eyeslikethorns

[eyeslikethorns]

I really want to make a “why choose” visual novel. Can’t decide who to romance? No problem! Kiss all of them. They’re cool with it!

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shoutout to leander's big naturals

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CHOOSE YOUR POISON

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these touchstarved LIs...

also the 'darker' cover of everytime we touch is just...perfect.

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That's all. Bye

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Touchstarved Kickstarter rewards arrived! Very impressed with the pack, lovely stuff x

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Can I have a random Azriel fact, please? ♥

Robin was his "common name" back in Faerie...

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@twincovesgame

...can I just... have all of them?

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👀

The upcoming bonus Moment works a little bit differently than the Step 3 one did. In that event, Cove and the MC had never done anything intimate before and had to progress at a set rate to arrive at the scene. In this Step 4 Bonus Moment, Cove and the MC are already past that point in their relationship. Because of that, you'll be able to get into it at any pace you want, including as soon as you walk through the door, haha. 

And doing the intimate scene first won't cut the event short, the other stuff will just happen afterwards instead of before. Or you can relax first and then end the night with romance. Or, of course, you can avoid physical contact entirely. It's all up to what's right for you!

The Patreon-Only Cove wedding night bonus story is currently in development by GB Patch Games. You can read more about it HERE!

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sighs i just finished errant kindom and man...it really feels like one of those "we had this super cool, super in depth idea that we hadn't actually finish preparing when we got all our funding and made promises, and then we lost interest halfway through but are obligated to finish it" situations. i wanted to believe they could fix things give then TWO YEAR break they had to come up with something but its just *so* obvious they stopped caring about EK once they got the greenlight for Call Me Under. idk how much most people remember from early dev of EK (since they've deleted two tumblrs, privated their original twitter account + deleted comments on the itchio pages to get away from the drama they've caused through this whole process. very normal things for a developer to do in response to very justified critique lol) but the change in attitude/tone/amount of updates about it after CMU became a thing was immediate and noticeable even back then. i think most people (me included) figured they were just really excited about their next game esp since wtnc had bought them so much good will, but in hindsight the warning signs were there even before the hiatus.

i know they site covid as the main reason for delays and everything for EK but at the same time, they've been perfectly on pace for CMU despite its development starting later (but before the pandemic) and not having nearly as many financially backed obligations as EK did at the time? they managed to release two waves of new content for WTNC including a mini story they charged for during the pandemic and got most of an extended demo done for CMU, but the ending of EK is the best they could manage in two years *AFTER* getting another 3 months to work on it from the original re-release? sorry not buying it any more, i'm sure the pandemic made things difficult and i emphasize but they very obviously were getting work done, just not on the project they should to have been prioritizing over their shiny new toy.

It definitely feels like they got tired halfway and just put whatever together to call it finished...

Honestly, I got into EK kind of very late (just about when they went on hiatus if I recall right?), so I missed a lot of the drama about the when and hows of the updates. I'm not necessarily annoyed that they ran into problems and had to release much later than originally said (that's the risk of buying unfinished games), but I would have appreciated it if they were more forward about it from the start. Instead they made excuses and pushed the date further and further away with half-baked excuses, and now that annoyed me. I honestly would have preferred if they took an indefinite hiatus and came back together to the game finale with a fresh mind instead (a controversial opinion perhaps, but I'd rather have had a good finale later than... Whatever we got now).

I'll admit I haven't yet looked into their other games (I get into stuff randomly and at random times), and after everything that went on I'm certainly no more confident to do it now.

I can only hope that the devs do better in the future, being more honest with the fans and taking their time to deliver a final result according to what they've been building up.

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Now I'm done being relieved I was perfectly justified in my diappointment, I still love WTNC and the revamp with voice-acting, (although I personally think it's not necessary in a visual novel game of that nature), was pretty good. Yes, there are some things they could have done better or differently, and you can definitely tell they write for one route specifically and use it as a base for the others, (Arcana has this very same issue), but it seemed to come together a lot better at the end. Plus, I adore the DLC.

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Errant Kingdom: thoughts about the Finale (spoiler alert: am disappointed)

Sorry for putting negative opininons in the tags, but I've seen it done before and I'm warning you to stop reading now if you don't wanna see it. That said, spoilers for everything ahead, read at your own risk.

(I wanna complain in detail, so I'm gonna break every point down)

•Where's my Convergence

Up until the finale the game was hinting towards all three routes merging at the end. And then it just. didn't. This would've been okay if from the start Nomad/Knight/Ambassador were the three roles you could choose, and even if they were nods towards the other two, they didn't have any real weight on the story and who you chose was the only, well, Chosen One. But they didn't do that!! It's obvious all three routes are supposed to happen simultaneously!! Maja literally tells Knight they're not the only one marked, Raiden tells Ambassador if they know anything about Knight because Erik is worried about them (implying their being snatched by the gods), I'm pretty sure in Nomad x Erik he tells them they're not the one they were looking for/expecting (he was looking for Knight!). And then in the finale they forgot about the existence of the roles you didn't choose. What happened with the other two Chosen ones. I get it would've been difficult to orchestrate this, but if you build up expectations then you need to live up to them.

•Erik's Bloodline

Where the actual hell did that come from?! You can't just pull that kinda stuff out your arse at the end in a haha gotcha, if you wanted to go for that you should've left hints. And no, having him exiled on weird circumstances isn't a hint. I assumed their Majesties set up a trap for him because he was a good knight who cared about people and that doesn't bode well for you when you're doing things that will actively harm said people. And in this assumed scenario it makes sense they exiled him? They didn't need him dead, just out of any position that holds power. But with the actual reason? Him being the Chosen One the only who can defeat their plans and their god? Yeah, I'm not buying that they went "well maybe exile will be enough lol".

Plus, Erik being from a bloodline of kings and then becoming King it's. eh. Don't get me wrong I'm not mad that he is King, he would make an amazing one, but I kinda wish getting back his old life (now upgraded) wasn't the only way he can get his happy ever after. It would've been cool if they went for 'what happened was not your fault and you don't need to go back to your old life for happiness', but I understand that's a subjective thing.

•Sword for the Ambassador

This is how I dubbed the fact that no matter which role you take the Mythical Item To Defeat God is a sword. Even when you're an ambassador that (canonically) hasn't held a blade in their life and just barely gets the basics of how to hold a dagger before the final battle. Yeah, sure, just strap the thing to their back and sent them to battle, what could go wrong? The sword made sense for Knight, but I assumed the item would be different for every role tailored to each on'es skills.

•The Final Battle

It was kind of anticlimatic after all the build up of it being a battle between gods/gods' Chosen Ones. And in the end it's a man with a bloodline and magic sword, a Fake Chosen One, and a god that *checks notes* gets distracted by mages throwing debris at them. This is where convergence and magic items tailored to each role would've been awesome.

•Suddenly Important Triplets

Look. I'm not against having the triplets have an important role, but the last time they appeared was all the way back in the prologue, Ambassador route only, and they were presented as kind of shallow and dumb. And now they are the masters of secrets holding super important information? What?! If they wanted to go for this it should have been hinted so that, at least in hindsight, it makes sense.

Also, side note on the favours. They should be different for every role. Up until I caught up that the three routes were not hapenning simultaneosuly anymore I thought good lord why is everyone being asked for Erik's hair. But no. Not everyone. Just who you're playing as because the other two Chosen Ones are not that important anymore and hold no role in the story.

•Dialogue Recycling

I mean, in the end a lot of the other points are tied to this. They wrote one thing and made the bare necessary changes to make it for the three roles. And we've seen dialogue recycling before! Sometimes it's necessary! In ch5 we've seen some dialogue recycling, but it was less... obnoxious is not the word I'm looking for but it will have to do, and generally made more sense (there were a couple instances in the polyam options were the recycled dialogue implied you'd entered the romance from the wrong side, but I'm not here to critique ch5, let's stick to the finale). However, in the finale the dialogue recycling has been constant across all three roles. Not much to distinguish if you're playing as Knight, Ambassador, of Nomad from the events/dialogue except how people address you. Before every route was distinctly different.

•Loose Threads

It drives me nuts that we've had the finale without all questions being answered. What the fuck happened with the cultist at the forest, for once? It was given so much importance and then they were not to be seen or even mentioned again. And what about Callisto's hiring of Raiden? I'm okay with not knowing how she got the Guild's favour (I would be more okay if the sisters were introduced from the start as sneaky and secretive little bitches), but who is Rai murdering? He even mentions it's a job he would have gotten eventually and it feels wird af that you can't even guess about it?

•No Time for Love

This might be slightly more petty, but it is a big pet peeve of mine when once a romantic route is selected you actually have less romance/content with the LI instead of more. But it's only a natural outcome when you combine 'Where's my Convergence' and 'Dialogue Recycling'

•King, Queen, and Special Little Friend

More petty things, but why don't MC, Erik, and Maja rule as a throuple in the polyam routes? I could buy it that Nomad doesn't want to because they made it clear they do not want to live in court like that (and still Maja and Erik could pester them about it). But with Knight and Ambassador? If ruling by three isn't a concept yet then their new Majesties would certainly make it one.

•I Love You but I Love Heist More

Also a petty one, but it didn't feel right for Lucien to leave for the next heist when you just started your relationship with them. Lucien, who so romantically told you that being so ancient they count time not by the seasons but by the lives of those they love. But then they can't wait the blink of a human lifetime for the next heist? Or failing that take you with them? I get that in the polyam routes Raiden has to stay in Novus as the new Viper, and that MC would stay with him rather than leave too, but the monogamous route? Kinda unnecessary for MC to stay.

(And then again, if Lucien is so ancient what is a human lifetime to them? Heist is good and all but are you really telling me it's the only source of entertainment you get? My friend, I say this as someone who loves you: you need to get hobbies)

•Bad Ending

I could write a whole essay on this, but enough to say that the Bad Ending isn't bad as in tragic but bad as in nonsensical. Why can Novoth make you replace the god who marked you? Why does that make you forgive you about yourself, your friends, your lifes and experiences? Why does everything go to shit immediately after (the gods told that Novoth wanted a utopia eventually leading to ruin, not the apocalypse? But well, they made Novoth straight up evill instead of not understanding how humanity works which was a far more attractive idea, so yeah. I could make a whole other point about this, actually). Additionally, why do your friends give up immediately after and scatter? They had strong bonds tying them together before you came around!!

Also, if you change your mind last minute and switch to the Good End halfway through it is. the most. nonsensical thing. of all.

And that has been all!! Thanks for coming to my TED talk. If you're still reading I commend your commitment.

I genuinely liked the game (still do, finale notwithstanding), the characters and overall game up until ch5 were amazing and it seemed like they were leading to an equally amazing finale. I was wrong. But I became attached to the LIs and my OCs, so I'll still be obsessed with this game for the foreseeable future.

All in all, bad canon exists so fanon can thrive, I guess, so I'll be working on my own fanfix for the finale because it deserved better.

[eyeslikethorns]

I get why (i think) lir has a question mark next to him being human (bc mc doesn't know he's a merman right?) but why does cass and kai have a question mark?

Because MC thinks Kai and Cass are humans too. But are they? Guess you’ll have to wait and find out along with the MC!

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Random RO fact of the day, please!

Cass isn’t much of a cook, but he can make a mean paneer makhani! (His paternal nan taught him)

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Azriel in all his babygirl glory ✨

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[eyeslikethorns]

Random question. What would the RO's need the most from their partner? Like who might need someone who's more patient or someone more understanding. Someone whos more serious or more lighthearted. Someone who can take control of a situation or someone who lets them handle things. stuff like that.

Good question!

Az just needs someone to believe in him. Believe the best of him. Not many people have in his life.

Cass needs a counterweight. Someone who knows when to be a partner in crime but also knows when to pull him back. On the flip side, Cass will encourage MC to try to things and step outside their comfort zone.

Damián needs a true partner. Someone to help carry the weight of being pack leader, and he will support them in turn. Power couple vibes.

Eli needs someone to care for. He's a very nurturing person.

Kai needs someone to push him to always be better, and he’ll do the same. Also power couple vibes.

Lir needs someone to adventure through life with, willing to go with the flow at a moment’s notice.

Rook needs someone to support him and be his soft landing place.

Wren just needs someone to love him.

Xander needs someone to remind him his life after death is worth living, and he'll make sure MC lives their life to the fullest.