Beautiful Glitch

Please, suppport us on KICKSTARTER! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/corintio/monster-prom You can check our first playthrought. Noble played our demo! (: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-qvTlTdRXc

we're on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/corintio/monster-prom/

Oh, not at all. I just see a common denominator on the critiques and I want to address it. I'm writing detailed replies because I really want to engage in what seems to be an interesting discussion. So quite the opposite, someone pointing out the flaws in my arguments will be the best case scenario for me. My goal is far from convincing you a game like this will be a game you'll like, since it's clear you search for a different experience. I saw that. But I like the discussion because it gives me very interesting insights. A written format like this fails to convey tone, so please excuse me if my intensity and interest in the matter could have been confused with being defensive. I just have brought extensive arguments so I might get more accurate and extensive critiques that help me get better understanding of these insights. Thanks! Yeah, sorry. That's true. I mention The Yawhg because it's the only reference I have (in the end, the initial goal of this post was looking for more references). So it isn't always the best reference to quote. I agree on being hesitant about The Yawhg and the VN tag. To me the VN tag is more important because our project is closer to it (but still with many different traits). We're heavy on dialogues, for instance. About lenght, I agree with you. My thoughts here are if being short makes a game not a VN or it makes it a different kind of VN. Well, it was the opposite: VNs an watching a movie or reading a book and then this as a multiplayer TV show's episode or a multiplayer short (the lenght is an important thing). It sounds weird, still The Yawhg is a successful example of it. Can I ask why that sounds wrong to you? Not trying to convince you otherwise, but wanting to understand your PoV to get a better undestanding on the whole matter. Thanks! (:

Yup, totally. On our project there is this plotline, for instance, where 2 players might interact to just fuck up with a 3rd player love interest. A sad businessman is looking for a way of making money and you might suggest identity theft as one of the options. If you do this successfuly (all options might succeed or fail depending on your stats) later in the game session a love interest (Liam) comes to you to tell you that apparently someone has stolen his identity. You can identify the businessman (who's possing as Liam) or call the police because you allegedly don't know this guy (Liam) and you think he's the impostor and the identity theft while the businessman is the actual Liam. If you do so succesfully, you erase Liam of the pool of chars to ask to Prom, since he will be in jail. If so, anyone that was pursuing Liam will have his/her progress thwarted. this bein said, it's hard to reply to the "there's no point" argument. What means that there is no point? You mean like the experience (obviously different than regular VNs) provided by a game like this won't be of your likes. This is totally legit and it makes me think that even if a game like this has a lot of traits from VNs, it might appeal to a whole new audience. I agree. But I won't label that as "there is no point", honestly. But damn, that's just linguistics. About the dev side, I totally understand the source of your worries about complexity and viability to build a dynamic script. I totally addresses that in my last message. I hope you take a look! (: The discussion is being pretty interesting to me! Thanks for your inputs Sorry! I'm new here and I just discovered the multiquote option. From now on I will address the comments in a same comment to avoid lots of comments! Hi! Yeah, I've addressed the "but visual novels are like reading a book" in 2 of my responses. The one to FinalChaos and to UnlimitedMoeWorks. I get the "VNs are more for 'alone time'", but once again, that goes for most of VNs. This means a local multiplayer VN would provide a much different experience which will -yeah- not please to a good % of VN regular players, but in the end I'm not sur of that being a deal-breaker. I mean, let's say I create this tasty burger which is actually sweet due to its ingredients. It's good but it's sweet, so some people say "I don't see the point to a sweet burger, because you don't eat burgers as a dessert". Yeah, that's true, but still this burger has a lot of traits of a burger, so it can be called a burger and a logical answer to that reply is "ok... just you eat this one as a dessert". I mean, "most visual novels are for alone time" makes me answer "right, but this one is not meant for that". It can or cannot work... it'll depend on the quality of the product. There are some interesting issues: > It can be called burger/VN? At what point a key difference (sweetness or a change on the whole game experience) makes necessary to address the product under other tag. It's hard, because if the product is rare enough not to have a tag of its own, most common thing is to say "it's like /more common tag/ but with these key differences". I mean, maybe in the future there are so many kind of sweet burgers that they have their own tag. But as for now you'd say "it's a burger, but it's sweet". > Obviously this can mean that the product addresses to a whole new audience. Maybe burger lovers don't like this burger because for them the point of good burgers are their savory taste. Maybe this becomes a product renowned in the world of dessert lovers or brunch lovers or whatnot. This is an interesting issue I'm studying here (the main goal of the post was to get more multiplayer VNs examples... but then this discussion appeared and I find it quite interesting). Ah, and The Yawhg is CLEARLY a multiplayer game since the interactions are divided in different characters that -even if there's one person inputing the choices- make different choices that are supposed to be made by different people. Let's picture a Trivia videogame where 2 teams compete answering questions with 4 possible answers. A team is handled a question then the other team is handled another question. Everything can be controlled by the same controller or mouse, since the participation is not simultaneous. So technically, even if I call the shots on my team and you in your team, just one person can input our different decisions with the same controller. It's the same case and it's also a clear local multiplayer game example. Also, an interactive experience with a set of rules and goals is the very definition of game... In The Yawhg there are many possible endings (+50) and they are divided into defeat, victory and a middleground. And getting one or the other heavily depends on players' choices. So it is a story that is told to everyone (same as for VNs or almost any videogame at all), but it is also a game where player might input their own choices in order to affect the outcome. Finally there's the issue of calling it a VN or not. That one is trickier and I addressed it before with the burger simile. The Yawhg is further from a VN, but this is an interesting issue to me because our project is closer to VNs, so it's actually a more ambiguous case, from my PoV.

Ah, no, not at all. Once again, we go similar to our biggest inspiration, The Yawhg. It works a bit differently than your usual VN. I'm no expert, but I think in most VNs there are heavy long plotlines that evolve during the whole gameplay. Let's compare them to a movie, right? There's some sweet interaction that means some complexity in their bifurcations so you get a nº of different endings (and storylines inbetween). Yeah? Ok, in this case -let's think The Yawhg or our project, Monster Prom- the thing works more like a TV show with a more episodic structure. Think of Friends, to quote a classic we all know. So, in The Yawhg and in our project a game session is purposedly short. 45-60 minutes. There is a common plotline which is the constant but that isn't specially heavy (prom is soon! or The Yawhg is soon!). Then you decide how you will play this time. It's up to the players. Thing is the game has some nice depth, so every time you play the experience is narratively brand new. A game session might mean around 30-40 events to happen. But there truly are a whole lot more events (not sure in The Yawhg, but we're aiming for 300 evens, so we can assure 7-12h of gameplay before you start encountering repeated events). Even like that, each event has 2 options and each option has 2 outcomes (depending on your stats). That mean that if you play several game sessions you will start encountering some repeated events, but you still can play it differently. The key is this modularity in smaller events. There is no 5-10h huge plotline. We have micro-events. Sometimes they are isolated (think of a TV show gag) and sometimes some of them mix together to create plotlines (think of the plotline of a TV episode). Some of this plotlines occur in a way where more than one player affect it through 4-5 events. This obviously creates a WIDELY different experience. As said before, this kind of game is more like a tabletop game, meant (normally) to be played by several players in shorter game sessions where part of the fun lays on replayability. It creates two kinds of player: the casual one that experiences it once or twice and the regular one, that plays it more times. Let's talk of The Yawhg: I own the game. I've played 5-6 game sessions, adding up to around 5h. I've played with different friends. Some of them have played just one session, so to them is like this light experience they had and enjoyed. I, instead, repeated it to understand the game and the storyline better. More game sessions translated into discovering new layers of the game. On Monster Prom the idea is similar, I want people that plays for 45-60' minutes to have a fun time with a conclusion; but I want some people to engage with the chars so they are like "oh, it was fun, I'd love to play again and discover new plotlines and situations, to get to know better these characters on this monster school". Similar to a TV episodic show again: you can watch a Friends episode and enjoy it and you can really like the show and watch more and more episodes because you really want to know more about a specific char, such as Joey or Monica. (: That's totally legit and there's absolutely no possible way of defending a multiplayer VN against that specific issue :c

hey, sorry! I answered to your inquiries in one of my latest messages, while introducing how the cooperative/competitive dynamics work + the direct reference to The Yawhg Yeah, I see this point. It's true that in some points Monster Prom disrupts what you usually expect of a visual novel. Sames goes with The Yawhg, which -in consequence- wasn't marketed as a visual novel. Still the experience that let the player live is basically a visual novel (a very different one). I have this interactive narrative I experience, only this time with my friends. It's similar to watching a movie or a TV show with a friend, right? I enjoy watching a TV show by myself, but the experience is somewhat different when I'm with friends and we comment what's happening. Let's forget the term "reading a story". Let's say "experiencing a story", because in the end that's more true to the experience of a visual novel. So, experiencing it with other people is far from impractical. Is it better? Well, that surely depends on the visual novel itself. Some stories are built in a way they're meant to be experienced in a more intimate way, so a visual novel that seeks intimacy would be weird to be played with friends. But let's say a visual novel is built on a more comedic tone, the kind of stuff you might later share in social media because you found it funny. In that case it make total sense for that kind of VN to be experienced by more than one person at a time. I'm not saying that ways is better or worse, just not impractical neither a nonsense. I don't know if it will work. There's a problem on marketing the product. Because it has lots of traits from the VN genre, yet it disrupts your usual VN experience so much it can be zero appealing to the usual VN market. That is no necessarily a bad thing. Lots of fields have been disrupted before and a good thing is that it opens the doors to innovation and such. I only have one reference of a game that mixes visual novel traits with local multiplayer mechs, which is -as said before- The Yawhg. I must say that in that case worked for sure. Not only it is a great and innovative game, but it also had pretty nice sales (around 60k owners on Steam).

Hi! (: If you let me, I will copy something I said in LSF: The mechanics are similar to The Yawhg. I won't lie: it's pretty simple, in the sense is just up to 4 chars with different stats that can be managed even by the same controller or keyboard. Each player can manage his char and the main idea is to have fun together the same way you can enjoy watching together a funny TV show. The idea is for all of you to see the absurd and crazy situations you're facing. Also, we're trying to include events with some complexity that can be altered by other players. Finally, you can always try to pursue the same NPC, fighting for his/her love. But in best case scenario we get enough funding to add more secret endings... and I'd love to add special secret endings when 2 players fighting for the love of a same NPC doesn't necessarily ends in one succeeding and the other failing, if you know what I mean Obviously, in the end, each person is building his/her own storyline, but I want to explore as many ways as possible to make the storylines collide... clash. That you feel like if your friend wants to cooperate he/she can help you to unlock a better version of your storyline. But in the end is more than that: as said, is the communal experience of living a crazy narrative altogether. The Yawhg's gameplay video conveys it excellently: What do you think? (: I'm not fond of MMORPGs myself, but still I think it's always good to have a variety of options, mechanic-wise. Anyway, in our case it's a local multiplayer experience, so think more of a tabletop game night with friends than a MMORPG. I insist: probably most similar experience would be The Yawhg.

Hi, guys! We're working on a project that is a multiplayer visual novel/dating sim. We liked the concept because it sounded very innovative to us. We tried to study other similar projects but we failed to find other multiplayer visual novels/dating sims. Since here is full of experts on the matter, we hoped we can ask you for cool references on multiplayer visual novels/dating sims. Can you tell us, please? (: Thanks a lot! P.S.: the project in question is Monster Prom. Our site is http://monsterprom.pizza

Questions: Do you want the concept so far? Why? What's the thing that excites you the most about the project? What's the thing you like the least about the project? Which is the char that appeals you the most? Why? What would you want to know about the project?

Hi, guys! We just started with a project called "Monster Prom". It's a game meant to be played from 1 to 4 players that mixes "choose-your-own-adventure" and "dating sim" mechanics. You will have a limited number of turns to explore a highschool full of weird and amazing events that will let you meet your six classmates. Each event will let you raise or lose your stats and improve or mess with your relationship with the NPCs. In the end you will ask one of the NPCs to go to prom with you. Similar to The Yawhg (Awesome game, check it out!) We're planning to launch a Kickstarter campaign soon! (October 25th) STRENGHTS OF THE GAME > Cool art > Funny situations and dialogues > A Multiplayer game to play with friends and laugh w/ the situations. A funny experience to share! What do you think?