Witchcraft

[Moonchaos]

Re: Witchcraft

Alright after a bit of work I created my screenshot collection of Spider-World... and since it took me much time I don't think I will do it with witchcraft since there is too much content...

CG are by levels.

3 screens per animations (in-out-cum)
Plus CG of the storyline

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lets see if link will be taken down since its not the game itself...

Of course it will even my walktroughs from Other World Quest were taken down even the Hentai Book and this has nothing to do with any game itself just 2 pictures and some informations about the name, language, maker, creator and stuff...

 

[HERO1000]

Re: Witchcraft

Of course it will even my walktroughs from Other World Quest were taken down even the Hentai Book and this has nothing to do with any game itself just 2 pictures and some informations about the name, language, maker, creator and stuff...

Woah,really?

I know she wants to gain money for her hard work but taking down walkthroughs is going over the line(it's like saying gamefaqs is illegal,it's got walkthroughs, pics, and "some informations about the name, language, maker, creator and stuff" and yet it's not considered so by almost any gaming company.)

 

[Nanie]

Re: Witchcraft

This game runs so slow and I've accidentally killed my data twice with escape.

In case anyone here shares my frustration with how incredibly slow this game is, with it's fake difficulty being produced by the need to farm money by very slow cutscenes, I got fed up and hacked a save for you all.

The save location is just beyond the demo cut off point where you're in the next village. Enjoy not being poor for a while.

Here's my contribution.

Edit:
Not entirely sure why the hell he had three different values all defining the gold. I figured hey one may be a trap! But nope. All three were just how much money you had. Who knows maybe one was how much was being displayed? But then what was the third? Haha, oh well.

 

[Kathy]

Re: Witchcraft

My 2 cents on games and prices.

Game developers deserve their fair share of money, small time or big name, and it should be seen as a way to encourage them to make more games. After all, if some tiny town dev released an indie game that suddenly made him rich, you can bet he's going to quit his job and go make more games.

A bigger issue becomes the types of games being released.

(big rant about the quality of games being released)

Spoiler

Is it about the gameplay? Silly games like TifaTanX and some of our other beloved RoR games have very few CGs and animations (if any animations at all), but we still love it and come back because the game (while dirty) is more about the fun of playing around with it, and the scenes are built into the whole feel of it. (The first time poor Tifa lost her top had me giggling wildly.)

A good one of these games should be compared to regular games, the $3 to $5 price tag would be a fair thing to stick on most of them. If it's a bigger game that's closer to an actual full game that just happens to have some dirty parts, the value should go up accordingly. (There ARE H-Games out there that surpass the quality of games you'd grab at the local gamestop...)

Value: $3-5 for a quick and short thing. More if it's better.


Is it about the CG? Sometimes game makers aren't as good at game making but feel as though they need a more stable platform to release their artwork. They actually want a story surrounding it, and to give you a feel for who their character is. These games are often simple choice games, usually barely more "game" than a visual novel. (Visual novels fall in this group if you actually count them as games... I don't.)

Being all about the CG, the only way to compare these 'games' is to go find a CG set on one of the official sales sites and decide if you'd be willing to pay for that. Better ones really change the entire feel and give you a lot of mood behind the pics, while cheaper ones make you wonder why it wasn't just a CG set.

Value: Whatever the CG set would go for... possibly a bit more since they put the effort into the game and story.


Is it just about the quick buck? A step worse than being about the CG, sometimes a good CG set will be thrown into a shitty, shitty game, because games sell for more money. Or even worse, the CG will be crap, and the game is crap too, making anyone who actually paid for it regret it.

These games are easy to identify by a very small amount of CG, or the CGs being rehashed and reused constantly throughout the game. They often brag about a high CG number, only to find that most of them are the same CG with a slightly different outfit, or the hair has changed so they can call it a different girl, even though everything else is identical. "Games" like this usually only have the game attached to pad the fact that it's not worth it, and the poor design of the game often shows it.

Value: None. The instant these games are revealed for their crappiness, they deserve to be fileshared to anyone who has interest, so everyone can see how crappy it is before blowing money on it.


Then there's the rare few games that have both good CGs and good gameplay.

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His most recent game is a perfect example of this mix. When the CGs are made, and the game is made, and either one is worth paying money for, we get what everyone hopes is going to be what all games are. A fun thing to play, that has good material. It's the rarest thing to find, and when we do find one, everyone goes wild for it, naturally, making it the big talk of all the forums.

Value: CG+Game = $10 to $15 easily, more if it's a larger game with more CGs.

The problem with most of Vanja's games is they fall into category #3 up there. The CGs were often of low quality with very, very few of them at all, and the game was more of a fuss to play and get at them than it was enjoyable, especially after the second or third level.

Especially that dragon and princess game, to get the different endings required you to play THE ENTIRE DAMN GAME AGAIN, and with the super-shitty long texts and wandering through town and the possibility of instant-death for hastily messing up jumps... just... ouch. It really wasn't worth it to go get the different endings on top of everything.

Having not played the new game, I can only hope it's been improved upon, but it's always hard to tell. The most "fun" game from that site I've toyed with was the one where you used two ingredients to make different spells, but even that felt less like a game and more like a toy to mess around with, the "boss" at the end being pointless and requiring a huge walk to get to for no good reason, while the "enemies" leading up to it were either far too few if you were unlucky, or far too plentiful if you kept running into the "wrong" spell early. Which bumped this game squarely into the category of game that's all about the CGs.


I guess the best thing to say is I hope the new game is worth it, and everyone enjoys it, but I'm in no rush to go out and grab it. If someone happens to send me the thing, I'll pick it up sooner or later, but otherwise, it can quietly 'ripen' on that site a little bit more before they deserve any of my money.

 

[Nanie]

Re: Witchcraft

My 2 cents on games and prices

And my logic in return, with fairly honest criticism and a 'Just in case the maker spies on the forum' suggestion topic.

Spoiler

I entirely agree with your statement here, but people like me who don't really have income but have honor have strange methods of bringing out some method of balance.

Take Tsukihime for example, I pirated the hell out of that shit. I felt it was very much worth the amount of money they were asking for, so one time when I had a nice check I slung them a donation for more than that.

This on the other hand, I would have felt eternally furious and regretful that I had bought it if I did. This thing surely is not worth 20 bucks. No offense to the creator, but I have to vote no on that. It runs slow, is built off the concept of fake difficulty, there's literally about twice as much playtime and room as the demo, all the scenes are the same scene with a recolor. It's like playing a Dragon Warrior game for Nintendo, only I actually felt like I had accomplished something after playing that first game, grinding gold to kill slimes to kill bigger things to beat an obscure Dragon Master boss who offers to essentially make you a Sith Lord.

Now, don't shoot me down yet. As far as these games go, none of them before have been games really. Think like a choose your own adventure book, only you can't choose a path, it runs really slow, and there's no avoiding really anything. Also to my knowledge, on the older games game overs had no continue spot (may not be so, been a while.)

This was a legitimate attempt to bring out a playable systen with animations. The effort on their end was great, but it it still very much a game that really could have used some polishing. It's like playing slow motion rock paper scissors.

For example. That 50 gold Anaphrodesiac that calms your lust a little is cheap and affordable. Later on in the game, a big, shiney 300 gold Big Anaphrodesiac is suddenly slung out on display. Only it heals about as much as two or three original ones. This wouldn't be an issue if you couldn't use more than one item. Therefore the Big Anaphrodesiacs are quite literally a huge waste of precious money and time.

There's an event where in order to progress, you must farm 5000 gold and buy a shiney diamond to spare someone's life. There's no choice to try to fight the enemy, you are just like 'Alright, I trust you won't just eat him while I'm gone getting you a giant diamond. Be good.' This is terrible and also should at least be scripted with better logic. It makes no sense.

My bottom line here is, though the artist here has done a large amount of work and probably drove himself mad trying to make great animations, the actual game designers were too busy trying to rush the game. It is unpolished and rough. We're essentially being fed an alpha to beta game here and being asked for a toll.

So yeah. If you guys want to financially support them and think it's the same as being able to give advice and guidance, go for it. I would donate if I felt it was worth any money. I personally really don't.

Just in case someone who actually worked on the game is reading my fairly sharp criticism here, I have some advice.

* - Make it so you can only use one item per your action phase, to actually make Big Aphrodesiacs worth it.

* - Delete the spell that insta kills enemies. That's essentially the 'I won the game' spell. Making it so it doesn't hurt bosses doesn't matter in a game with no stat system other than how much gold your pockets are lined with.

* - You don't need to shrink your levels, but you should seriously work on enhancing the player's movement speed. Maybe have a dash feature, or run toggle button to make you move a bit faster. Exploring the game at a snail's pace really isn't fun at all.

* - Lower your price. If you left it as it is now, I would venture to say your game is worth roughly four dollars. If you made the improvements I suggested, I would say that this would raise to probably six or eight. If you think that's low, think about this. If it is cheaper and affordable, you are more likely to have larger quantities of buyers, and thusly profit financially more from it while spreading your name to a wider audience.

Anyway, as it is now, those who actually legitimately purchase this game will have a very very very large chance of never purchasing anything ever again from the site in displeasure. This game is a good experiment and a great show of collaboration skills to finish the said project, but it feels like you really should have maybe had a few testers selected and gotten some advice before you jumped the gun and labeled it for sale. Also, if you do update it, make this update available to those who already purchased your games.

 

[Raxon66]

Re: Witchcraft

I see some people here don't really seem to have read at least a small piece of info about who's actually making these games, as words like "they" and "him" are frequently being mentioned. Just as you know: the game creator is called Vanja, her website is

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(free site) and her paysite is

You must be registered to see the links

. There is one person behind these games, so there's no "they". She does have an e-mail address on her free site, so if you feel you have some good advice for her, why don't you send her an e-mail?

Second: I'm starting to get a little tired of the constant "not worth the price" fussing. As mentioned before: these games doesn't have a set price..! If you sign up for her site just to get your hands on one game, it will cost you $25. But it's still wrong to say the games costs $25. If you sign up on her site without having any of her games, there are 28 games (counting the flash games), and that would set a price of $0.9 for each game.

Really: fussing about the price here is rather senseless, because the creator isn't selling these games for a set price. She is also not selling single products - she is selling a membership to a site, and people get access to absolutely everything there for the price they pay. It's possible to wait for the site to build up before paying, so you can even adjust the price for each item you want by yourself. If you don't think it's worth paying $25 for a game, you could wait until the site has got 5 new games for example, and then you'd pay $5 for each. If you don't think that's worth it either, you could wait until the site's got 10 new games, and then you'd pay $2.5 for each. Sure, it would include a lot of waiting, but by the way some of you are writing about about these games, I feel they don't really suit your tastes in the first place, so you'd probably be better off playing other games anyway.

Anyway, as it is now, those who actually legitimately purchase this game will have a very very very large chance of never purchasing anything ever again from the site in displeasure.

How do you know that? If she didn't have a fanbase, do you really think she would keep producing games? If customers never returned and everyone felt pissed off, do you think the site would continue to exist and continue to have new content added to it frequently? No, I don't think so. Some people might not like these games and will feel "ripped off", but just because some people do (and the majority of these seems to be people who didn't originally pay for them anyway) doesn't mean that the majority actually does. She's got her fanbase, and there's a reason for that. Having a fanbase doesn't mean everyone will like what you do, but if the majority didn't, her paysite wouldn't exist anymore.

Like I said, some of us are able to enjoy what she actually has to offer, and while some consider her games to be the only thing out there, that isn't the case. I enjoy her games, but I also enjoy her pics, comics, animations, and the chance to even make a member requested drawing from her. The games are just a small part of her site, so in a way it can be a bit unfair to talk about them as if they're the only thing people sign up for, because it isn't.

Some people really don't like these games, but I, and several others, really do. But that's okay, we're all different and have different likes and dislikes

 

[Nanie]

Re: Witchcraft

Now don't get me wrong here. As I said, this is a great project and the animations are great. I did not know that Vanja was literally one single person. In which case, I would have to say that before Vanja really releases games she hopes people would pay for, she probably shouldn't work solo then. Whereas she is fantastic with art and storyline (I have to say that Witchcraft at the very least had a pretty neat story, definitely approve of it), as far as creating a suitable game system goes she's still very early on in her skill.

I also was not saying that people should not invest in this, nor should they be fans at all. I'm just saying that before something has a price tag and is labelled a game, it should probably have a series of play testers and comments being taken in to work with. Like, no offense, but calling Witchcraft a Game is an insult to the word Game. But, it is a serious attempt at creating which, which is very much commendable and is a sign of aspiring talent.

Though if it is as you say and it's not really like this is being sold, but membership is being sold, than it isn't quite as bad as I had originally believed. If this single individual game had a $20-$25 price tag, I would never imagine anyone but close friends purchasing it. However, if it is a global purchase thing I guess it makes more sense.

Still, aside it's great artwork and fairly good concepts, storyline, and everything on the visually pleasing artistic side, it fairly lacks anything that is on the pleasing side of someone anticipating to play a game.

This is my own criticism and am in no way trying to sound like a jerk here. I also am not fully talking down this game and Vanja, so don't take this personally haha. I am just saying, this seriously could have used fine tuning. It seems she's using the same movement system she's been using, only it's terribly slow and hit boxes are strange too. That probably should be retuned.

 

[Raxon66]

Re: Witchcraft

No problem, giving some criticism is always a good thing no matter what, and that's why I also thought those of you that might have good suggestions for her might be interested in sending her an e-mail. I just thought that it seemed a lot of people here (you included) didn't know about the real price of the games and who the creator is, so I thought it would make sense to clear that up

Personally, Witchcraft is one of my favorite games amongst most of the games I've played recently, but that doesn't mean I don't see room for improvements. The movement system really improved in her latest game ("Spider World") compared to her older ones, so at least that seems to be worked on. What makes Witchcraft solid for me is the good story and animations, and I can't say I felt like it wasn't a game (even those "click for the next scene" games are being labelled as "games" ) because I always felt intrigued to get to the next levels and enemies. But hey - everyone's entitled to their opinion, and I think it's always good to share those thoughts

 

[thetruemaster]

Re: Witchcraft

The point I was trying to make is that individual elements of her works should be available for purchase, we shouldn't have to get the whole thing. This is especially true for people like me who aren't actually aroused by pictures or comics and only care about the games. Your argument for waiting until there are 5 good games in there is not valid either, since there is a good chance there may not be 5 good games on the site that I will like, or its possible that they will never get made.

Bottom line is that not letting people purchase individual games for reasonable prices will cut into her profits, and it will annoy players to the point that they pirate the games more often.

Some people definitively do not have the patients to wait for more games on the site, or end up forgetting about the games entirely and move on to other games that come out. Heck, Vanji's new games may make some of her old games obsolete too.

 

[Xraven888]

Re: Witchcraft

Some people definitively do not have the patients to wait for more games on the site

If people are so eager to have them that they can't wait for them, then maybe they should just pay for it and be done with it?? If you don't think something's that good, then there's no sense in not being able to wait for it. I've seen a lot of people complaining about these games in threads here now and before, and yet, many of them have been very eager and impatient on getting their hands on them. People who have tried earlier games are still wanting the newer ones, despite saying that they thought they sucked and blah blah blah. Hey, I'm even liking her earlier ones (a lot of people here doesn't seem to have liked "Bondage World" very much, but I do, lol) and I look forward to her new projects. And I don't even care particularily much about anything else on her site, except the games. Thing is, we don't really know if this kind of sales practice really hurts her sales like some people are saying here. Maybe some people here would prefer that she'd sell her games separately, but what about her other customers? It's not like people here on ULMF are her only customers. Hardly anyone, by the looks of it. It may annoy some people here who are only interested in her games, but what about her other customers who might be interested in her whole "package"? We don't really know that much about what kind of customers she's got to know what would be the best sales method for her. As some other people here have mentioned already, they do prefer the "whole package" thing. So maybe the majority just do?

Since we seem to be talking generally on the games by Vanja I thought I could share something I discovered in

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:

Spoiler

On certain days, if you visit the princess, she'll give you 10.000 gold. This happens on day: 15, 33, 50, 68, 85, and 94.

 

[Kathy]

Re: Witchcraft

Just a couple things...
1) I know Vanja is a femme, my first half of that post above was a generic line aimed at game makers in general.
2) Most people view the 25$ fee as a price tag because you're assumed to want to sign up and stay with the site for a new game every month (which would cost 25$ each if there's one new game a month!). Ducking in and out from month to month gets annoying and causes you to suffer through missing games you may have been anticipating, while needing to sign up again later on.
3) ...

The biggest issue is Quality over Quantity. The monthly signup format is one used by cheap, shitty sites to entice people in, then try to make them forget to cancel once they have what they want, or constantly dangle a carrot in front of the person's nose.

The problem is that it forces the maker to constantly push out huge sums of work in order to appease the signups, many times at sub-par quality.

Most of her earlier games FEEL like alpha versions, and looking at the slow improvements (but steady, I'll give her that!), you really feel as though she's a good artist and has cute things, but could have benefited from taking a month off to get the coding straight, or asking someone else for help.


It's because of this forced release schedule of owning the pay-by-month site that is making so many of these games feel cheap and poorly made while the content per game is very limited in scope.

I'm glad her games are improving, but still have a low interest level due to them still clearly being more of a beta than an actual game in most ways.

 

[thetruemaster]

Re: Witchcraft

If people are so eager to have them that they can't wait for them, then maybe they should just pay for it and be done with it?? If you don't think something's that good, then there's no sense in not being able to wait for it. I've seen a lot of people complaining about these games in threads here now and before, and yet, many of them have been very eager and impatient on getting their hands on them. People who have tried earlier games are still wanting the newer ones, despite saying that they thought they sucked and blah blah blah. Hey, I'm even liking her earlier ones (a lot of people here doesn't seem to have liked "Bondage World" very much, but I do, lol) and I look forward to her new projects. And I don't even care particularily much about anything else on her site, except the games. Thing is, we don't really know if this kind of sales practice really hurts her sales like some people are saying here. Maybe some people here would prefer that she'd sell her games separately, but what about her other customers? It's not like people here on ULMF are her only customers. Hardly anyone, by the looks of it. It may annoy some people here who are only interested in her games, but what about her other customers who might be interested in her whole "package"? We don't really know that much about what kind of customers she's got to know what would be the best sales method for her. As some other people here have mentioned already, they do prefer the "whole package" thing. So maybe the majority just do?

I'm not arguing for one or the other, I'm saying both options should be available. What gave you the impression otherwise? As for the patients thing, that's a footnote, why are you looking mainly at that? Also if you're only asking the people who are willing to buy the subscription whether or not they think its a fair deal, don't you think your evidence is going to be a little skewed?

You can spend $25 and get the whole thing, if that's what you want to do. If you only like one thing, you should be able to buy that one thing separately. I've looked at her main site and I know that she advertises every thing that she adds to the pay site. I don't understand why we absolutely MUST subscribe to get anything from there. Why not have the option to get one thing for a small one time fee?

 

[Raxon66]

Re: Witchcraft

The monthly signup format is one used by cheap, shitty sites to entice people in, then try to make them forget to cancel once they have what they want, or constantly dangle a carrot in front of the person's nose.

While that is certainly true about some paysites out there (I mentioned in an earlier thread that I've been to some paysites that hides their cancellation info on FAQ's or support pages), but that is not at all the case with Vanja's site. She's got both the link to the cancellation page right off the join page, with a huge red exclamation mark on it

Just a suggestion: those of you here that do not want to buy a subscription to her site, but would rather want to buy one of her products as a single purchase, why don't you just send her an e-mail and ask if you can do that? If you actually show her an interest for something like this, and enough people do, then maybe she'd consider it. I don't know if she reads this thread, or even if she does, most of these requests are coming from people who admits they have just pirated her work earlier and would never pay for her work anyway (some here even wrote they don't know how to use a credit card).

If you try to look at it from her side, nothing of this really gives any foundation to start a single-game payment option. How many would want to use it? How many of the people requesting it here in this thread would use it anyway, considering most of them seem to think of the games as not worth any payment in the first place? Is it worth the trouble, are there enough people interested in this?

You see, if her subscription method works for her site and people come back to it and don't complain about it, then why change it? I mean, unless there's an actual interest for it (not just a few forum threads where people originally are used to - let's be honest - download pirated games instead of buying).

I might try to send her an e-mail and ask her if she would consider selling her games separately, maybe by using Paypal payment or something like that. Those of you who'd really like her to start selling her games like this, should consider doing it as well. Fussing about it in this forum isn't likely to bring this any further - but if enough people shows an interest for this and take it to her directly, then who knows?

 

[Kp Romplestein]

Re: Witchcraft

If you try to look at it from her side, nothing of this really gives any foundation to start a single-game payment option. How many would want to use it? How many of the people requesting it here in this thread would use it anyway, considering most of them seem to think of the games as not worth any payment in the first place? Is it worth the trouble, are there enough people interested in this?

You see, if her subscription method works for her site and people come back to it and don't complain about it, then why change it? I mean, unless there's an actual interest for it (not just a few forum threads where people originally are used to - let's be honest - download pirated games instead of buying).

I might try to send her an e-mail and ask her if she would consider selling her games separately, maybe by using Paypal payment or something like that. Those of you who'd really like her to start selling her games like this, should consider doing it as well. Fussing about it in this forum isn't likely to bring this any further - but if enough people shows an interest for this and take it to her directly, then who knows?

What...? Since when has it been a good idea for a business to hold back a payment method for their product when said new method costs $0?

(Don't mean to sound like a dick, although I'm sure this comment comes off that way, couldn't be bothered to re-word it in a less douchey fashion)

 

[Raxon66]

Re: Witchcraft

No payment method really costs $0. They all charge fees for the sales, some more than others, and some charge setup fees. Plus, you need to set it up properly (a shop or something else that makes the purchase easily done, preferably with an instant download link so she won't have to manually send the product after the order). I'm not going to say this is a huge lot of work to do, because I don't have any experience within this field, but I guess it will take some time and probably money to have it set up properly.

As for the PayPal alternative, I don't think she could use that after all. I forgot for a moment that they are very dicky about any transactions for adult products, they don't allow it.

 

[Kp Romplestein]

Re: Witchcraft

No payment method really costs $0. They all charge fees for the sales, some more than others, and some charge setup fees. Plus, you need to set it up properly (a shop or something else that makes the purchase easily done, preferably with an instant download link so she won't have to manually send the product after the order). I'm not going to say this is a huge lot of work to do, because I don't have any experience within this field, but I guess it will take some time and probably money to have it set up properly.

As for the PayPal alternative, I don't think she could use that after all. I forgot for a moment that they are very dicky about any transactions for adult products, they don't allow it.

She is already paying for a transaction management company (called Verotel) and is therefore already paying the necessary fees (at least for recurring payments). From what I can tell by looking at their website, it seems as though there would be no added cost to whatever she is already paying in order for her to setup this new potential payment method, other than the fact that they take a small percentage of whatever she'd end up selling...

(but in all seriousness, I actually don't care that much about this subject just wanted to throw my 2 cents in...sorry for this cop-out, but i've lost interest)

 

[Raxon66]

Re: Witchcraft

Yes, that's right, she could probably use Verotel for this. I haven't really looked so much at their site, I figured they were more subscription based. She would still have to set up some kind of shop though, and a way for the customers to get the ordered item/s sent automatically, unless going for it manually which would probably be a hassle and would add waiting time for the customer.

My point is just that, before she might consider doing it (because it is going to be some work setting it up) she will probably need to know if there really is a need and interest for it, hence my suggestion that people who really want this could send her an e-mail and let her know

 

[TwilitFeather]

Re: Witchcraft

Too any walls of text to keep up. @.@ Just posting to say Im no longer keeping up with this. I hope some good came out of it. This thread seems to have gotten her a few more memberships if anything.