Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!
Ok, I finally finished it.
So for those having trouble, after following the robot try clicking activate randomly around the front of the inactive elevator door (not the door itself, but somewhere in the area in front of it) and eventually you're find the right spot to trigger the event and get moved into the next area.
Once you have a new team member and return to the area with the ARIS unit, the robot should exchange fuses. Once you find the oil somewhere in the maze, the robot will give you a 20amp fuse in exchange for three 10amps (which can be farmed from robots). You will still have to navigate the maze to find the circuit boards, but as you install them and put 20amp fuses in after them, it will be a lot easier to navigate the maze.
Eventually the elevator door will be activated (it needs 40amp per letter, not in total, so you'll need six 20amp fuses in total to activate the elevator) and everything should be a linear path until you end up back in the very first area where you arrived with the eyebot thingy. Go to the elevator and fight the final boss(es) for the demo.
Thoughts: I think letting enemies evade your skills pushes the difficulty a bit far over the edge when you only have a single character. It's not impossible, but the RNG for a game over is tilted heavily against you when facing multiple enemies who can grapple you whilst their friends keep attacking. This is probably fine with two characters, but it makes the first area with Neon (and the second if you didn't realize where to get Malise) quite painful to navigate. This is especially true of the flesh-pod thingies, since they have an extremely fast Constrict ability that will usually end with a character dead or at almost zero health unless you quickly break it.
Anyway, the new hentai scenes with the pod enemies were fantastic, and I like that they change based on the state of Neon's lower armour. I think Malise's scene looks the same regardless of her armour status but maybe I wasn't paying attention (Neon's scenes seem to focus on her breasts if she's armoured, and an anal scene if not). Great work there! The new Fleshfather scenes that segue into part 2 weren't really my thing, but it's not a fetish that I find actively unpleasant (unlike scat, guro or whatever) so I'm not complaining about them and I don't mind if other stuff like that is added later on.
The new boss/NPC was pretty cool (not to mention hot!) and I liked that it had its own armour system. I didn't find the fight too difficult at level 5/6 and only had to use items a couple of times during the battle.
I didn't encounter any notable performance issues, crashes or glitches, though the thing with the elevator and the robot should really be cleaned up, because I went there 3-4 times and kept activating the elevator, got no response, and assumed I wasn't supposed to go that way at all.
Overall then - great work! Really looking forward to new h-content in the coming months
