As usual here's the link for the beta version:

https://winter-wolves.itch.io/volleyball-heaven



Be warned: the game uses strong language and contains mature themes. It's very different from my past games Any feedback on this is welcome (if you like it or not)



What's New in 0.8.1

- fixed a bug that was triggering Jade's job scenes by mistake on Rika's path towards the ending

- now Pina Solara sprite (Lana's ending) is not reused to show Rae during Xmas scene and fixed also the character's name display (before was displaying Pixie)



What's New in 0.8.0

- fixed a bug that wasn't returning properly if you picked "Find Rika" during Christmas, causing Zoe's scene to trigger twice

- fixed a bug of missing background/wrong images in a later scene with Zoe (no details to avoid spoilers!)



What's New in 0.7.9

- fixed a bug that was assigning automatic bonus point to team members already from week 2, instead they start from week 11 and only in a few weeks, not always!



What's New in 0.7.8



- getting Jade's job is now a pre-requisite for her romance (to avoid plotholes) so if you don't get it, her romance path will be disabled

- during several points in the game you'll get +2 relationship to all team members (not Emily) to make it less frustrating beating all the opponent teams to unlock the bonus CGs

- added a "stats" button to display the team alchemy stats any time during the game

- New kinder, less abrasive Lana texts (from Christmas Day scene)

- New proper endings for Lana and Zoe indicating continuance of relationships. (BBQ scenes)

- Revised gameflow.rpy endings to more closely match original writing style

- Minor addition to Christmas dance scene to indicate Zoe's fondness for 'cruel' practical jokes on people.

- fixed several typos/grammar mistakes



What's New in 0.7.5

- fixed two small plot-holes in Jade's path: when you're hired you can choose if to go shopping with her or Lana. Choosing Lana was originally supposed to end the romance but I managed to still make it work adding variants to some lines of texts (would be bad to just have a sudden "romance is over" over a simple and apparently harmless choice!)

- added more info about Norma Sex CG in the gallery screen, explaining how you unlock it (since you can have sex with her in two occasions but only one has the CG)



What's New in 0.7.4

- fixed a crash bug in Rika's path



What's New in 0.7.3

- by mistake a scene regarding Rika's job offer was always called even if you refused

- tweaked car scene with Kayla and Terry to make it look less absurd (due to Terry crossed arms pose ! :D)

- fixed a few typos



What's New in 0.7.2

- the hot spring CG for some reason wasn't showing in-game (while in the gallery worked fine) this has now been fixed!



What's New in 0.7.1

- by mistake left some developers menu, now they shouldn't appear anymore



And if you play it and find any errors of course let me know as usual! Even if it looks simple there's some branching going on behind the scenes so I might have left behind some small plotholes or mistakes. Thanks

Yikes! I don't fucking think any-fucking-body fucking speaks like fucking this.



There's strong language and then there's, apparently, this...



https://i.imgur.com/BvTQYpP.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

https://i.imgur.com/lvco9G0.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

https://i.imgur.com/XaBZWFK.jpg" style="max-width:100%">



I'm assuming this was deliberately done to provoke the reader, but that's just ridiculous.



Between this and Kayla cringe-breaking the fourth wall, I'm about to stop before I really got started... Well, I guess I gotta force my way through it and hope it improves, for the power of yuri!

...and now the fourth wall breaking becomes its own character that speaks on my behalf. Yeah, I'm out... for now at least. I don't want to offend anyone, but the writing really doesn't work for me.

Sorry that you didn't like it, but it's OK - I knew this was very different from my other games, and that's why I wanted feedback from people.

Also if more people complain about the strong language, it's not like I can't edit it a bit and remove / tone it down before Steam launch. Since the art of the game (in particular the CGs) is really pretty would be a pity if people were put off by the writing only.

I'll wait more feedback before taking a decision.

From those screencaps, I don't have an issue with the amount of swearing. I have met plenty of people in my life that swear that much (if not more) and I am not using hyperbole. I admit Scots are infamous for swearing a lot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0w4JojTlB4) but I also follow a lot of Australians online and this is positively tame for them. If you've ever been to a The Flaming Lips gig then the lead singer Wayne Coyne uses f*** as a filler word when he's talking between songs. It was kind of strange hearing an American swearing so much, I admit, but it does exist.



I confess to having not played the game since, personally, while I love Yuri I'm just not that big a fan of the art for this game (No offence to the artist. It's just not my style). Also I really hate fourth wall breaking and if that exists like people say then I'm definitely not interested. The last VN I read with that sort of stuff made me audibly groan.

Thanks for the feedback. The art of the CGs though is done by a different artist and is amazing now that I think about it, probably I should include at least one of those CGs in the game page to show the difference.



Edit: I have added one of the many CGs to the game page:

https://i.imgur.com/00MdEaW.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

Probably one of the few with the girls still having their clothes on

The CG art is definitely more my style.

Haha I bet. It's impossible to not like such finely drawn ladies!

I played some more, and after getting a bit annoyed again, I tried a fun experiment. I unpacked the script and counted the number of times the root word "fuck" was in there. Care to guess?

Show Spoiler

I might not have been totally accurate, but I found 1064 instances of "fuck" in the 200k+ word script. That's something like 0.5% of the total word count.

I personally find that highly excessive, but I guess, if I power through, I'll become desensitized eventually. Also, that's not counting other words like "bitch", "shit", "piss" and what have you, of which there are also plenty.



I understand using expletives for impact, I don't get using them in almost every sentence. It's extremely distracting.



Looks like Emily and Rika have the fewest foul words, so I guess I know who to romance.

Jade also should be more polite and not use fuck instead of commas

There's no longer any scheduler or anything like that in the game, right? You should probably remove all that Pixie talk about getting a scheduler, if so. In fact, I'd recommend removing everything about imaginary friend Pixie from the game. It reads like the writer trying to justify writing for a game and commenting on how we're actually playing a game with choices, not following some kind of real story. In other words, it's immersion breaking (especially when it breaks the fourth wall).

Ah lol, indeed talking about the scheduler doesn't make sense. I forgot to change that. For sure I'll remove the scheduler thing, removing Pixie completely is not so easy since there are other several points in the story where he's referenced to... so could be a problem to do it well.

Yeah, I get it's a big change to make throughout the whole story, and why you'd want to not start on that. Anyway, other than that and the swearing, I don't think I have any serious issues. Maybe, as always, get an editor to look at it, there's a lot of missing words and typos - that is, if you can find an editor who'll put up with all the fucks. Ok, ok, I've said enough about that.



Unpacking the CGs was fun too, I think I know who to romance first when I get back to it (away from comp over the weekend).

I just got an email from writer to discuss about this, in the end at least reducing the "fuck amount" and removing Pixie shouldn't be a big effort as I thought. I'll see tomorrow if I have some free time to do that as for word and typos, I have given up lol it's impossible - really even using 500 editors there WILL ALWAYS BE missing words and typos. So even in future games I'd rather spend that money to add more hot CGs instead

So I tried to do the changes but... nope. I know this is probably going to hurt sales, but I want to keep it as it is - including Pixie and the fucking fuck words

Seriously as I was editing it, some sentences made no sense without Pixie and Lana was no longer herself without a fuck every two words. It felt really strange and "wrong". So no, I'm sorry for those who don't like that, but I can't see myself doing this. A bit because I'd have to spend even more time on this game and I want to move on, but also because then it would become like all my other games, making it pointless as "experiment" as it always was meant to be.



After all I already have written on the store pages "strong language" so people will know what they're going to find in it

Thanks for giving it a shot at least.



If this was a maturity experiment, I have to disagree that excessive strong language is mature, but I think I've made my point. I hope it does well regardless of my own feelings on the matter.

No, not in the sense of mature, but in "something very different from my past games" (in term of story of course since there's no gameplay here).

I have planned other mature games (as contents/amount of erotic images etc) without strong language

I think there's something wrong here. I spent Halloween with Zoe (didn't plan to, but relationship max, oops). One of the next scenes is the sponsor results scene with Jade, and it refers to having spent Halloween with Jade at a café? ("The cafe Jade took me to was where we'd gone on Halloween night")

Yes weird can you tell me the line numbers (F1 key). Also now in the game folder I have a file called label_log.txt that basically is a history of the labels, how they were called, useful to reproduce / understand this kind of issues. If you can just post here the last 5-6 labels I could understand what happened. It might just be a few lines in that Jade scene that shouldn't play and that's all (hopefully).

This scene:



https://i.imgur.com/MJKO7QI.jpg" style="max-width:100%">



These would be the relevant labels:

2020-04-24 11:50:33 HighestRelationshipCheck

2020-04-24 11:50:38 Zoe03_Sc018a5_Halloween

2020-04-24 11:50:38 changemusic

2020-04-24 12:03:35 changerel

2020-04-24 12:04:20 simpletitle

2020-04-24 12:04:24 Jade03_Sc018_SponsorResults

2020-04-24 12:39:28 Jade03_Sc018a_SponsAirAsgard

2020-04-24 12:39:30 changerel

2020-04-24 12:39:52 Jade03a_Sc018a1_AirAsgardCoffee



Also, lol, this is not how you drive a car...



https://i.imgur.com/GfOjQnM.png" style="max-width:100%">