Your every choice will impact both characters' mental states, changing their fate. John might reject Lizzie, succumb to his depression, or die violently. Lizzie might lose control and ruin her chances or become obsessed with shadowy conspiracies that may or may not exist. Or just maybe the two of them might be exactly what the other needs and their story could end in happiness...
You can purchase the game at the following places:
Steam
Patreon (just add a new pledge and message me)
itch.io SFW
itch.io NSFW
GameJolt
MangaGamer
Nutaku
DLsite English (censored)
DLsite Japanese (censored)
Patches
These will convert the SFW version into the NSFW version:
Background
This was an experimental project, dipping my toe into visual novels and trying something different. I'm glad it's found a passionate audience. ^-^ The story continues in the mini-sequel, Dusk and Dawn.
How much of the proceeds would go to you if bought from Nutaku? Cause I would really like to give you all the money if possible? Would just going to Patreon be easier?
ReplyDeleteI'm happy you're playing no matter where you get the game! But in terms of financial return to me, Patreon is first and itch.io is second. Giving a review on Steam might be even better though, if it gets the game noticed. So please, feel free to buy via whichever platform is best for you!
DeleteI'll most likely buy from patreon then. Thanks for clarifying for me and i'll definitely give a review on steam. Big fan of your work so would be happy to help however possible!
DeleteYou could always do what I did and both be a patron and buy the game on steam.
DeleteI played through most of Crimson gray today. The story itsself is just as good as I'd expect from you and the art is good, but the gameplay has some bad points, to the point where it seems as if you didn't do any proofreading or testing at all.
ReplyDelete***Spoilers ahead***
1. the psychologists name changes back and forth between Smith and Smyth.
2. During the conversations (the ones where you can choose the topic) in the dungeon, Lizzies clothes will change from casual to school uniform and back. I'm guessing you simply used the same scene as for the conversations on school grounds?
3. The quit button brings up the credits, the credits button links to patreon. Always having to change to windowed mode or bring up the taskmanager to quit is pretty annoying.
4. Choosing the living tree background after the true end resets to the burning tree after quitting the game, starting a new game or loading a save.
Now for the content oriented things:
1. In some scenes, Lizzie sudddenly takes out her axe even though the clothes she's wearing are completely unsuitable for concealing it. I don't know how it seems to others, but at least for me (martial artist and concealed carrier) things like this always break immersion. It would be far nicer if the axe did "print" (as in, have a somewhat visible outline) on the paperdoll. Something you don't notice at first, but can't unsee once you know it's there. Same for her knives, though there it's somewhat realistic that she'd manage to conceal them completely.
2. there's simply to many choices in the beginning. Even if one plays as completely indifferent or outright aggressive towards lizzie (I did both while searching for the cgs I'm missing), john will still try to save her and talk nicely with her in the hardcoded text. If you are going to press the player into this plotline, it'd be better not to include choices that would lead away from it.
3. It would be nice to have at least some kind of progress indicator, or even better yet, a scene selector (similiar to katawa shoujo). Like it is now, there's no way to know if you missed any scenes or in what part of the game those scenes are other than counting the unlocked cgs. In the beginning, I thought that the "there's still another path" message had this purpose, but even after I no longer got this message I'm still missing 2 cgs (second page, low center and third page, upper right) and found other endings afterwards.
4. The sex scenes are quite short compared to other VNs. While this isn't necessarily bad (I'm one of those people that usually switch them off completely after playing through once to ensure that there's no plot in them), it actually seems like there's something missing for some reason (hard to explain - basically they seem to lack feelings?). At first I thought it was intentional to show Johns inability to feel happiness (similiar to Hanakos H-scene in Katawa Shoujo), but considering the rest of the story and him being pretty much healed by lizzies company, more "loving" scenes might fit better. As to how that be accomplished, I'm unsure though. Perhaps adding some foreplay instead of getting straight down to business might help.
Now please don't get me wrong - the plot is nice, and I'd buy the game again because of it. It's just that what I assumed was a thought-through, completely developed game like for example Ouroboros ended up being more like those experimental free-to-play VNs on Steam.
Thank you for your feedback. Some responses:
Delete1) Can you provide a screenshot? I did a Ctrl+F of the code and "Smith" doesn't appear as far as I can see.
2) Lizzie does change clothes between days during the basement sequence, as is mentioned in the text. If she jumps back and forth during one conversation, again, a screenshot of the exact point would be helpful.
3) This is a problem with the NSFW patch on Steam, unfortunately. It's on the list to fix, many apologies.
4) I believe it will reset to the burned tree if you ever go over the part of the game that switches it to the burned tree the first time. This is the intended behavior. If it's doing it constantly, then that's new behavior I'll have to look into.
Regarding CGs: The first CG you're missing is a titfuck variant (found on one of the four main fair branches), the second is for any ending where John breaks (easiest one would be to ask for Paxetine again when you get the chance).
Hi, would it be okay if u give a little hint on the First CG u mention above? I kind of have some difficulties with unlocking it and wasn't really sure which 4 is counted as main fair branches. P.S i did most of my replays on the bonus option.
DeleteJust tried to reproduce the errors. Seems like some of them were actually on my side. Sorry about that.
DeleteI can't seem to find the smith / smythe thing - which is kinda weird since I remember scrolling back the first time she was mentioned as smythe to make sure that the I hadn't previously misread smythe as smith.
For the clothes change, there's now a "new" (i was able to skip it so it was there previously, but don't remember it being there before) line where it says something about the next morning the moment her clothes change - don't know how, but it seems like I somehow managed to jump over that line during every single playthrough. So again, probably my fault.
As for the blooming tree / burned tree, it reset to burning tree the moment I went back to main menu after finishing one of the bad ends, and again after having loaded a saved game and returning to main menu.
Jeez, this Visual Novel is really decently written. Doesn't have too boring dialogues or try to explain everything in detail. There's something bigger going on than what it first seems.
ReplyDeleteAlso good Yandere character. In my very first playthrough, I nearly got the true ending, except I didn't went all the way through and broke the chain with the crowbar (didn't know you could stay afterwards and thought I had left enough 'evidence' already that I could have escaped, but didn't).
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
DeleteHow in the hell do you get the patch to work? It doesn't show up in my download folder outside of the browser -_-
ReplyDeleteNevermind, apparently my cloud storage was deactivated...
DeleteGlad it was just that, because for the record the patch should just be normal files. Enjoy!
DeleteHi Sierra,
ReplyDeleteRecently purchased game and got two endings. I then learned about this patch downloaded it, but I isn't working. All the files seem to be where they should be, but "Adult Content" isn't appearing in the options menu. This is the first time I've ever installed a patch so I may have done something wrong. Got any advice?
It's a bit difficult to support since it could be a variety of things, but I'd like for you to be able to play the full game!
DeleteIf you don't see a new options menu, then it seems like the patch didn't install at all. The first thing I would recommend is to completely delete and reinstall the game (your saves will stay), then copy the patch and make sure to copy over everything. If a fresh start doesn't work, then we'll have to figure out the next step another way.
Thank you I'll try that. Sorry for the late replay.
DeleteIt worked! Says "Adult Content" right there in the options menu. Thank you, and once again sorry for the late response. I'll get to playing this game and the sequel right away.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that worked for you! Hope you enjoy. ^-^
DeleteI would love to see more of lizzie and John in further sequels going more into Lizzie's history and the other children who have the same problem as her
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear of your interest! I also have a lot of ideas for these characters, but I'm afraid they'll be on the backburner for a long time.
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DeleteThat's unfortunate but I eagerly await seeing where the story will go
DeleteThis game really helped me in the time I was dealing with severe depresion, thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome. I don't know that the game is qualified to help with depression, but I'm glad that players have responded to the story on a serious emotional level.
Deletehello, i dont know how to install the nsfw patch properly in the steam version
ReplyDeletepd: i love the game