"until i breathe my last breath, i will crush all traces of spineless glorious reich wherever i can get my blood-caked paws on them." fuck yeah. holy shit. i got the feeling while playing that this was very cathartic to make
What a game. The anger, the fantasy, the feeling the utopian dream won’t ever happen in our lives: it’s all there. I can’t believe y’all went there, and it’s great.
i wondered a lot about xelia after playing loner dog, so needless to say i really enjoyed xxu! the music, camera positions, and modeling bring out an overall sense of doom throughout the story. xelia's words to mariette were powerful, dire, and cathartic. we lose so much to so many mariettes and the pain and rage of that is conveyed masterfully through xelia's speech. i was also moved by the juxtaposition of xelia speaking with her friends vs xelia speaking to mariette. these are both her and they are both hurting, but they couldn't be anymore different in presentation.
Really strong, potent work with all the pieces in place. Runtime, format, sound, color, just all pointed at full strength in one direction. Xelia living one lifetime away from being able to live in peace or being exalted as a folk hero for her actions after they've been stripped of the gory details is melancholic and ominipresent.
It's cute that she likes fishing.
LONER_DOG was not required though it added some texture. It was also an emotionally tougher read.
Minor typo, I think conscious is swapped in for conscience in a few places
(edit: sorry, I accidentally deleted the post. this is the same post. what a mess)
I played through the game once and got what I imagine is the 'normal' ending, I don't know how I could get the other one but my first thought is choosing differently during the scene with Mariette being given the gun.
Anyway, what an experience. You really have a knack for writing stories with two women stuck somewhere and one of them having a gun, huh? It was nice to get to see another side of Xelia; she was one of the characters we got very little of during Loner Dog besides her debilitating depresssion and playing devil on the shoulder for some of her friend's dangerous habits, and her personality there is much clearer and stark now that I've played this. Though the game is short, you really make her point (as in, the view she has of herself as someone who's broken but in a useful way for her friends and for the world she wants) come across like a hammer to the face.
Her character writing is pretty great, though personally (and this might 100% be a me thing) I had a hard time at the beginning with her dialogue; it's very different from pretty much every other character in your works and I'm sure that's by design. There's a certain separation between dialogue and narration in your works and Xelia feels like she blurs the line between the two, and that's a really cool thing but the overtly technical style of the dialogue itself took me a little while to get into without it feeling distracting.
Which I think wouldn't be a problem with a longer game, though I get that deadline and scope limitations affect this a lot. I always argue for cutting and narrowing stories but this is one of the few times where I feel like the story would've benefitted from a little more breathing room and a few more scenes, but again that's a very minor nitpick. It accomplished what it wanted and deliivered those punches well as is, just maybe feeling a little cramped.
With that said though, I really like this as a short piece; it's striking and brutal in a very angrily positive way, which I appreciate even if we live in slightly different geopolitical realities; the feeling itself and the anger are very familiar and very eloquently expressed here, and I'm a fan.
Not to mention that everything around the writing supports it very well, as usual. I'm a huge fan of the 3D models mixedd with the portraits. The music is great, and the sound design especially was delicious here; the part where Xelia's actions are narrated after she takes the gun back are so crunchy and perfect.
this was a tough read... everything seemed so ugly at first. but im glad i stuck with it, the journey of gaining insight into the main character, between how she talks to her enemy vs how she talks to her friends, was kind of cool. photo mode was fun too :) i forgot how to get out of it so i pressed every button and accidentally figured out how to make mariette change position
i was able to run the game on the second highest setting, on my desktop! i am not going to try to run it on my laptop.
Hello, I will give the new version of XxU credit for crashing instead of freezing my machine (Debian 12 Linux, as a reminder), but it still does not work without manually disabling dither. However! I think because of this change (or maybe I never noticed it before...), I found a log file I can upload here in the same area as preferences.cfg: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pvHDgblMVEmekKPOvyfR2r01cIVKiDfg/view?usp=drive...
Oh, also, I should mention that I deleted the "XxU" folder preferences.cfg is in before running the game and getting this log, in order to test a "fresh" experience.
i really appreciated the contrast between xelia's dialogue in the basement versus her internal narration/exchanges with friends. it points to the reading that her monologues aren't only for the power but also as a means of hyping herself up; at the end of the day she is another scared pup. also really enjoyed the musical callbacks to loner dog in the scenes with argo (the track titled, "the bitter part out loud")
xelia is a character who i really found myself attached to when i read loner dog, so i was super excited about this release and it still blew me away. her characterisation is so powerful and emotive and i really loved how her conversations with argo acted as the warm hugs she needed. it's also genuinely quite impressive just how much consistently substantive monologuing she manages.
will definitely be thinking about this for a while !!!
Absolutely amazing game. After I finished Loner Dog I remember viscerally wanting more of the characters, so it's super exciting to see another game set in the same universe. Getting see the shit Argo mentioned Xelia did was awesome.
Every aspect of this game is impeccably done. The music sets the tone perfectly, and I like seeing the 3d models used in a visual novel context. I also like how you used the Loner Dog portraits along with them. Despite how different a lot of the art is it fits together very cohesively!
Being a brown trans anarchist, this story hit me like a truck. The monologue about sentimentalism being the death of you is gonna be burned into my brain for a while now. There can be no compassion or compromise given to the people that want us dead. Xelia could rant for hours more or let Mariette beg forever, but there's no other way the story can end. I also find the ranting nature of Xelia's dialogue incredibly relatable. I think if I ever had a conversation with somebody like Mariette, I don't think I'd be able to do anything other than rant and yell at them lol. Shit makes me wanna yell about my politics more in my art. The story has also given me a million new questions and head cannons about the greater world.
One technical issue u might already know about is that there are two sections where the music cuts out in the middle of the scenes. Definitely not immersion breaking or anything but I figured I should say something.
Keep up the good work! Love seeing everything you put out!
Thank you so much for the kind words aaa ♥ I haven't encountered music cutting out in the last version I tested, shucks .`(>▂<)´. Do you perchance remember which sections had this issue? Even approximate guesses would help a lot^^
There was a section right before you choose who to point the gun at and a second one in the later half of the game but I don't remember exactly where. Wish I could give more details.
That's already a great pointer in the right direction! I'll check that out before Monday on my side, but can't give any guarantees on fixes for now, as I only have access to the QA side of things.. Thank you lots for the info^^
Hi, quickly testing this game for later play and both the Linux version and the Windows one (through WINE) instantly crash on my admittedly rather weak Debian 12-running laptop. Annoyingly, the Linux one outright freezes, forcing me to restart my computer (ironically, sometimes it gets to the initial graphics setting menu and freezes there).
Not sure what it is now, but I wonder if this could be fixed by making the default graphics the lowest option, and then letting people pick from there? Just an idea, IDK.
yeah I'm not sure what it is, the graphics do start out really low, but I couldn't find out what causes a bunch of performance drain on some systems :c
Hi! Thanks so much for letting us know about this, it's a really important piece of info! A lot of the testing was also done on a pretty weak laptop (albeit one running WIN10), and that's how most of the lowest graphical settings got implemented, but I haven't encountered outright instant crashes yet, hmm. For now, a potential temporary solution I could suggest for the WIN version would be to try going to 'Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\XxU', opening preferences.cfg, and changing the 'slideshow_enabled' parameter in the [graphics] section to true. I'll run this by the team so we can check potential issues with the Linux version and look into more stable fixes^^
Huh, I see. We didn't have issues with the shaders used for the Dither effect so far... More of a reason to look into it though! We probably won't be able to do anything in the sense of updating the downloadables for a couple of days, unfortunately, but we'll try to figure that out in a bit ♥
I'm playing this after a job interview, but seeing what I assume is a puppygirl named astra in the previews jump scared me since i am ALSO a puppy girl named astra sometimes.
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"until i breathe my last breath, i will crush all traces of spineless glorious reich wherever i can get my blood-caked paws on them." fuck yeah. holy shit. i got the feeling while playing that this was very cathartic to make
What a game. The anger, the fantasy, the feeling the utopian dream won’t ever happen in our lives: it’s all there. I can’t believe y’all went there, and it’s great.
i wondered a lot about xelia after playing loner dog, so needless to say i really enjoyed xxu! the music, camera positions, and modeling bring out an overall sense of doom throughout the story. xelia's words to mariette were powerful, dire, and cathartic. we lose so much to so many mariettes and the pain and rage of that is conveyed masterfully through xelia's speech. i was also moved by the juxtaposition of xelia speaking with her friends vs xelia speaking to mariette. these are both her and they are both hurting, but they couldn't be anymore different in presentation.
thank you!
Really strong, potent work with all the pieces in place. Runtime, format, sound, color, just all pointed at full strength in one direction. Xelia living one lifetime away from being able to live in peace or being exalted as a folk hero for her actions after they've been stripped of the gory details is melancholic and ominipresent.
It's cute that she likes fishing.
LONER_DOG was not required though it added some texture. It was also an emotionally tougher read.
Minor typo, I think conscious is swapped in for conscience in a few places
(edit: sorry, I accidentally deleted the post. this is the same post. what a mess)
I played through the game once and got what I imagine is the 'normal' ending, I don't know how I could get the other one but my first thought is choosing differently during the scene with Mariette being given the gun.
Anyway, what an experience. You really have a knack for writing stories with two women stuck somewhere and one of them having a gun, huh? It was nice to get to see another side of Xelia; she was one of the characters we got very little of during Loner Dog besides her debilitating depresssion and playing devil on the shoulder for some of her friend's dangerous habits, and her personality there is much clearer and stark now that I've played this. Though the game is short, you really make her point (as in, the view she has of herself as someone who's broken but in a useful way for her friends and for the world she wants) come across like a hammer to the face.
Her character writing is pretty great, though personally (and this might 100% be a me thing) I had a hard time at the beginning with her dialogue; it's very different from pretty much every other character in your works and I'm sure that's by design. There's a certain separation between dialogue and narration in your works and Xelia feels like she blurs the line between the two, and that's a really cool thing but the overtly technical style of the dialogue itself took me a little while to get into without it feeling distracting.
Which I think wouldn't be a problem with a longer game, though I get that deadline and scope limitations affect this a lot. I always argue for cutting and narrowing stories but this is one of the few times where I feel like the story would've benefitted from a little more breathing room and a few more scenes, but again that's a very minor nitpick. It accomplished what it wanted and deliivered those punches well as is, just maybe feeling a little cramped.
With that said though, I really like this as a short piece; it's striking and brutal in a very angrily positive way, which I appreciate even if we live in slightly different geopolitical realities; the feeling itself and the anger are very familiar and very eloquently expressed here, and I'm a fan.
Not to mention that everything around the writing supports it very well, as usual. I'm a huge fan of the 3D models mixedd with the portraits. The music is great, and the sound design especially was delicious here; the part where Xelia's actions are narrated after she takes the gun back are so crunchy and perfect.
Anyway, great job as usual! This fucks hard.
this was a tough read... everything seemed so ugly at first. but im glad i stuck with it, the journey of gaining insight into the main character, between how she talks to her enemy vs how she talks to her friends, was kind of cool. photo mode was fun too :) i forgot how to get out of it so i pressed every button and accidentally figured out how to make mariette change position
i was able to run the game on the second highest setting, on my desktop! i am not going to try to run it on my laptop.
Hello, I will give the new version of XxU credit for crashing instead of freezing my machine (Debian 12 Linux, as a reminder), but it still does not work without manually disabling dither. However! I think because of this change (or maybe I never noticed it before...), I found a log file I can upload here in the same area as preferences.cfg: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pvHDgblMVEmekKPOvyfR2r01cIVKiDfg/view?usp=drive...
Oh, also, I should mention that I deleted the "XxU" folder preferences.cfg is in before running the game and getting this log, in order to test a "fresh" experience.
i really appreciated the contrast between xelia's dialogue in the basement versus her internal narration/exchanges with friends. it points to the reading that her monologues aren't only for the power but also as a means of hyping herself up; at the end of the day she is another scared pup. also really enjoyed the musical callbacks to loner dog in the scenes with argo (the track titled, "the bitter part out loud")
I do like bugonia, but this is the real shit
beautifully angry story.
xelia is a character who i really found myself attached to when i read loner dog, so i was super excited about this release and it still blew me away. her characterisation is so powerful and emotive and i really loved how her conversations with argo acted as the warm hugs she needed. it's also genuinely quite impressive just how much consistently substantive monologuing she manages.
will definitely be thinking about this for a while !!!
Absolutely amazing game. After I finished Loner Dog I remember viscerally wanting more of the characters, so it's super exciting to see another game set in the same universe. Getting see the shit Argo mentioned Xelia did was awesome.
Every aspect of this game is impeccably done. The music sets the tone perfectly, and I like seeing the 3d models used in a visual novel context. I also like how you used the Loner Dog portraits along with them. Despite how different a lot of the art is it fits together very cohesively!
Being a brown trans anarchist, this story hit me like a truck. The monologue about sentimentalism being the death of you is gonna be burned into my brain for a while now. There can be no compassion or compromise given to the people that want us dead. Xelia could rant for hours more or let Mariette beg forever, but there's no other way the story can end. I also find the ranting nature of Xelia's dialogue incredibly relatable. I think if I ever had a conversation with somebody like Mariette, I don't think I'd be able to do anything other than rant and yell at them lol. Shit makes me wanna yell about my politics more in my art. The story has also given me a million new questions and head cannons about the greater world.
One technical issue u might already know about is that there are two sections where the music cuts out in the middle of the scenes. Definitely not immersion breaking or anything but I figured I should say something.
Keep up the good work! Love seeing everything you put out!
Thank you so much for the kind words aaa ♥
I haven't encountered music cutting out in the last version I tested, shucks .`(>▂<)´.
Do you perchance remember which sections had this issue? Even approximate guesses would help a lot^^
There was a section right before you choose who to point the gun at and a second one in the later half of the game but I don't remember exactly where. Wish I could give more details.
That's already a great pointer in the right direction! I'll check that out before Monday on my side, but can't give any guarantees on fixes for now, as I only have access to the QA side of things..
Thank you lots for the info^^
Hi, quickly testing this game for later play and both the Linux version and the Windows one (through WINE) instantly crash on my admittedly rather weak Debian 12-running laptop. Annoyingly, the Linux one outright freezes, forcing me to restart my computer (ironically, sometimes it gets to the initial graphics setting menu and freezes there).
Not sure what it is now, but I wonder if this could be fixed by making the default graphics the lowest option, and then letting people pick from there? Just an idea, IDK.
yeah I'm not sure what it is, the graphics do start out really low, but I couldn't find out what causes a bunch of performance drain on some systems :c
Hi!
Thanks so much for letting us know about this, it's a really important piece of info!
A lot of the testing was also done on a pretty weak laptop (albeit one running WIN10), and that's how most of the lowest graphical settings got implemented, but I haven't encountered outright instant crashes yet, hmm.
For now, a potential temporary solution I could suggest for the WIN version would be to try going to 'Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\XxU', opening preferences.cfg, and changing the 'slideshow_enabled' parameter in the [graphics] section to true.
I'll run this by the team so we can check potential issues with the Linux version and look into more stable fixes^^
Hi, I found that file and by turning things on and off I discovered it's actually the Dither that's causing issues. But thanks for the quick reply!
Huh, I see. We didn't have issues with the shaders used for the Dither effect so far... More of a reason to look into it though!
We probably won't be able to do anything in the sense of updating the downloadables for a couple of days, unfortunately, but we'll try to figure that out in a bit ♥
Understood, no rush from me, and thank you.
I'm playing this after a job interview, but seeing what I assume is a puppygirl named astra in the previews jump scared me since i am ALSO a puppy girl named astra sometimes.