Naughty Road
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Walkthrough options
🕑 Added 2025-06-10 10:01:17 +0000 UTCOh, walkthrough mods. Don't mention the W word around Naughty, or he'll start frothing at the mouth. Even now, I'm fighting the urge to go off at walkthrough mods with every fiber of my being, even if I fully understand the reasons why people feel a need to use them.
So, quick history lesson: apart from steering players through arguably the blandest possible path through Light of my Life and providing them with a terrible story experience - while flashing some donation links because why would someone who clearly doesn't give two ####s about the game even bother with a low effort attempt at making a mod if not to make some cash - the walkthrough mod was a bit of a support nightmare as well, as it turned out it was breaking saves in subsequent chapters and borking playthroughs for users (who then reached out to me as obviously this was my problem to fix), and no doubt turning even a greater number of people silently off of the game entirely and damaging its reputation.
By now though, Light of my Life's become too big for a low effort cash-grab, so walkthrough mod makers don't seem to touch it anymore, because even the minimal effort of pissing a random path through the game and presenting it as a best path, donations here please is too much work I guess. Which is fine by me, and good riddance.
But that still leaves the fact that for a portion of abused players out there, there is a real need for a safety net that outweighs whatever arguments I bring up about how the game won't let you drive off a cliff or miss content by accident, and how a mod makes it objectively worse to play. And my fear is that when it starts out, The Velan Reach will be small enough to be a nice juicy target for that particular brand of public service provider again, with all the problems we had with them last time 'round.
So I plan to get ahead of that and ship with some walkthrough options out of the box.
Apart from the warnings about locking out the path of a love interest and locking out a particular fetish, which Light of my Life incidentally does already, and having the option to not even show choices that lock you out of love interest paths (also something Light of my Life does), it'll have a setting not to show fetish lock-out choices, and even not to show disagreement choices (anything that might lose you a relationship point or otherwise harmlessly ruffle another character's feathers), although the game will on occasion acknowledge the player playing through the game with that particular option enabled.
Mostly though, The Velan Reach is doing exactly what Light of my Life was already doing, which is trying its best not to blindside you in a bad way, and make sure you don't accidently miss any of the fruits of the hard work that was put into it.
So this screen isn't so much about settings as it is about communication, reassuring players that they will be informed of serious consequences, don't have to worry that picking one character over another locks them out of one of them, and don't have to be afraid of missing out on content by picking some random "wrong" choice, without having to look for a ####y mod that only pretends to provide that.
Comments
Naughty Road
Well, I got you covered. Walkthrough options are included out of the box.
Ryan Rollo
I like W word :(
Naughty Road
Cheers Bob. Well, LomL isn't entirely over yet. Two more chapters, but first a demo for the new thing to see how people feel about it.
Bob
Oh bugger Naughty :P and here I was playing the game over and over because I enjoyed experiencing watching the girls do their thing, shaking their booty's and generally them and me having a good time. (sigh) Your game and one other that you actually endorsed on here years ago are the only two that I repeatedly " repeat" like a good trip down memory lane :) Can't wait for your next project. Cheers big ears.
Naughty Road
Cheers, you've touched on a good point. I've found it's really hard to convince players that have the notion in their mind that the game has some optimum state and the challenge and struggle is to wrest that optimal choice from the clutches of the developer. The 3d chess analogy is one of a contest, the player and the developer locked in a competition to see who wins some meta game. The choice of the word "false" choice also indicates that. It's a choice that doesn't matter. A red herring perhaps, something to throw you off the trail of finding the best path and winning the meta game. But why doesn't it matter, if it lets you express a little something of yourself in the game? Even if it is just not sitting by but taking part in the conversation, for instance. That matters, even if there are no consequences to speak of. That is, unless you're playing the meta game and not the actual game. But the baffling part of that analogy to me is that I already did the 3d chess bit trying to get into the mind of the player and offering choices that allow them to express themselves through those choices in the game and validating them. And I made an effort not to hide the optimum choices (that for the most part, don't even exist tbh) away with some double wording or a red herring to throw you off the trail. by making sure consequences are always telegraphed. To me the idea of doing anything else is absurd. Why would I want to hide the best, most fun path through the game away under opaque wording and poorly telegraphed outcomes in an effort to trick the player, and risk the player getting fed up with the game and putting it aside? But that is a very hard sell if the player is convinced the dev is setting up a competition with them instead of attempting to collaborate with them to give them the best possible experience for their playthrough. And while we're at it, let's be very clear about something: the player in question isn't entirely wrong about being suspicious of the dev's intentions either, as there's so many examples of devs out there that seem to be doing just that. Now, leaving that aside for a sec, I find it interesting that specifically *that* type of player often places the most value in a tool that, if it is not provided by the dev themselves, probably has the least chance of actually providing what they are seeking. Keep in mind that it is not unlikely that a mod maker, especially one that's not invested in the actual game, will not provide you with a well thought-out choice, taking into account the actual effect of that choice on the short and long term. They just want to churn it out real quick with minimal effort and get it - and their funding links - in front of potential donors asap, while the buzz of release is still high. So to them, any random choice that doesn't result in a "game over" screen is good enough. After all, who's going to call them out on it? The players that never look at other choices courtesy of their walkthrough mod? In LomL's case, that resulted in the walkthrough mod picking "say nothing" every single time given the choice, which brings out a narrative of an emotionally unavailable, uncaring MC, and skips over some of the best heartfelt or funny moments in dialog, skipping over significant parts of the story and character development, and callbacks to those moments at later times. Let me just rephrase that: the walkthrough was *objectively* one of the worse narrative experiences possible for LomL, so much so that I've dedicated an achievement to it. So, two take-aways here: One: I've learned that in order to give a particular type of player the best experience, I should put some thought and in-game communication effort into assuring them they are not in danger of falling off a cliff at my hands. It's a tough one though. Two: don't trust 3rd party walk-through mods made by someone other than a die-hard fan of that game to provide you with a good path through the game. All they do is take away the burden of having to make a choice, at the cost of getting a mostly random, sometimes downright bad playthrough.
Tarmenel
I personally prefer when a game has a walkthrough. Not because I want to by fixate on one linear path, but because it usually gives the player more information about the story choice. Light of my Life doesn't suffer from this drastically, but sometimes it's simply unclear what the choice actually decides or it's a "false" choice and it doesn't matter at all. Walkthroughs have the huge benefit that you don't have to stop and tear yourself away from the narrative to play 3D chess with the creator in your mind about what a phrase actually means in a given context or if means nothing at all.
Naughty Road
Oh, I agree on that. It's one of the reasons I make sure you can catch all the content in one playthrough on Light of my Life. I don't believe replayability is a great value-add to Adult VNs, because there is so little gameplay involved, and having to sit through the same conversations again just to see a different pic isn't worth it.
Grimlar
When I was younger I was happy to play games that caught my attention, multiple times trying different routes, hundreds of hours. Thousands of hours on certain multiplayer online games. These days, sadly, I have neither the time nor the patience for retreading the same storyline again.. Nor do I appreciate stories that get me involved in the lives of multiple characters but end up forcing me to select only one thread to follow to completion, it kind of feels like I wasted my time. That's why I tend to use walkthroughs where possible. I don't like that I am so impatient with the stories people have created for us to enjoy, but seems unable to buck the trend.
