(copying my reply -with a couple of edits - from the other thread in case anyone happens to see this and has a similar problem with their computer)

Since I see you posted a similar thing on another project of mine, I can only assume there's something your computer really doesn't like about games made using Naninovel in Unity :(

What that could be I have zero idea without troubleshooting, and that would sadly be impossible at the moment as I am too unwell to get on my PC. It would also require me to export and send to you a separate dev build of the game for you to send me any error logs that your computer generates, so quite longwinded >.<

I know it's not helpful to say, but plenty of other people have played this and The Hostage from start to finish without any issues at all, so it must be something specific to your device :(

I appreciate you checking out the games regardless! I'm just sorry that they don't seem to work correctly on your computer for whatever reason cos that sucks for both of us T_T

That's  just one of the woes of everyone having different devices I guess. I know everything I make works on both my PC and on the family potato laptop (albeit slower loading on the potato) cos I test stuff for ungodly amounts of time before releasing, but that doesn't mean the games will run perfectly on every device out there, unfortunately. 

For big companies, it's not so much of an issue cos they can get a whole team to troubleshoot, but I'm just one person making games as a hobby x3

There are a billion different reasons that a PC could fail to run a game properly. I've come across a fair few bugs in other people's indie games I've played. Sometimes, I'll download something that has no sound at all, even though I've seen video playthroughs and know the game has sound. I know there's something my PC doesn't like about the game for there to be no sound for me, but I have no way of knowing the cause, and the dev wouldn't stand much of a chance of figuring it out without going through time-consuming tests.

Computers can be a nightmare sometimes >.<

im a mac user too, i was able to unzip the file just fine it might just be you 😣

Hey hey! Sorry my reply is so slow >.< I've been super busy with irl stuff all of October and haven't had a chance to go on my PC still (typing this on my phone while waiting at an appointment x3)

Firstly, thanks so much for checking out some of my games, and I'm glad you were able to play others without problems :3

Mac is a complete mystery to me as I don't own one or know anyone who does that I could borrow from to test stuff >.<

BUT... you're definitely not alone cos I've had Mac users in the past state various steps they've had to do to get different itch games to work while others seem to have no trouble.

It got to a point where I made a big list of everyone who commented and turned it into a megapost :3 I list it on all of my game pages, so you might have even have found it yourself by now, but in case not, it's this one here:

https://melancholy-marionette.itch.io/darling-duality-winter-wish/devlog/227880/...

Honestly, none of what's written there means anything to me, haha. But with you being a Mac user, hopefully, at least something on there will make sense to you and will work! :3

Thanks again for your interest in the game <3

Thanks so much for checking out both of em! And for the luck too cos I will definitely need it x3

Glad you had fun with them :3 I don't know if some of the other stuff I've made will be your cup of tea or not (mostly yandere vibes in them or horror of some description, haha), but feel free to check out my other projects in the meantime cos it's gonna takes me aaaages to get the full version of Darling Duality finished >.<

Thank you again for the kind words and checking out my games <3

Glad you enjoyed the demo :D Thanks so much for checking it out!

It's a little rough around the edges & there are a bunch of things I'd really like to fix, but I will already need to remake the demo content from the ground up cos all the updates to the engine will have broken everything by the time I actually finish the game x3

Hehe, gotta love the softbois x3 Whether or not Castor stays one or becomes more of a monster will be down to your choices in the full game :D

Unfortunately, development on this is waaaay behind while I finish some other shorter projects first >.< but it will be finished eventually. I'm just not entirely sure when at this point. I'll be sure to post a proper update once I'm actively working on it again though :3

Thank you for checking out the demo & for the kind words of support! <3

Well, that’s brilliant to hear :D So glad you had fun with the demo! Cheers for checking it out ^-^

I can only apologise that the full release is such a long way off >.< Many of my other games feature yandere-type characters though, so if you’re into that, feel free to check em out in the meantime :D

Thanks so much for checking out the demo & leaving such a lovely comment! ^-^ I can only apologise that development on this particular project is so slow >.< It’s on hold right now while I finish a couple of other projects first, but I’ll get back to this one eventually :3

I definitely wouldn’t recommend paying Castor to stab you x3 and even if you did, he’d likely refuse to do it for money, haha. If he thought you really, really wanted him to do it though, and that it would make you happy... he’d just do it to try and make you smile/win your affection x3

Since you said you enjoyed Castor’s volatile nature as a love interest, feel free to check out my other games :3 Almost all of them have love interests like that in them, haha. Although, they are all somewhat different from each other. Some are softer, some are more manipulative, and some have even angrier explosions xD But all of them love MC deeply, even if it’s not in the healthiest way, haha.

Thanks again for playing! :3

I hope I will be able to at some point :3 It will be a long way off though because I need to finish the PC version of the game first >.< then I have to learn how to make Android builds work because currently, I don’t know how to make them x3

And Castor loves you too :P probably a little too much x3

Since this is only a demo and the full game is a looong way off (it’s currently on hold while I finish other projects that I started, but once they’re done, this will be my main priority), if you happen to like yandere characters in general, almost all of my games feature at least 1 yandere LI :D I try to write a different kind of yan for most of my projects, so some are soft, others not so much, and some are a mix x3

Thanks so much for checking out the lil demo for this one! I’m glad you had fun with it ^-^

It’s okay, the demo is pretty ancient at this point anyways, and I’m already well aware of how badly it needs a remake, haha. There just isn’t much point in doing that at the moment because the project is currently on hold while I finish other projects, and when I do come back to actively working on this one again, I will need to pretty much remake the entire thing from scratch for a bunch of different reasons x3

One is because it’s waaaaay behind the current version of Naninovel that I’m using. It was one of the first things I made when I got Nani a few years ago, so I didn’t know anywhere near as much as I do now about how to use the software. Many of the niggles in this old demo can easily be fixed just by using a more up-to-date version of Nani now I know how to do more with it :3

But updating the project files to the latest version of Nani will break pretty much everything in the demo + I’m gonna have to recast voice actors (already covered the reasons behind that in past comments/posts, so I won’t repeat myself cos it’s a loooong story >.<), so I might as well just completely start over with it when the time comes!

Anyways, thanks for choosing to check out the demo anyhow! I’m glad you like the music and atmosphere in general :3 There will be a lot more original music in the eventual full game, as I now make full OSTs for my projects. The demo only has a few original tracks because I had only recently started dabbling in making music back then x3

There is indeed an explanation later on in the story regarding how Castor/ia leaves the game, but I won’t say what it is cos it would spoil major stuff further down the line x3 Just know that it’s covered eventually, haha.

Actually, the reason that you can’t do much with the AI branch of the story (and also why so many choices are blocked off in general) is that there are a lot of features and routes planned that were impossible to showcase in the demo, sadly.

Basically, I had this even shorter demo originally cos I made it in under 1 month for Winter VN Jam. Then Manly randomly did a playthrough of that outta nowhere much later after I’d released the demo as a self-contained chapter of a much larger project that I put on hold, but with Manly’s video came an influx of eyes on the project, and that put me in a bit of awkward position when people started assuming that what Manly played was all there was. A worrying number of people who saw the video thought that was the end of the story >.< Or they assumed that the game was all about/only about Castor/ia, and that was never my intention.

My plan was to start Castor/ia’s story and end it at a point where it was self-contained to make it tie up nicely for the jam I was making it for while leaving it open to continue at a later date. I kinda got swamped with people asking if there was gonna be more, and I just wasn’t expecting so many people to suddenly look at the project when it was in a state that I wasn’t particularly proud of >.<

So, to try and give people a better idea of the direction I was hoping to take the project in, I tried my best to put together a remade version of the demo that clearly showed there would be more character routes and features, in the hope that all the questions would stop x3 It was very rushed. I realised it would be frustrating to keep encountering blocked-off paths, but it was better than constantly being asked the same questions over and over again because I was really struggling to keep answering. 

The demo that’s currently on here to download is more like a working copy of my old project files with parts blocked off because there wouldn’t be any point pursuing them when they aren’t written yet >.< They’re literally just there to show that there are things in the game other than Castor/ia x3

But like I said, it was super rushed because I just wanted to get something out there as fast as I could to stop all the misunderstandings that kept happening after Manly’s video.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the entire thing needs remaking from scratch, I would update it to make it much more polished. As it stands though, that would be far too time-consuming, so sadly, it’s stuck in the super rough state that it is until I’m actively working on the project again :( 

It all boils down to the fact that when I made the original demo, I wasn’t expecting anyone to play it >.< I couldn’t have anticipated all the attention it would get from Manly randomly playing it x3 And I’m extremely grateful for that :3 It’s just that it was never really ready to be viewed by a larger audience, and still isn’t now really, haha. It’s not even remotely to the same sort of standard as my more recent full releases T_T

But yeah, that’s that explained anyhow, haha.

As for content warnings, that sort of falls under a similar issue as above >.< When I first made this, as far as I was aware, people weren’t making especially detailed content warnings and triggers for their projects, or at least, I hadn’t come across that in any of the stuff I was playing. Of course, times have changed, and I do now include detailed content warnings and trigger information in all of my recent projects. I put larger lists in-game, and on the game pages here on itch. I put a main list that is visible by default, followed by an expandable dropdown list that’s far more detailed (but contains spoilers), covering everything I can think of.

Again, that’s because it’s something I’ve learned how to do more recently.

In the past, I had no idea you could even make hidden dropdowns on itch pages >.< So all of my older games, like this one, are somewhat lacking in the level of detail for content warnings, and I do absolutely intend to rectify that at some point, it’s just I haven’t had the time to do it yet >.< It does need doing for all of my older projects though!

The problem is, I’m just one person who gets very easily overwhelmed (I have ASD >.<), so it can take me a while to get around to ticking off tasks on my giant (and seemingly neverending) to-do list :( 

Nowadays, I use a specific resource to help me compile my big lists of warnings/triggers which is quite comprehensive and includes a lot of stuff I would never even think to mention. 

Back when I first started making games, people seemed to just be using warnings similar to like what you see for films or when starting a Netflix show (just like 3-5 vague bullet points), so I just did the same. It’s a tough one because, of course, I would never want to hurt anyone who encounters my stuff >.< but I also had folks tell me in the past that even a vague warning kinda spoiled their enjoyment of some of my stories because it sort of acted like a spoiler. 

I’m not sure about including nudity as a warning though since it’s only a topless sprite with censored nudity/no genitals on show, as PEGI says that sorta thing can even be in games rated 12 >.< Even PEGI 16 says it covers erotic nudity or sexual intercourse without visible genitals. And that in general, “depiction of nudity in a non-sexual context does not require a specific age rating.” As far as I can remember, when the characters are briefly naked, there isn’t any sexual stuff going on. Heck, the nakedness is even there specifically to represent innocence and rebirth into a new world. However, I do completely agree that drugging needs to be added when I update the lists!

It’s interesting that you mention how an actual victim of SA could be affected though because I am one myself.

In fact, I’ve endured more non-consensual sexual experiences than I have consensual ones throughout the course of my life! I'm actually asexual/demisexual myself, but that was hardly going to matter to the people who chose to abuse me. That’s one of the many perils of being an autistic woman >.< especially as a teen/young adult. I was extremely gullible and easy to take advantage of. By the time I realised what was going on, it was too late.

Despite that, I don’t find I’m ever harmed in any way by fictional content covering the sorts of experiences I’ve had in reality. Sure, the odd scene in something might bring up a bad memory or two, but it passes in a flash and I’m no worse off for it. I know that won’t be the case for everyone though! I just wanted to point out that when you mention how a victim might feel, I am one of those victims.

I guess that’s partly why triggers/warnings are such a contentious issue because everyone is so different >.< It’s impossible to know what might hurt one person and not even remotely impact another.

I’m just the sort of person who doesn’t really get triggered by anything in fictional content despite my past being filled with enough trauma and abuse that I could curate an entire gallery of horrors x3 And as a gamer in her thirties, I’ve played my fair share of games that just straight-up slapped that sorta stuff in my face with no warning whatsoever. For me personally, I find my brain just completely separates fictional content from anything that’s ever happened to me in reality. Like I said, I realise everyone is different though :3

I would like to hope that if someone finds something even remotely triggering or making them uncomfortable in some way, regardless of whether they've seen warnings or not,  they would just disengage with that piece of media immediately >.<

Being able to create hidden dropdown lists on the game page is a real blessing when it comes to that sort of thing because it means it’s up to each individual as to whether or not they want to view the fully detailed list and be prepared at the cost of also being spoiled, or to just heed the main warnings without going into any detail :3

As a player, I personally prefer all content warnings to be hidden/revealable, as I don’t want any spoilers whatsoever for stuff I’m about to play cos that completely ruins the experience and immersion for me.

But yeah, whenever I actually have a chance, I plan to put those detailed dropdowns on all of my older project pages that don’t currently have them! It just might take a while because, as usual, I’m completely swamped with stuff and struggling to stay on top of things >.<

As for the intro sequence, I know how to edit that sorta thing now :D Again, it’s just a case of literally not knowing at the time how to code it in a way that avoids playing the full sequence every time, haha. Now that I have the knowledge, I can implement an instant-loading version of the title screen when backing out of menus and stuff :3

Cheers again for checking it out!

Hey hey! Thanks so much for checking out the demo ^-^ I’m really glad you enjoyed it! It’s still kinda clunky >.< but there doesn’t seem like much point in me fixing stuff when I will need to remake it all from scratch once I’m working on the project full-time again (cos the updated version of Naninovel will break pretty much everything in the demo xD)

If you do end up making fanart of Castor, definitely give me a poke cos I’d love to see it :D 

Thank you for playing & for your kind words :3

Glad to hear that you still enjoyed playing the demo even if it wasn’t an exact fit for your tastes :3 The good news though is that in the finished version of the game, there technically will be the option to play with a submissive version of Castor :D It’s just you will kind of have to tame him first x3

Other characters will start out more submissive than Castor/ia though! 

I guess it probably doesn’t come across much in the demo, but if you go down the start of the sweet path rather than the sinister one, you can just about see how Castor/ia could end up becoming more submissive based on your choices. It’s just there’s a looooot that isn’t implemented yet as the game is still in the very early stages of development, and sadly, the demo doesn’t do the greatest job of accurately representing my vision for the finished project >.< haha.

Thanks so much for playing and taking the time to comment! ^-^

The good news is, it absolutely is still in development :3

The bad news is, it’s not actively in development because I’m trying to finish a different big project that I started before this one x3 

After I released my first ever game which took me like 3 years or something to make cos it was quite a long one, I started something else almost right away (CiQ) but that’s been on hold for far too long while I’ve worked on other things >.<

Once CiQ is finished, Darling Duality will become my next priority long-term project to work on though :3

I don’t anticipate being able to work on Darling Duality at any point in the remainder of this year though because my schedule for 2024 is already packed. It looks something like this: 

• Completing a brand new short-ish game (probably around 40-50k words) for a game jam that’s running this year (most likely it will be part 01 release for the jam around 1st July with part 02 coming probably later in the year)

• Working towards finishing CiQ since I started it long before beginning DD (writing for CiQ was finished years ago, but the game never got past the demo stage for a whole bunch of reasons >.< and all the art and stuff is now getting a complete overhaul) I had hoped to possibly release CiQ by the end of this year, but I don’t think that’s going to happen, so I might have to push it back to like summer 2025 or something!

So yeah, I’m not likely to have the chance to work on Darling Duality until possibly Autumn 2025 maybe >.< Which is a long way off, and then development to completion will probably take another 1-3 years T_T It’s really hard to tell tbh cos I never know what crap life is gonna throw at me that slows down progress, haha.

The main thing though is that it will be finished eventually one day :3 

I’ve created this problem by being too enthusiastic and making more than 1 long-term project at once xD I’ve finished plenty of projects at this point, but tackling the longer ones is harder with how much time they eat up >.<

I’ve learned my lesson though and won’t be starting any more long-term projects until CiQ and DD are completed :3 And I’m cutting down how many game jams I participate in too so that I can spend more time focusing on long-term stuff, haha.

Sorry for the giant ramble anyhow xD Hope you’re having an awesome April :3

I should probably have put this on the FAQ x3 I’ll try to update it with this answer when I get a chance, haha.

The TLDR answer is: I hope so! But it won’t be any time soon, sadly >.<

The longer answer is, I would honestly love to release Android versions of all of my projects :3 The problem is, the couple of times that I tested it on small projects, the builds succeeded, but they didn’t run >.< I just got a blank screen in the test environment :( 

I have literally no idea what I did wrong cos I followed all the steps of a guide multiple times, but I still haven’t been able to get any Android builds to work. What doesn’t help is that my PC is pretty old and can’t really handle the load of Android Studio + Unity >.< But more than that, I’m just not a very techy person, so I think I might need help from another dev who has more idea how to do that sort of thing, haha. Cos I would also love to get my games on Switch, and my brother keeps saying I should try to have some on Xbox too, but I can’t get anything other than PC builds to work T_T

For this particular project, there will be even more problems because the final version of it will be pretty big, and I’m guessing I will have to tweak A LOT of things with the UI and stuff to get it to display decently on a phone >.< And this project itself is nowhere near completion for PC release and probably won’t be for at least another couple of years cos I’ve got other projects that are a priority to finish before this one :( 

But yeah, I do hope to in the future! :3

That’s awesome that you had fun with the demo :D Thanks so much for checking it out!

The other love interests will all have some level/aspect of yandere-ness to them, yeah :3 They won’t all show it in the same way as Castor/ia, and some will lean into it more than others, but they will all have shades of yandere present with how much of it you see depending on the player’s choices, hehe.

It’s possible some of the future characters might swing more towards yangire than strictly yandere too, but yeah, they will all have those vibes somewhere in them x3

It’s kind of inevitable that I would end up making a game with all yandere LIs because almost every game I’ve ever made features at least 1 yandere LI of some sort and they’re the reason I got into making VNs in the first place :D 

Still, I will give players the option to avoid being bombarded by yandere behaviour if they mainly stick to the sweet sides of the characters, haha.

Sadly, development will be quite slow, especially with me focusing on getting CiQ finished first, but I’ll get there eventually x3 I’m hoping I’ll be able to start working on DD full-time sometime next year :3

Thanks so much for your kind words and support! ^-^

That’s great :D So glad you had fun playing the demo ^-^

Hehe, well, the next part of the story that shows how getting a job plays out is already written, it’s just I haven’t coded it in yet cos I’m trying to finish some other stuff before coming back to this project x3

It definitely is easier to pay for everything though if you’re a pair, haha. I honestly don’t know how anyone can even live on their own in this day and age when everything is so expensive o.O 

Thanks so much for checking out the demo and leaving such a nice comment :3

That’s strange :o It sounds like a bug that happened for some people with one of the much older versions of the game >.< It was an issue caused by certain PCs being unable to load video files (as the title screen used to feature a video background.)

I fixed that a long time ago though by replacing the video file with regular png image files and animating them in-engine.

Which version was it that you downloaded?

For reference, the most recent one that is recommended to download is the file called (depending on your OS):
Darling Duality - Demo - (Windows)
Darling Duality - Demo - (Mac)
Darling Duality - Demo - (Linux)

Any of the other files are old and outdated versions that are only there for posterity so that people can see how the game has changed over time if they want to. The full game isn’t out yet and won’t be for a long time :3

Thanks for your interest in the project. If you still have the problem, I’m not entirely sure what would fix it >.< but I can look into it when I’m actively working on the project again to try and make sure that it’s fixed for you when the full game is released eventually :3 

Oh, and your English is great :D

Glad to hear you had fun with the demo! Thanks so much for checking it out ^-^ It’s gonna be quite some time before the full thing is eventually finished, but I’ll get there in the end, haha.

Hehe, weeeell, technically you can thank Naninovel for the 99 save slots cos that’s how many come by default on the save/load UI and I never tweak any of the actual settings, just the look of it x3 I feel you though cos I always save a LOT when I’m playing pretty much anything, but especially with VNs!

That’s really kind of you to say :3 Thanks again for taking the time to play the demo and leave such a nice comment! <3

I can only apologise that it will more than likely be quite some time to actually get it finished >.< but I’ll get there in the end :3 baby steps, haha. 

Funnily enough, I’m typing up this reply at the same time as typing another reply to a comment on this project that also mentions voice acting stuff, but I rambled A LOT there, so I will try to write a shorter version here x3

The TLDR version is that without voice acting, I have no motivation and I hate every word of my writing so I wouldn’t be able to release it without voice acting >.< I know I’m weird T_T Pretty much any other dev would probably just release it all without VA first to get it done faster cos it’s the logical thing to do, but it just wouldn’t work for me cos without VA I’d just want to burn all my writing and never let it see the light of day x3

I appreciate the support though and I’m glad you’re interested in the project :3 I’ll absolutely get this finished eventually, it’s just gonna take quite a while because there’s a hell of a lot to do on it still and I have other projects that I want to get released first since I have a project older than this where I finished the writing years ago but ran into problems with it so haven’t been able to finish the coding yet >.< Once that one is out of the way, this one will be my main long-term project priority :3 I find I have to work on smaller side projects at the same time though because I get bored just working on one thing at a time, which makes everything take even longer x3

Hope the new year has started out awesomely for you!! :3

Sorry about that x3 The page definitely needs a rehaul! I try to match fonts on the pages to what’s used in the project, but the problem is, they don’t always turn out the same on the itch page >.< usually, they’re a lot smaller for starters, and I have no control over making them bigger or clearer :( 

I’m glad you think it seems cool at least, haha. I’ll be attempting to redesign the page soon, so hopefully, that’ll make everything somewhat easier to read :3

Yeah, it's definitely been a while x3 When I released the original version of this for the jam, I'd hoped to continue working on it sometime, but had no plans to anytime soon since I knew it would require a huuuge amount of money for voice acting, and I wasn't likely to get that anytime soon, haha. Then when Manly played it, I suddenly got support from the project out of nowhere! But because it was so long after the original release, I wasn't even remotely prepared to work on it all of a sudden, and the voice actors involved had moved on to other things x3

At the same time though, since more people were checking it out, I didn't really want people playing the old jam version and thinking that's all there would ever be, so I made the new demo to try and give a better idea of how I hope the project to pan out in the future :3 It's still pretty far from how I'd like it to look though >.<

There's a lot of finished content that sadly isn't in that demo (like CGs for Castor/is + most of the opening part of Cana's route) but I didn't want to update the demo with that stuff until I can get it all voiced + polished more. 

I haven't worked on the project for most of 2023 though for a whole bunch of different reasons >.< And I was hoping to have a post out before Christmas that goes into more detail explaining the different factors that have prevented me from making much progress with this particular project, but I've been so stressed, ill, and busy because of Christmas that I probably won't be able to get the post finished and posted until January T_T

I'm hoping I will be able to work on it some more in 2024 at least! But I'm probably not going to get any updates for the game out next year because I'm not going with an episodic plan anymore >.< it just won't work. So I'll only be updating once full routes are actually finished to avoid having the same issue again with losing voice actors and stuff x3 But yeah, I'll explain more about that when I eventually manage to get a post done :3

So yeah, completion is still a loooong way off, sadly >.< I really appreciate the support though! Hope you have happy holidays :3

Hehe, aww, well, Castor loves you too :P So glad you had fun with the demo! Thanks for playing + hope you get to have happy holidays!!

Ahh, that sucks x3 My best friend's laptop actually does the same with all of my games whenever she's tried to play them xD It's just because the security is overprotective and because they're just indie games, they don't always recognise that the files are perfectly safe >.<

In fact, when I export builds to start testing them before releasing, my own antivirus tries to stop me playing through my own games xD It's like... uhm, antivirus, I made this, it's fine, it's safe! x3

I guess it's probably different for each kind of security software, but with mine I just tick a box to tell it that it's fine, and then it lets me play with no problems :3

Glad you like the look of the project anyhow! :D Hope you get to have happy holidays!!