Supermodel: Defenders of Desire - The First Release
Welcome to the world of Supermodel: Defenders of Desire.
Let's get the important things out of the way. You want the download links, so here they are. But while you're downloading, please read the text below the links. It's important.
DOWNLOAD LINKS
PC: https://pixeldrain.com/u/rcVtNXn6
Mac: https://pixeldrain.com/u/3Anrg2sw
Android (tablet only): https://pixeldrain.com/u/qvx9Qd7h
I'll be relatively brief in this post and write more on some of these topics later:
How to recognize that you have completed all available story in this version
When all available scenarios for all characters have a green checkmark, you're done. The "bonus match" card games are optional and don't unlock anything new, so you can skip them if you want. The official end of this version is marked with "To be continued".
Crowdfunding support
The lengthy development of this first version of Supermodel has taken its toll on the support I receive on Patreon and SubscribeStar. My income is now a fraction of what it was in the heyday of Long Live the Princess. That isn't sustainable.
If you have the means and you like what I've created, please consider supporting the project. It really matters. A $5 donation gets you access to new releases of the quality you see in this release, so it doesn't take much. And if you're already supporting me, thank you! I really appreciate it.
Expectations
If you've played Long Live the Princess before, you might be surprised that Supermodel isn't the same kind of game at all. I want to make that clear right at the beginning to manage your expectations. LLtP is an open-ended sandbox game with choices at every turn. Supermodel is a linear visual novel with an optional (but important) collectible card game component (no microtransactions, I promise).
Also, LLtP is a horny, comedic mystery-drama, while Supermodel is more of an erotic mystery-thriller. You won't find much nudity in this first version, as I want to take my time building suspense, but rest assured there will be explicit sex in the story sooner than you think. If you want to play something that will constantly stimulate you while you jerk off, Supermodel isn't really that. This is a serious story with an erotic core. The sex scenes are easy to replay once unlocked, but it takes time to get to them.
I ask you not to think of Supermodel as a spiritual successor to Long Live the Princess. Supermodel is a standalone game that doesn't try to follow in the footsteps of LLtP.
Finally, I'd like to clarify something to avoid future confusion: If you don't care at all about the collectible card game aspect of Supermodel, enable "Pure VN Mode" in the game's settings If you do, the game won't interrupt your VN experience with card games and will simply skip the chapters that focus on those. You don't have to love card games to enjoy Supermodel, but it helps.
I could write a lot more, but I'll keep myself in check for now.
Please enjoy this first look at Supermodel: Defenders of Desire. I'm proud of this game and I hope that shows.
Comments (16)
Thanks for your answers!
Hello! OK, I have finished playing this first release and I'm really liking the story. About the grainy renders, I'm not too detail-focused but I honestly didn't notice anything wrong with them. The hair looked fine to me (though I still don't particularly like Michael's harido 😊) The sound I think really shines, not only the music, I agree with @Saphirweapon about the main menue theme (hope you make a downloadable version in the future!) but the ambient sounds too. Like the occasional passing car in the alley where tha assassin meets the hobo, or the birds chirping in the park before Solace's speech. My only complains are minor: a glitch in the final animation of Ida's lewd scene (there's a spot where her shirt looses color on her left breast) and I was a bit doubtfull about the order in which to play each chapter when more than one get unlocked, so I ended up playing a bit of each before deciding. About Snapshot: I'm not really a fan of card games in general but I still want to play it here, so I'm grateful for the Warm Up level, as I can't seem to be able to beat it at the higher levels 😊 BTW: I'm all for story-driven games/VNs and I think I understand what you aiming for in SM so I have no problems with how the game is developing so far.
Forgot to mention: this is under Linux. Aside from that visual glitch the game worked perfectly! Also, I just installed SM in my Android tablet so I'll comment on that later
Like what you're doing here. A suggestion I have is improve the render quality so they look less grainy, or at least please revisit the hair models. Anna's image in the main menu looked good, but when I played the game it looks really bushy and messy. Really goes against that high ranking professional image she maintains. For Michael and Phoebe, I recognise these hair assets from the Daz store and tried them before and found this type of hair looking really unrealistic and wispy looking. I'm guessing you're struggling with the renders because the game has characters standing in front of static image settings. So if you can't put in more rendering time for each image, maybe consider replacing the hair models. Also for the action scenes in the apartment, I feel like having more dynamic, action-y angles focusing on the heroes struggle and fight, would have been better than the over the shoulder angle from Michael lying on the ground. It just seemed too stilted.
I'm not "struggling with the renders" and I'm not replacing any hair assets. In fact, this look is exactly what I'm going for. I've seen other devs talk about how to get rid of grain and achieve that "flawless" look before, and it always leaves me staring at such conversations with bewilderment. I'm not looking for that plastic video game look. I want the game to look more like a movie and have put effort into that. I *want* grain. Grain looks good. For the life of me, I'll never understand those who think otherwise. Even Hollywood, with their ability to render pristine, flawless images, add artificial grain. While the exact details are different, it's a similar reason why people use CRT filters when playing retro games. Sometimes the flaws in an image are what makes things look good. But I will agree with you on the somewhat stilted look in Michael's apartment. I had a choice between what you see vs spending another few weeks creating action shots that would still have been underwhelming due to the limitations in the assets and my somewhat lacking ability to easily recognize so-called action lines in art. I decided to keep Michael's angle on things while using narration to fill in the blanks. Still, I'm not sure what your point is here. Are you seriously telling me that you think I should go back and re-render the vast majority of the images in my game? Do you really think I would have released what you see here if I weren't happy with it? The only art you see here that I'm not 100% happy with is a few shots in Phoebe's chapter that I'll likely revisit in the future, and that's about it.
Alright so after i had the time to play through this first version here is some feedback. First impression is that you can feel the dedication you have put into this. There are a lot details that just show off how much work and effort has been put into it. Compared to your previous game its a big improvement renderwise aswell what makes a great first impression. During the waiting months i was very sceptical about the time spent on music. Of course all that standard licence free music out there that other developers use arent something that they can make fit to there game experience so it always sounds very generic. I could understand that you wanted the music to be something that drains people into aswell. But all that effort for the very first version while the patreon count decreases as of no releases ? Well with the final result in hands i can say that you did a great job with the music. The main menue theme is my favorite as it is very catchy. The other tracks are more subtle but the keep the job done to get the scenes they are used in a certain atmosphere. After all that positive things i also have a big complain. And that is that atleast for my personal taste the ammount of renders and the ammount of story that is told are kinda a missfit. There were many scenes where i was reading text and was disappointed that some things only happened with words but not with renders to look at (one example is the short photoshoot with Anna that didnt have a single render of her posing at all). I am some optical typ when it comes to learn things and to get a living impression. So for me it often felt kinda colorless. I dont know if this is a general thing you aim for or if it was a balance for content and richness of the world for this first release. However personaly i would enjoy the game more if the text <> renders count would be a bit more balanced. Sometimes there was too much writing for the love of writing but it did feel a bit artifical and blown up. Overall i did enjoy this first version a lot and cant wait for the next update. Keep up the great work and i hope your dedication and passion gets appreciated by many people and that the patreon support does increase again !
Thanks for the feedback. Your complaint makes sense based on how most adult games seem to be presented, but I made a deliberate choice to steer away from that style with Supermodel. Long Live the Princess let me experiment with having the renders tell the story since I had no narrator. In Supermodel, the narrator can handle that burden and add a LOT more depth to the events than the renders ever could, considering how limited Daz Studio can be. Reaching this decision was not something I did lightly. I played many other games and read multiple stories to see what resonated the strongest with me, and in the end, I realized that the big, successful Japanese VNs all seem to go for limited visual storytelling (mostly just setting the mood and the scene with their imagery) while the writing does all of the heavy lifting. Since I want a more novel-like experience in Supermodel, this ended up being a perfect fit for what I wanted to achieve. So don't expect a million different images for each scene here. LLtP did something like that with some success, but I don't feel it's right for Supermodel's style. To respond specifically to your mention of Anna's photo session, you need to understand what this scene is conveying. I'm placing you inside her head here as she gets increasingly absorbed by her inner thoughts and sensations. To see her from the outside as she poses would defeat that and create a mental disconnect between you, as the reader, and Anna. You will get to see her model later, but for this scene, it would have been counterproductive and lessened the emotions I wanted to present. I also want to stress something due to your "writing for the love of writing" comment: I'm an experienced enough writer to know that every piece of the text needs to have a purpose, or I'll cut it out. If a scene drags on that might be a pacing issue, but I'm not adding words simply to add words. If the words are there, it's because there is something I'm trying to tell you with them that I think is important enough to spend time on. You might not see the whole picture right away (in fact, I'm a big fan of saying things that might only make sense in hindsight), but there is nothing random or pointless about it. I believe in brevity in writing. That's why LLtP only showed a single line of dialogue at a time. It forced me to stay brief and snappy. Supermodel is a different beast that needs lengthier paragraphs, but the lessons learned with LLtP are carried over. This is brief and snappy given what Supermodel is trying to say. Supermodel stresses the "novel" part of "visual novel." If you can't let yourself get absorbed in the writing, the game might not be for you.
Excellent start. I see another story I'm going to love is taking shape.
I haven't really gotten to play it yet, hopefully today. But I must say the intro is amazing. You can tell a lot of work went into it already, I'll come back with more feedback haha.
Loving it so far! One question: The card tutorial says that when an effect says that you gain heat, it adds to both the total heat and usable heat. However, it also says that when you discard a card, you gain USABLE heat. Indeed, when I play the game, discarding a card seems to give only usable heat and not add to the total heat, which is confusing, since it often means that the usable heat is higher than the "total" heat. Was this intended, or a bug?
I get why this is confusing, but I've found no better way to present it to the player. Usable Heat used to be called Temporary Heat, and that made things even worse. Think of it like this: Usable Heat and Heat are two different things. You build up a pool of Heat throughout the game, and this can never deplete except when effects *explicitly* say that they'll drain your Heat (which is rare). Each Heat point you gain during the game allows you to spend one point of Usable Heat (essentially, Heat points are single-use for playing cards, but you don't lose the Heat point for doing so). You can also get Usable Heat independently from Heat, which is what happens when you discard cards. When you gain Usable Heat and its total is less than or equal your Heat, it becomes permanent (it just refills spent Usable Heat). If you gain so much Usable Heat that you now have more of it than regular Heat, you lose any excess Usable Heat at the end of the turn. So Heat is the maximum size of your pool and the value that is checked during the victory conditions. Usable Heat is a fluctuating resource pool that can be spent to play cards. Gaining and Draining Heat also gains or drains an equal amount of Usable Heat, but the opposite is not true. Gaining or losing Usable Heat does not affect your Heat. Does that clear things up? It makes perfect sense when you realize what's happening, but it's challenging to explain it.
OK, downloaded and played my first 4 chapters (I'm taking it slow), so far so good! But now I have to know where can we buy a Belle's "got milk?" mug 😊
It would be a fun merchandising idea if it wasn't a registered trademark and thus illegal for me to sell. Its appearance in this game falls under the parody clause, but merchandising definitely wouldn't. :P
Well done Belle. As a big fan of LLTP i can say confidently: This is the next level. As I was playing the game and struggling to find the right words for this feedback, you (or in this case Anna) gave me a little help. I'm sorry, because I just copied the text you wrote yourself, but I could not say it better: „Thank you, Belle, you've exceeded my expectations once again. This is good stuff.“ My expectation was to see the typical game of this genre with new (hot) faces, and the mix of humor, storytelling and music we know and love from LLTP. I was wrong. I got a mix of a really damn good written story on a bestseller level mixed with action and suspense of a good action movie even when we basically just got a few renders of Anna driving to the building and talking to the team. Speaking of movies: are those skyline shots rendered or filmed? I can't say for sure tbh. This intro action-sequence the got followed by the emotional punch to the guts (No spoilers. If you know, you know) that caught me completely off guard. Again: well done. (tbh: that was a little too well written. Please take care of yourself) TLDR: Music: Good Story: Awesome Renders: Even better than LLTP Just Testing: back as supporter Can`t wait to see more of this project. Cheers
Thank you for the very kind feedback. I appreciate it. :) Those skyline shots you mention are actual filmed stock footage. I want to make sure that the New York presented in this game feels like a real place, and these establishing shots help a lot with that.
Congrats on the release!!! ❤️ I'm at work ATM, so I'll have to read the full post and download the game (yay!) later 😊