HTML Blue Swallow [v0.5F Hotfix 3] [Blue Swallow]

[AelphysTerra]

Does anyone know how to get the best score on the piano vignette?

 

[Samu Al Hydit]

Note that due to the dance requirement in the above needing two different forms, the only way I can see to get that bonus is to have taken dance as a kid (which gives the Ballet1 dance tag) and then dancing in high school (which gives one of Ballet2, Hiphop1, Ballroom1, or Contemporary1).

As such, the easiest points are:

• Attractiveness 5+. You can get this just by having both parents be really hot, and it opens up a bunch of other doors as well. Who'd've thought, being attractive makes things easier when you're being judged on appearance?
• Being shorter than average. This is a double edged sword, but doesn't seem to hard lock any content right now, and being tall makes it much hard to get accepted due to the penalty for being above average height.
• Having the Pliant Limbs sexual skill. This is expensive (it costs you a sex skill slot), but there isn't a whole lot of content based on those yet, so for now this is a straightforward pick.
• While not technically a point, you can get the difficulty lowered from 6 to 5 by having non-blond hair - you'll be given a tentative invite to practice on the condition you show up with blonde hair or not at all.

Unfortunately, that still leaves you short, and the remaining ones aren't exactly freebies.

• Learning 5+ almost requires at least a partial academic route, which makes it difficult to get the other stats needed for the 5th success point.
• Conversely, getting your combined confidence and risky score to 9 requires a pretty heavy focus in being audacious, and you don't always have the options to get enough for a fifth point here.
• Performance 3+ plus two dances is likely the easiest, but that locks two vignettes.
• Coordination 3+ is attainable, but your only other option is likely Performance 3+ or two dances, which leaves you on the same routes.

As such, the best route is likely to start off short, with super hot parents, take dance for both vignettes that it's offered in, pick the "pliant limbs" sexual skill, and hope to hell that you can get coordination 3+ and performance 3+ by the time you start college... or aim for one of those two and be willing to change your hair color for it.

TL;DR: It's not easy to be a college cheerleader.

Man, great job for discovering this. Do you also know all things that affect Excitable scores? And how many scenes are labelled/tagged as cheating?

 

[kunIOIOIOIOIO]

• Cheating on your final exams in high school.
• Using the fact that you've been sleeping with a high school authority figure to blackmail them into helping you on your finals.

I have been trying to get this for awhile I got each scenario seperately but for the life of me I can't remember what triggers them so the blackmail can happen

 

[Gibberish666]

Exactly what you might think: Things that are inherently risky, self-destructive, or - and this is important - that would lead a normal person to behave that way. For example, having your mother hate you results in some (justified!) lashing out, but the ways that a child or teenager can express that are limited, so it often ends up as a kind of senseless defiance that is pretty self-destructive. As such, having your parents together with your mother hating you gives +1 risky.

Here is a non-exhaustive list:

• Parents together and mother hates you.
• Parents separate.
• Picking the "slutty" personality type.
• Picking the "rebel" clique.
• Several of the first vignette options (split into three here but I don't know if there's a reason for it):
  • Going joyriding
  • Shooting guns
  • Doing drugs
  • Picking Romans 12:2 as your favorite bible verse (lol)
  • Saying you were enthusiastic for a party because you weren't supposed to be at one
  • Choosing to give the peeper a show when staying at home
  • Getting sexed or jacked in when joining a gang
  • Picking striker for the soccer position
  • Asking what was in the coolers at the tailgating party
• And some of the second vignette options:
  • Picking "keeping me high" as the goal in the SILO club
  • Matching the grin of Raymond when vandalizing Ava's stuff
  • Picking "and the drugs" when taking the house party option
  • When stealing from target (bad move), choosing to ignore security and continue
  • When volunteering with the convicts, let your goodwill buy some protection
  • Pick hurdles as your gymnastic contest of choice
• Third set:
  • Steal the cow for your vandalism
  • Send a message to the man for vandalism
  • Stay home
  • When in a gang and dealing drugs, take the risk and deal from all corners
  • When skinny dipping, tread water until the guys leave
  • Chill with the TA instead of hanging with The Boys
  • Spend your part time job money on a burner phone
• Cheating on your final exams in high school.
• Using the fact that you've been sleeping with a high school authority figure to blackmail them into helping you on your finals.

There are more options later, but that covers most of the way through the end of high school.

You need a cheerleading success score of 6+ to make the team, or 5+ if you're not blonde and willing to change - see the next post. Points can be obtained by:

• Having a Learning score of 5+
• Knowing at least two different dance styles (from extracurricular dance lessons as a kid)
• Having a performance score of 3+
• Having the Pliant Limbs sexual skill
• Being shorter than average (note that being taller than average loses you a point, as you're hard to toss around)
• If your combined Risky score and Confidence traits is 9+
• If your Coordination skill is 3+
• If your attractiveness is 5+

This is the kind of stuff I like to see, and the best argument for some kind of means of tracking character values. One person's logic doesn't always translate into another person's logic. The idea of my parents being abusive doesn't strike me as an incentive to be rebellious. I had an abusive father, and I only became too scared to interact with people or participate in anything because it might anger him - until I was old enough to punch back.

This difference in perspective lends itself to access to content we want, or may not want, to see. I may choose one thing for my MC, thinking it'll open access to lesbian content, but actually find myself locked out of lesbian content because the scenario gave my MC some kind of PTSD about sexual encounters with women.

I have been trying to get this for awhile I got each scenario seperately but for the life of me I can't remember what triggers them so the blackmail can happen

Same here.

 

[PeanutGallery]

thanks! I just realized how much content there is in this game. I must have played through it 50 times and didn’t know what SILO, that you could volunteer with convicts, or ask what’s in the coolers for tailgating. I’ve chosen tailgating, but don’t remember additional choices after that.

There is a remarkable amount of breadth and depth to the vignettes that a lot of folks don't see. Like, the high school vignettes alone are something like four thousand lines of content between code and text, and most people will only see a tiny fraction of that. Mad respect to CassieBare and the team for being willing to dedicate that much effort to the branches.

I’m not sure still how to get performance or coordination points

I'm busy with work so I can't do a full summary now, but performance points are typically gained from putting on a show: Acting, spinning a tale, lying quickly on your feet, and the like. Coordination points are gained from being dexterous and nimble.

It seems most of the time I pick double dance that I barely pass the final tests and don’t get the college option.

Passing High School is a moderately complex function, but it can be generally summarized by "discipline plus stability equals grades." There's some smoothing that goes on and you can apply "street smarts" in the form of other skills to help bring you up to average if you're failing.

Two good places to start for better grades are improving the PC's home life (which, depending on choices, can grant a bonus to stability or remove a penalty) and picking the "I thought the spy stuff was dumb" option at the very start, which also grants a point of stability.

Also note that discipline helps get better results from dancing and sports, so you'll want to have it anyway. The only character archetype that at doesn't want discipline is the self-destructive hedonist, and that's simply not compatible with being a college cheerleader. The game is, alas, unfortunately realistic in its portrayal of cheerleading as a real sport that requires effort to do well in.

 

[PeanutGallery]

I have been trying to get this for awhile I got each scenario seperately but for the life of me I can't remember what triggers them so the blackmail can happen

You need to have slept with someone in a position of power in high school. Like, when you set up your body count after prom, pick people like "so and so, high school principal" or "so and so, chemistry teacher." There's a degree of RNG here because not every name will pop on every playthrough, so you might have to save scum to ensure you get it if your character doesn't have a high body count. More promiscuous PCs should be able to get the necessary names just by dint of sleeping with half their social circle.

I can dump the full list of names later if people want exact guidance.

Do you also know all things that affect Excitable scores?

I think I did this one earlier - one of my previous posts here ought to cover most of it. Let me know if I'm misremembering.

And how many scenes are labelled/tagged as cheating?

With the disclaimer that I've only done a cursory look (I am, at least in theory, working right now) it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of cheating content at the moment. The only real cheating stuff comes up in university, and even then it's pretty limited in scope.

This is the kind of stuff I like to see, and the best argument for some kind of means of tracking character values.

I think everyone agrees that some form is in order, but the argument is mostly about what form it should take. I'm personally in favor of a less numeric and more narrative description system for showing the PC's attributes combined with a "flavor hinting" system for responses. It could be as generic as coloring the response text - red for aggressive, green for deceptive, blue for reserved, pink for horny, etc. to give the player an idea what the tone intended by the action is, and what the corresponding shift in character would be for doing so.

 

[CassieBare]

As far as cheating:

• there's a flavor of it at Prom between Ava and her boyfriend, if you head down that path.
• there's the professor in college -- he's definitely married
• there's people in hookup lists that are other people's BFs or husbands
• there's the Spring concert in college that you can cheat on your sig other
• there's an aspect of cheating in Gap Year Backpacker (new release!) depending on what you, the player, feels about the relationship between Jordan and her
• there's a potential couple hookups in Gap Year Finishing School where the MC is involved with married people

This is non-exhaustive but off the top of my head. Plus, there's just using your imagination with whether the MC has a sig other or not throughout the scenes where she's having sex with other people. It's not prescribed as *not* the case, so if you want it to be, then why not?

 

[kunIOIOIOIOIO]

Passing High School is a moderately complex function, but it can be generally summarized by "discipline plus stability equals grades." There's some smoothing that goes on and you can apply "street smarts" in the form of other skills to help bring you up to average if you're failing.

Two good places to start for better grades are improving the PC's home life (which, depending on choices, can grant a bonus to stability or remove a penalty) and picking the "I thought the spy stuff was dumb" option at the very start, which also grants a point of stability.

So is the highest grade you can get a B? Also soz for all these qs not too good at codediving - Nvm just found out why and got a perfect score

 

[Sammie]

Finishing school btw feels a little unfinished. I’m not sure exactly what the choices at the end mean and how to not select all of them and kind of defeat the point of finishing school. It’s the path I’ve explored the least, but also because it seems to have the least variation with the choices

btw, I love this form of character creation and hope you keep this and maybe do future games with other themes that also used this kind of paper doll and narrative creation. Even a simple game where you play through college and then it generates an ending could be a lot of fun. You guys have really made something special

 

[Deniz31]

Could we see the changelog of the latest release?

 

[CassieBare]

Finishing school btw feels a little unfinished. I’m not sure exactly what the choices at the end mean and how to not select all of them and kind of defeat the point of finishing school. It’s the path I’ve explored the least, but also because it seems to have the least variation with the choices

btw, I love this form of character creation and hope you keep this and maybe do future games with other themes that also used this kind of paper doll and narrative creation. Even a simple game where you play through college and then it generates an ending could be a lot of fun. You guys have really made something special

I can look at the hookup section of Finishing School to make it a bit clearer, but not sure how to make it feel 'finished' -- pun is great btw.

It's a class and etiquette training opportunity where you make one friend in particular, have some activities outside of school, go out, and go home. There's nuance between all the potential friends and the experiences you have there and success/fail gates on how well you do at finishing school.

 

[CassieBare]

Could we see the changelog of the latest release?

Change log will go out with the dev report this week (Sunday)

 

[Samu Al Hydit]

Plus, there's just using your imagination with whether the MC has a sig other or not throughout the scenes where she's having sex with other people. It's not prescribed as *not* the case, so if you want it to be, then why not?

It's way hotter if the cheating is explicitly stated, especially if you explore her morality and mindset during those scenes.

 

[CassieBare]

It's way hotter if the cheating is explicitly stated, especially if you explore her morality and mindset during those scenes.

Granted. But then it's a LOT more writing for me, and it's less hot for those people not into cheating/NTR.

 

[AelphysTerra]

I have to admit Finishing School isn't as fun as the overseas trip or the glimpse at college we got so far, partly because there's no bespoke sex scene. Maybe if it had one, sure...

 

[CassieBare]

I have to admit Finishing School isn't as fun as the overseas trip or the glimpse at college we got so far, partly because there's no bespoke sex scene. Maybe if it had one, sure...

There are actually 3 bespoke sex scenes in Finishing School Depends on who you're friends with and what choices you make (but that should go without saying).

 

[TerumiNin]

Is there going to be a journal/'player'/character description like other games? Y'know where you click on the side and it has the various details. All the stuff is being tracked but there's no way to view it now? Other than the physical aspects of the doll.

 

[PeanutGallery]

Is there going to be a journal/'player'/character description like other games? Y'know where you click on the side and it has the various details. All the stuff is being tracked but there's no way to view it now? Other than the physical aspects of the doll.

My understanding is that yes, we're going to get one, but it isn't going to be explicit and will be more of an in-character description than a list of stats. Think "So-an-so has an athletic build" instead of "Trait (Athletics): 3"

 

[PervertedGnome]

There's very few games I look forward to receiving updates such as this one at the moment. Keep up all of the great work!

 

[ray3dave]

I am pretty intrigued by the concept, but still I can't shake off the feeling that I am missing out LOTS of things because I don't really get much variety in playthroughs done. Plus in the chengelog is mentiuoned that there were clothoing option ("wrapped in towel" - I never stumpled upon parts where you chose clothing in that detailed way (apart from prom night, which does not go into details much).

Any hints or comments (on my stupidity, if that's what causes me to fail to find the stuff)?