Far Out There: Happy Heart Love Mission!
…and the scary thing is, this is probably the only kind of Far Out There game that’d ever stand a chance of actually getting made in real life, if only in the sense that it’d require the absolute minimum about of programing knowledge on my part. Truly, it is a dark, sad world in which we live.
But yeah, it’s been a little while since I was last able to pull off an April Fools page that actually did the whole “sudden art shift” gag properly, huh? And just for the record, that’s not just a throwaway joke up above. All of the art on this page was created via AI, just to give it all that extra added hint of fly-by-night sketchiness. So I guess the REAL April Fool’s prank here is the fact that I went and committed artistic sin. But you know what the funny thing is? Having done so, I’ve never felt more secure in the belief that I have a job that will NEVER be taken over by a machine, because this took FOREVER. Getting Skynet to cough up some results that both looked anything like the characters I was trying to get AND that didn’t have some extra arms or whatever took literal pages of text prompts and HUNDREDS of attempts. And even then, the art you see before you now is actually frankenstein’d together from multiple different elements, because I STILL never got any results that were truly satisfactory straight from the computer brain itself. Heck, I had to pretty drastically scale back my original plans for this comic because these four girls were the only ones I could get an even CLOSE to convincing picture for. Stilez and Mariska were supposed to be in the title screen too, but I couldn’t for the life of me get the AI to understand how their hair is supposed to look. And you know what? I take a strange pride in that. It’s nice to think that the stuff I make is so far outside the popular trends that bots scraping The Internet for raw material to mash together as “new” pictures apparently can’t find much else that resembles it. Granted, another way of saying that would be that I make things nobody else WANTS to make… but that’s still a form of job security, if you think about.
Having said all that, if anybody out there wants to get a closer look at these pictures (or actually read the filler text on the screens) here they are at full size.
So yeah, Fools in April, everyone! Come back Tuesday for a normal comic drawn the normal way, which most likely will technically take me longer than this did, but will FEEL infinitely quicker and less frustrating. Also, more Patreon comics went up this week, and you could be reading them right now for just $1 a month!
I would have assumed that Layla was the nightmare-level challenge character, but you ended up putting Stillez as one of the hidden options! And Mariska’s another! Stillez wouldn’t recognise a what a date is even during a kiss, and Mariska’s dates are canonically nightmare-level disasters! The most Layla would do is simply give a swift kick to the balls hard enough to castrate you for being too perverted, and that’s nothing compared to the danger of simply talking to Stillez. Combine that with the fact that the implication is that the ship wouldn’t survive whatever problems occour during Mariska’s dates, and you have a potential horror story here.
Actually, thinking about it, the entire dating sim would probably end up becoming a horror story regardless of who you date, with Skye being the safest date (to our knowledge), followed by Jenna, Tabitha and finishing off with Layla. I’m not sure about how to rank Stillez and Mariska, simply because they’re dangerous in completely different directions and means. But I would probably rank dating Stillez as safer than Mariska, as you at least know what you’re getting into there, while whatever disaster’s that could occour during a date with Mariska is chaotic and unknown.
The biggest danger of trying to date Stilez isn’t the date, it’s whatever random thing she gets distracted by, with apocalyptic results.
And yet I’m of the opinion that dating Stillez is still far safer than whatever occurs during one of Mariska’s dates, particularly if you wear armour & environmental shielding.
Oh yes. The answer to the question of what happens on Mariska’s dates is “something worse than whatever you’re thinking”
Mariska: My impression was that (as with many people in real life) the disasters of her dates were a result of WHO she chose to date. So if you’re dating her in the sim, YOU are the disaster. Or perhaps that’s the challenge, is trying not to inadvertently be the disaster yourself.
Jenna: “I’m really sorry, but our usual babysitters have all strangely turned up missing, I hope you don’t mind if I bring my little brother along on the date, there’s nobody else to watch him.”
[ “Sure! I’m great with kids!” ]
[ Scream and run away very quickly! ] –pick this option!!!
Tabitha: Getting her to date you would probably not be the issue, it’s when you get introduced to her parents….
Skye: Date’s going fine, but she seems to be having to excuse herself for a few minutes and taking a while to get back…then there’s some explosions and she explains you’ll have to leave very quickly (turns out the date was cover for a sabotage mission…)
Layla: Those tsundere characters are the easiest ones. Or rather in this case, just remember to spend lots of money on her and don’t try anything suspicious. And don’t be a Kevin. Also no kitty brain related projects, those are definitely out.
Stilez: Ichabod vehemently objects in the most stringent terms to any assertion that she is not the most dangerous date on this list by several orders of magnitude!! (despite his being familiar with Mariska’s dating disasters) She’s not exactly a typical yandere, but does share the similarity that she’s more affectionate to those she likes than they want her to be, and only directly dangerous to everyone else around. Though there’s always the danger of getting hit by crossfire. Really, though, as long as you get Tax’s approval, you’re in.
Otome game version: Ichabod (since you included Mariska), Frank, Kevin, Trigger, Marshall, the 4 rich kids(they are treated as one unit, though, not individually), and special challenge: Vengeance!!! (we really have no idea what his age might be after all)
Mariska is a NITPICKER. Even if whoever she was dating regularly ended up being on the level of Stillez for a singular encounter, it STILL wouldn’t be enough to give her a reputation for going on horrific dates. No, Mariska has to have been on dates where the planet that the date was on was destroyed as a direct consequence of the date occurring ON MULTIPLE OCCASSIONS WITH DIFFERENT PEOPLE. And those were some of her better dates.
For Jenna, by the time she’s finished saying that, Megaweapon’s already set the restaurant/food court on fire. Your answers suggest that you have already failed the date for not noticing him doing so, and stopping him.
Tabitha’s parent’s wouldn’t actually be much of an issue. No, it’s meeting her CHILDREN, Bridget & Alphonse, that’s the problem here. And if they don’t like you, you get NOWHERE with Tabitha.
To have a chance to be successful with Skye, you have to excuse yourself before she does, and end up on the same sabotage mission. Which is practically an infiltration game in and of itself.
Layla’s difficulty isn’t in getting her into dates (if you have sufficient financial capital), it’s getting her to be something other than a token girlfriend who is just effectively stealing your money. Basically, getting one or two dates isn’t hard, it’s progressing the relationship beyond the level of the second date and getting to the sixth date with enough money to pay for more than water that’s difficult here.
Stilez is the most dangerous individual on the list, but not the most dangerous date. Particularly since she’s liable to get distracted and run off chasing pretty lights, causing havoc away from you. Alternatively, she’ll get annoyed at something nearby and destroy the city you’re in while you’re right next to her, but that’s STILL more predictable, and thus safer, than whatever happens when Mariska goes on dates.
Basically, my interpretation is:
– Jenna: Easy to get to date, hard to get the relationship anywhere due to her family.
– Tabitha: Easy to get a first date, near impossible to get a second one due to near impossibility of getting both Bridget & Alphonse to like you.
– Skye: Moderate chance of a singular date, if it ends up being close to something work-related for her. Only get a chance for a second date if you end up supporting her job unexpectedly. Chance to be employed in such a way that your job is to hinder her job.
– Layla: Dates have a minimum price range, and a base requirement for offerings/gifts. “Easy”, if you have in-game money, to get dates, but near impossible to develop emotional ties with, due to jaded personality.
– Stilez: Can get dates fairly easily if you bribe Tax. Getting the date to go well, and having Stilez remember you beyond twenty seconds is a NIGHTMARE, though.
– Mariska: Easy to get dates with, but disaster always occurs during them. Moderate to high chance for the Player Character to be killed, turned into something disgusting, or become completely incapable of not speaking like a creep the entire rest of the play through.
The problem with trying to date Tabitha is that she’d either treat it as less of a relationship and more of a fun chance to conduct experiments regarding human interaction AND/OR that she’d base all her assumptions on what a “normal date” is like on some really weird manga she read once. Heck, she might actually play some dating sims as “research” and Lord only knows what kind of ideas THAT would give her.
“Wait! Where are your tentacles?!”
Some of the mod-ed humans in the FOT universe probably do actually have tentacles…
Aside from having to correct her misconceptions she got from her “research” the remainder of that really doesn’t sound bad at all to me, Tabitha’s social interaction experiments would likely make the date a thousand times more interesting/less boring than the standard RL boilerplate lets-do-the-exact-same-thing-everyone-else-does dating. Sadly, there are very few Tabithas in RL.
I see nothing wrong with this art whatsoever. You Primates took 100 millennia or so to get from crude stick figure cave drawings to where you are now. I can draw recognizable art from a text description and I’ve only been doing this for a few decades! Check back with me in 20 years or so for my perfectly written and drawn amalgam of every Web Comic on the web over the prior half century. What could possibly go wrong?
Foolish Internet, us artists just have to wait until you’re too bogged down by copyright takedowns and georestrictions to be usable and then we’ll all be fine! Without unrestricted access to a database of other people’s content, you’re NOTHING!
Also, I love that the title above the text box said “Reply to The Internet” just then
I dunno, if there’s one thing the internet has proven good at it’s ignoring and circumventing peoples copyrights and IP 😉
But if the Internet ignores your IP, you will never get a response. Or was that the point?
The weird part is? I’d probably buy it if you were making it. Mostly because it’d be surreally funny.
It probably IS a safe bet that any dating sim I made would swerve pretty far afield of the genre’s conventions (if only because I barely even know what those are)
So long as each target character has a conclusion that can be reached following a guide where you have the character as a life-long partner, and a second-post game ending where you have a harem with all of them, you would’ve hit what you need to. Having a single character who you can’t have in the post-game harem, or that you can’t have a “good ending” for your listed target becomes your lifelong partner, and it would be a confusing miss of the convention. Like, further than the game that actively turns the dating game into a pseudo-bugged-out horror setting missing the genre’s conventions, as that’s an obvious subversion of the genre.
It’s already impossible then – there’s no plausible scenario where Layla will accept a harem ending!
What if instead you’re in HER harem? That seems slightly more plausible.
that does seem far more likely result 😀
(although i’ve never heard of a game where the protagonist/player ends up being in a character’s harem…they’re probably out there.
If not, this could be a revolutionary new niche opportunity!)
Folks like Ichabod will definitely make jokes about Layla having a boy harem, but in actual practice, it’s hard enough to get her to let her guard down around ONE person, let alone a whole group of them.
I was thinking more the traditional harem: more of a status symbol than anything else. Most everyone there is there to show off that you HAVE them, and then the one person you genuinely like (but can’t marry for political reasons).
So she marries the four Justice club kids for their parents’ immense wealth, and Marshall’s the one she likes but can’t marry…because he’s a Nitpicker!
I’d be cool with a sharp turn. Not normally a “dating sims” sort of guy… (though I’m making an exception for the Fallen London one coming out in June.)
I’m only disappointed that even in the closeup version there are no funny signs on the vending machines. They’re SUPPOSED to be there. It’s a thing!
It’s AI Generated Art, Ed8. Anything that would have suggested putting funny signs on the vending machines would have turned the vending machines into standard cartoon mascots, pieces of meat, or something else that isn’t a vending machine.
I was actually thinking of copy/pasting some pictures of Xal-Gox and the like onto the machines, but part of the meta-joke I was going for here was for everything to look like the most generic, low-effort, “milk cash out of the players” project possible. In that spirit, I felt it was actually better to just use the exact machine designs the AI spit out. Heck, you’ll notice that the two sides of that background are just the same image mirrored!
I figured that was why. But it’s still disappointing that they’re not there 😉
The internet should have known that on its own and placed them there originally! For shame, Internet! FOT’s conventions, as the current #1 webcomic, should carry more weight!
Also, give up, Layla, you ARE the the tsundere character! There HAS to be one, and you’re the only choice with enough tsuntsun personality characteristic to qualify. You can just be one of those that’s 99%tsun1%dere.
No, she’s just deredere to those rich and near her age (in an attempt to get their money), and tsuntsun to anyone who annoys her (which is pretty much everyone who she’s not friends with, or aren’t pre-teens).
Basically, between Layla-only shot 2, and Layla-only shots 3 & 4, Layla learnt that your player character is LOADED. So she’s genuinely sorry she beat the ever-loving crap out of you, as it makes getting you into a relationship purely for the purposes of exploiting your wealth and taking it all for herself notably harder. And more embarrassing, as she needs to do things like actually apologize for her actions.
I think once she’s mad it you you’re done for no matter how rich. Look at Kevin, he’s got zero chance now despite being heir to a fortune apparently at least on a entire-planetary-system-GDP level, probably larger. I guess it depends on how badly you screw up initially.
(then again, her game personality doesn’t have to be EXACTLY like her real one, I suppose)
Once Layla has a strong negative emotion applied to you, she’s cutting you off. The thing is, the beating she gave was purely from mild disgust at your perversion. It’s something she dislikes, sure, but it’s not enough to stop her from exploiting you.
Basically, Kevin thought how her beloved father died was funny, so he’s got no chance anymore. Dr Vanderslice used cute animals as a power source, so he’s got no chance anymore, either. The PC only looked at Layla’s curves and made some comments about her being hot, which is minor enough that she can ignore it for money.
There’s probably a sliding scale in the game between how perverted you were, how disgusted she was, and how much money you’ve supposedly got in game, the latter being increaseable via microtransactions with RL money, of course.