Salvus: Aries Demo
A downloadable Otoge
NOTE:
New patch has been uploaded, to improve quality of life. Should fix a good amount of errors for sprites and lines. Still more voice lines to add in later, but hopefully this helps. Return button has been added in the options, to ease return to the game. Other notes will be added in a devlog. Sheep icon has been added.
If you find any bugs, please do let us know! Discord is the most helpful spot for our tester, but I will pass on bugs!
If there are any errors, you can hit the skip button. Currently no history tool but you can roll back with your mouse.
Demo and Kickstarter coming in early October
Different boys have different endings! It is very straightforward. I recommend also saving in Chapter 4
Follow our prelaunch page here!
Follow our twitter and instagram @rosemilkstudio
5 in total (and 2 more if we can fund our kickstarter goals, winks)
Coming Soon!
Features
Demo:
- 50k Words, single ending
- Entire Common route (subject to changes and improvements in the future)
- Phone Calls
- Text messages
- Different boys have different variations on the ending. Chapter 4 is where I recommend to save.
Full Game:
- 450k+ Words
- 5 Routes (If KS stretch goals succeed, route count goes up to 6 and/or 7)
- More calls!
- History Log
- Endings/meter
- Glossary
- More text chats!
- CGs
- Good and Bad Endings
- Epilogues
Producer/Director/Writer/etc: deepsealily
Lead Artist; mors_gn
Chibi Artist: mootecky
Bg Artist: Kina
Lead Bg Artist: Vui Huynh
Malthus and Lucien Design + Cat Sprite: Molenaide
Opening Song: Nem_P and Aohi Rame
Main OST/Audio Mastering: crysetbase
Additional: tanaka yana
Main programming: Kohi
Additional code: Dragoon
Writing Editor: illegalileo
Aina - Marisa Duran
Orias - John Patneaude
Xaphan - Nazeeh Tarsha
Caym - Conner Allison
Seir - Kieran Regan
Valefar - Ryan Colt Levy
Malthus - Alex Ross
Lucien - Corey Holland
Special thanks: Casting assistance, Sam Slade
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Mid-September UpdateSep 18, 2023
- September UpdateSep 07, 2023
- Aug Build Fixed!Aug 29, 2023
- AUG 2023 BUILDAug 29, 2023
- 10/25/22 Patch UpdateOct 26, 2022
Comments
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hello, I heard the game has been updated with the villain route. Is the update still not available in itch io? Since I saw the last update was last year.
(please do reply, thanks)
Hello! The villain route is currently available in it’s demo phase on Steam. We’re currently working on getting approved with Itch to upload the next build (since it’s a slightly bigger file size)
When is the full release?
We plan on releasing the full game next year 2025 ⭐
<3 awesome sauce
A+++ tier game and this just the demo...!
Everything is amazing. From the writing to the art/graphics and music. I am so WOWED. Honestly, one of the BEST indie otome games I have played. I am looking forward to how this beautiful project comes into fruition <3
Awed by your support during this demo phase! We have a lot more content coming up for the full release and as we add more into the demo in the future. ❤️
I love this so much!!! You guys are amazing, the interactions between Aina and the RO's are just heart melting. Is Felix going to show up in the plot at any time in the full game? Honestly was trying so hard not to get invested into his character, but Aina and Felix seemed to have such a cute dynamic. Thank you so much for your hard work!
Happy to hear you loved Aina and Felix's dynamic! We may have some things in store to reveal more about their lore in particular. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our recent update to the game that has been uploaded as of today. :)
finally got to chapter 4, but i must say, all the characters & their interactions seem shockingly immature & lacking much intelligence or common sense at all most of the time. i'm having an extremely difficult time figuring out how this could be any kind of 'romance' at all, when most of them seem like they're about 12 years old (let alone how this is s a romance that came up in a search for adult/r18/nsfw games). i'm trying to get through, but the immaturity levels are a real struggle to get past.
i also agree with comments about how condescending all the head patting is & how difficult it is to tell what's a thought & what's actually being said most of the time. & other than the characters swearing, i'm really not sure how they're supposed to be believable as adults, or what part of this game earned it a place in the above search.
overall though, i think the biggest problem is that i cannot find a single redeeming quality in aina, at all, (especially so after the hall of memories scene)
I agree. I love the story and the character designs but I had to bear Aina's actions + personality to move past each chapter. The more time I played, the more irritate I get with the FL.
I know the writer holds their characters dear to their heart but can we build her to be more mature and responsible? There is a trend in otome which FL is not very intelligent. Plus, FL acts recklessly and self-rigteous, which is 10 out of 10 annoying. How about putting more choice in her actions? I still can't finish the last chapter because of her personality and surely her character will put many other players off, I can guarantee that.
Excellent!!!Eagerly anticipating the full release and it'd be even better if there were Chinese version!!!
谢谢! We'll definitely look into Chinese localization once we've expanded the game further into development.
Hi! I played this game for houuuuuurs last night, and I love it already! I'm not quite finished with it yet, and I've been quick saving (probably my mistake, but maybe not), but the saves aren't showing up in game. They're in the saves file, but when I go to load them, they don't show up. If I could get some help on this issue, that'd be great, thanks!
Hey hey, happy to hear you love the game so far! I'd love to help you fix this bug if it's still a bother. If you happen to have Discord and don't mind joining our server to report this bug, then I'll be able to get this sorted out for ya!
Me when the human world bg music came on: ヽ(⌐■_■)ノ♪♬ ヾ(´▽｀*;)ゝ” (ﾉ･ｪ･)ﾉ
In all seriousness, this is so amazing! The art is beautifully detailed, the character design is interesting, and the premise is interesting. Pleeeeeeaseeee sell the game's OST when the full game gets released!
This demo was amazing, I can't wait for the full game!
Are there anyways to delete saves? Or reset the whole game?
Hi! Depending on your system, I've included instructions below:
For PC -
Let me know if you have questions!1. Search for %AppData% using your Windows search key.
2. Once inside, look for Roaming.
3. Click on the Renpy folder to find "Salvus Aries".
4. Saves folder should be inside with your saves!
5. Another saves folder is inside the unzipped Salvus-1.0-PC folder.
6. Click on salvus-1.0-pc once unzipped.
7. Head to the game folder. 8. Inside is another folder called "saves".
For Mac -
1. Click out and above your taskbar you'll see the button "Go". Hit "Go to Folder" next.
2. Enter ~/Library
3. Look for the Renpy folder and double click to access Salvus Aries
4. There should be a saves directory inside with your game saves.
Just finished the demo and I'm still FLOORED that this is just a snippet of the full game. I'm sitting here with literal tear tracks on my face, WOW. I'll be counting down the days until this drops because it's such a strong start!!
We're happy to hear you enjoyed the game! <3 We'll do our best to make sure the full release is worth another bucket or 2 more of tears ~
SEIR IS BEST BOI
anyways I enjoyed the game, just kinda wished that at the end when MC sees youknowwhat she was in 5x more despair. I didn't like how she seemed to snap out of it so easily, and even though still distraught she can still think so clearly and rationally. I don't think her thoughts were consistent with how supposedly depressed she was feeling. I think it would be more poetic if she almost broke the way her friend did...Maybe like a bad end where if she doesn't pick any of the guys she goes mad and it's a bad end right there? Dunno, still liked it tho and will be coming back for more Seir
Also I agree with other reviews mentioning how its kinda hard to follow whether MC is saying something or thinking something
amazing game! the game has been so beautifully done, the ost fits very well into scenes and it's very exciting to play through. i look forward to the full release. thank you for your hard work! <3
we appreciate your kind words! the full release will be worth it (:
i love game
haven't played through much yet, but I really like it! one problem I'm having though is that when I click to go to the next dialogue, I often jump and get the message after and skip the message I'm supposed to be. it's very confusing and I don't know how to fix this. I don't know if this is just a problem with my computer or the game, but I thought I'd put it here anyway. again, awesome game!
hey there! I haven't heard of this issue yet, but I'll look into this for sure to see if it's either system-related or something in the game's code itself. though I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it so far!
The background music is way too loud compared to the voiced lines and I can't access the sound menu to adjust the level.
Hi! Yes my sound person is remastering everything currently. But what seems to be the issue with the sound menu, if you don't mind me asking (so we can help you resolve it!)
Beautiful sprites! I also liked the music very much.
My pet peeve is head patting / hair ruffling. To me it feels a bit condescending, so when the LIs do it to MC it feels like they're treating her like a child. 😅 Touching her cheek/chin/shoulder or swiping back a lock of her hair would feel more equal, imo. But that might just be me. Other than that, I enjoyed the dialogue and banter, especially when they tease Seir for his funny comments. 💜
To help out with the bugs, I kept notes while playing Orias's route. It got quite long, so I made a doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1na-bh-a6X0i7zrkMDp-de6n1zQYr2-dNHjgM5TeJE_Y/...
You have a great game brewing. Good luck with the development! 🙌
Thank you very kindly. Ahh in re: to headpats, I tend to receive them often from people I know, haha, so it was intended more so like that (and she will do it to them in return too hehe, once they're in patting height). No worries! Oh bless, we've been collecting all bug reports for patches, organized like this is such a treat.
Thank you again! Now that we have a hot minute to iron things out, hoping to patch stuff as best we can.
Okay so the three of us are supposed to be devs--do you really think anything comes out of telling another dev to their face about their passion project that YOU don't like a little aspect of it?
I'm not saying every single comment must be roses and sunshine but this is personal preference and not anything useful.
I don't like it when characters call each other "babe." But I'm not going to tell an author hey loved the writing but man I really just can't stand all the babe talk. Who cares about my opinion because that's THEIR work. If you don't like it, tell a friend in DMs or someone who cares.
I am very sorry if I have offended anyone with my comment, it wasn't my intention. I liked the story a lot, it was just a thing that bothered me, and I wasn't sure if it was something that others would have trouble with, so I wanted to mention it. I originally hesitated to post about it, and I realize I shouldn't have. Sorry.
Thank you for understanding, I'm sorry about being so tilted in my first response too. I've gotten the same comment before and it's just really upsetting to have someone criticize a personal preference in your own passion project. We're making these projects to please ourselves and express and explore what we want to, so thank you again for seeing that side.
It's alright, I understand your concern. I can relate to the feeling since I'm always nervous to push the publish button for my own projects. >_< I will try to be more thoughtful with my future feedback. 💜
I'm sorry for making you feel that way, but from the position of a dev, it's exhausting dealing with entitled people. Indie devs from all areas often receive rude comments from people who think they can guilt or bully devs into making what they want.
The person in this post and I already apologized to each other. However in the future if another person shows a lack of respect/consideration, I want to continue to convey how I feel about this stressful position without having to do fake customer service pleasantries to someone who was rude to me first.
You say learn decorum, but consider that the dev isn't in a position to stand up for themselves (customer service pleasantries) but as their close friend, the least I can do is stick up for them and say what a good chunk of devs are thinking. If I was in her position, I wouldn't be able to "clap back" either. But imagine you see your friend being treated awfully at their customer service job. That's how I feel about this and I always will.
You might leave this reply still thinking, "Well, you still didn't have to be so rude/aggressive," and that's fine, it just means you can't understand my perspective. It's fine if you want to blame me, but I have absolutely nothing to do with Salvus Aries, so direct your distaste to me instead of this project. It makes less sense to me that you'd say you regret supporting the project and then compliment the actual dev for their reply.
Hey Ebbasuke, just wanted to chime in and say that having head patting/ hair ruffling as a pet peeve is totally valid! I absolutely hate it when someone touches my hair/ head without consent.
Sharing feedback about your experience is actually really helpful for developers (of any kind). It allows them to understand user preferences and improve the product for everyone.
And kudos to rosemilkstudio for taking the time to respond to your feedback with a respectful explanation. That kind of open communication is awesome! 👏☺️
Love the art! Some bug reports though during testing, I can't choose an option while messaging the boys (I chose Sieran at the time), so I was stuck there can't do anything, and when in the settings the return button doesn't work but pressing escape repeatedly helped.
Also due to the many boys on screen, I didn't know who was talking at the beginning, too many names in such a short time, and I didn't notice their expression change since it was overcrowded which is a shame. Transitions were very off-putting and the music had weird pacing in my opinion, but I do like the music where we first met the shinigamis.
Also at one point the game just freezes so as pretty as it was I couldn't really enjoy the demo.
Good luck though as I'm sure your kickstarter will follow through the art alone is a good enough reason. I hope you can fix the overall mechanics though as it was really buggy.
Oh, would you mind letting me know what system you're on? We've heard reports of problems with mac. Oh, what did you not like about the transitions? And for the music would you like longer pauses in between? Taking notes so I can see what we can improve haha. Thank you!
Sure I'm on windows, 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11600K @ 3.90GHz 3.91 GHz, NVDIA Geforce RTX 3060.
The music to me has some odd placement like when we first meet the reapers the first time I rather it stayed in that first music tone until it entirely change scene since to me the early chat has the same tone but it went into this slightly battle-ish music mid-conversation (idk the music name but it was more quicker pace) before going back to slow. I suppose it all comes to the music choice and placement could be better.
For the transtitions, I felt most are really sudden or sometimes the transtition is very short so it immediately goes to another scene which surprise me I even checked if the transtition setting was off but it was fine. It was like experiencing a jump cut.
For the messaging system renpy has some good messaging frameworks. The best ones are in russians lol, but pretty easy to use sDextra messenger is the one I used as it can also play audio clips and click images and has choices integrated into the text which should prevent the choice error -- as it's a common error in renpy if messaging systems aren't coded correctly due to the screen label clash. Good luck!
Ahh I see! That's interesting, all of our errors have been on mac, but we'll look into it for sure. Ahh the lets go type music! Meant for the introduction. I'll see what I can do, waiting on a lot of other tracks from my musician still. Ohh, okay so you'd prefer slower transitions, I'll look at what the Otomate games do for reference. For the group conversations, we're going to probably install the shadow code to dim the other characters while speaking.
Ooh okay! I'll pass the messaging system on too, thank you so much for the tips!
I know why the messaging error exists now, it's because the messaging system is draggable. So if I dragged it and a choice popped up during messaging system then I couldn't select the choices hence why I got stuck. Because renpy couldn't decide if I was in that screen or in the main one (where the choice is). So I was able to continue after loading and making sure I don't drag and click right at the bottom part/outside the watch area. As for the return it's just an asset thing, since I assume your imagebutton is just the bar and not the return/load text above it (which I thought were the main buttons to click and not the bar below it) You could just include the text with the bar as the buttons so it also makes it easier to click overall I think ^ ^. So I think for those errors, you're good, the solution is easy enough. Other than that other errors are what others listed (white circle during messaging, typos, mismatch voices,etc) but are definitely fixable over time! Story wise I like Caym, the boys and story remind me of Obey Me! for some reason but it's a good thing since I do like it.
Hello!!! Just finished playing through all the routes. Loved the game and I'm looking forward for more (also just wanted to say that everyone looks so good)
I did find some bugs and stuff I'm not sure is a bug or not but I'll mention just in case. Like that other person commented, there's some voice lines not matching the text, and sometimes the transitions are a bit abrupt
The MC had a white circle as a pfp in the messenger window for me
Sometimes in group talks someone would talk (Xaphan or Orias mostly as far as I remember) but they wouldn't be in the sprites
During the conversation with Seir on the roof MC said: "It's good when we tell each other when they mess up" (I think it was supposed to be "when we mess up")?
And also, sometimes it would be a little confusing if MC was thinking something or saying it out loud, so I had to do a double take in a few places, because when not in the narration panel (without MC's name at the top), there were some spots MC would "say" something (like MC: "text"), but then it seemed more like a thought and the other characters wouldn't acknowledge it, so it made me a little confused at times, so in case I wasn't reading wrong, might I suggest making the text italic if it's a thought? Or just a narration panel, if that makes sense
Anyways, good luck on the kickstarter, hopefully we'll get Malthus route funded 👀
Hi! Thank you for all this, it's all been forwarded to our coder! Yessss let's hope he gets his route! You're so kind, this is all super helpful too. So glad you had fun!!
Hi, I want to download the demo, but when I try to install it, an error occurs saying "Cannot read property 'build' of undefined."
Hi! What platform are you on?
I don't know what platform in your question means. I'm using the itch pc app on windows. Does this help?
Ah hm , the itch app...That might be why, I've heard that it has issues. A direct download might work better, I'll ask our coder too what she thinks!
Hi, it's been a long time since I replied but I tried a direct download. I would have preferred having the game accessible from my itch app library along with my other games, but I was able to install it just fine.
The game's story is interesting and I'm interested in how it turns out. However I did notice that there were a few things that need fixing:
Amazing!!!! It's already so good :3
Thank you so much! (And we hope to make it even better~)
I have tried the demo and the game filled with error. The voiceover doesn't match the subtitles on the screen, some of the transitions are very awkward they're just changed the scene right away confused me, I can't figure out what's going on, where those characters are or what time of day it is at that moment. The battle music keeps playing after the training scene at peaceful scene after that makes me feel like a pop up quiz is gonna take place any moment. But the opening music was totally a bop and the character arts are stunning. I hope the official version of the game will fix all the bugs, really looking forward to it
Hi! The bgs shouldn't have problems, but I'll definitely check, but yes I've been made aware of all the other bugs (the voice/sound issue happened right before upload.) Thank you for letting us know, we're hoping to put out a patch in a couple of weeks to address the errors!