Hello!

My name is Lavan, and I'm the writer and 'developer' for Wayfinder.
It feels strange calling myself that even now, after almost a full year of doing this!

Recently, I received a very well-written/thought-out comment for Wayfinder by a user named Kaiotikid.
The comment contains both critique as well as praise, and quite a few of the points made are also among other comments.
I'm going to attach the comment in full as a quote here (with Kaiotikid's permission, of course), and then I'll be referring to it as a springboard for a longer discussion and, hopefully, open the conversation for anyone who is interested in joining!

Kaiotikid writes:

I'm liking the story so far. I played the first update and decided to give it some time to progress before judging it further, so now that I've come back to see how it's come along, I've prepared a few thoughts on the matter.

So far, it seems like the voice for the MC isn't established at all. Sometimes it seems like he has entirely realistic reactions, only to completely 180 in the same scene for no discernable reason. It feels like the character is contradictory to himself, and the pacing seems to be part of the issue. I saw in another comment that this is essentially just the first act of 20, but that means that the MC's reactions change so suddenly that it's off-putting and feels forced for the sake of story progression. That said, another comment assured a reason for his readiness to accept the existence of all these new revelations, though that doesn't explain why he simply trusts everything they say without demanding more answers, particularly from Skoll, who MC immediately agrees to help with no information about how, why, or who they are.  My second criticism: it feels like the MC treats the Wolf Giants like they're pets rather than people sometimes, with all the scratching and intimate gestures that you would never do to a stranger let alone someone who followed you and entered home in secret and uninvited like Arkyn. Other times, MC acts like they're lovers already despite knowing little about them and for less than a week.  Though, as I'm writing, I also realize the three treat the MC just as familiarly, which is just as concerning. They all get way too close way too fast under their circumstances. I'm suddenly wondering if this is tied as well to the reason the MC is so accepting of everything, though if that's the case, it doesn't exactly feel like it is. I feel that, based on what information is available at the time, a moment to acknowledge or question how abnormally intimate they are might be beneficial. And if any of this is simply due to a difference in cultures between mine and yours (whichever it may be), I apologize for being presumptuous and ignorant.

Lastly, the abilities of a Finder seem like an interesting an important piece of lore and integral to the story on paper, but the execution feels more like it's a macguffin -- a magical excuse to advance the story. Ever since it was introduced, it felt like the MC lost all autonomy in his life. It felt less like the MC was pushing the story forward, and more like the story was dragging the MC along. Having an ability that acts as a guide for the character is a tricky thing for this reason - the ability starts to feel more important than the character himself.

Keep in mind these are my personal thoughts on the matter, and I don't fully know what you have in store that might make me change my view on the matter. I hate to think this might be discouraging for you to hear, but I'd rather voice these concerns early and be assured that things are either well in hand or being addressed as you feel necessary than to let things go unspoken until it's too late to do anything. That said, I'd rather not leave a comment full of just negativity, so I'd like to move on to the positives that I've noticed. For one, you did well at making the wolves feel like real people, the complexity certainly caught me off guard. It's a breath of fresh air among more one-note characters in some of the VNs I've been trying lately. The way they speak feels familiarly modern, while still feeling just off enough to remind you that they're not from Midgard. Additionally, I found myself entertained with how you'd set up scenes to appear one way, only to turn them on their head at the peak, using common tropes and omitting specific information to create a scene that changes tone with a single word.

Finally, it's easy to tell how much you've put into this VN. The lore and its consistency, the near complete lack of spelling/grammar mistakes, the projected scope; it all comes together to show your dedication to making Wayfinder as perfect as you can, which in turn makes me excited to see what's in store for the future.  I sincerely enjoyed my time reading your VN, and I can't wait to find out where this story leads and what your plans are. I wish you all the luck in this endeavor.

First thing's first, to Kaiotikid:
Holy shit, thank you so much for all of this juicy feedback!! 

I'm seriously grateful that someone cared enough about my project to leave that for me, both now and every other time I receive any form of critique or praise or both!

This is one of the best parts in making something that is updated over time and not complete- I get to gauge audience reaction and adjust whatever might be going in the wrong direction.

However, one of the worst parts in making a constantly updating and unfinished project that uploads over a long time is that I can't address a lot of things that I want to without either being like "I have an explanation, just wait" or "I can't respond without spoiling much". While there are a few things in here that fall under that, I CAN respond to a good amount of this without that, so I'll go through what I can now and- at the very end- I'll leave thinly veiled responses to some of the ones the spoiler worries apply to. 

Activate Detailed Response mode!

Kaiotikid Point One: MC's Voice

So far, it seems like the voice for the MC isn't established at all. Sometimes it seems like he has entirely realistic reactions, only to completely 180 in the same scene for no discernable reason.

I'm going to make a confession here:
This is because I honestly didn't know what I wanted from this VN when I started.

It's a bit embarrassing, but I was torn between making a serious, plot-heavy story with a lesser focus on the adult themes/content (more akin to say, Minotaur Hotel or Remember the Flowers) or making a slice-of-life romantic 'dating sim' style game with a plot as a through-line (more like Sileo or After Class). Keep this in mind for the rest of this, as it has its hands in quite a few things herein.

It feels like the character is contradictory to himself, and the pacing seems to be part of the issue. I saw in another comment that this is essentially just the first act of 20, but that means that the MC's reactions change so suddenly that it's off-putting and feels forced for the sake of story progression.

This is something I've actually struggled with but feel like I'm improving on- the MC at the start of the story acts a lot like a character from (again) an upbeat slice-of-life dating sim. He even literally bonks his head on a doorknob in his first scene. I like the way I have him written in more recent chapters, namely the memorial scene at the graveyard and beyond, as well as in the more serious portion of the greenhouse scene and on his hangouts with the wolfbois, minus a few things here and there that I'll get into later.

A rewrite is happening, but that probably won't be applied until Tehngo and I replace the wolfboi's sprites and I can set the feel/mood of the entire story up with the next act when it finishes here on itch (an act which is currently about halfway through on Patreon).

That said, another comment assured a reason for his readiness to accept the existence of all these new revelations, though that doesn't explain why he simply trusts everything they say without demanding more answers, particularly from Skoll, who MC immediately agrees to help with no information about how, why, or who they are.

The aforementioned rewrite won't change the overall fact that MC (I'll be using Fynn from here on out) makes his mind up quickly to go with the wolfbois or that he sort of casually accepts that they exist (those things fall under "I have an explanation, just wait").
It is, instead, my hope to further establish Fynn to be more like the guy who was considerate enough to warn Arkyn that magic can affect other people, or wise enough to tell Geirolf that his bias against Biorn is unhelpful, or who is caring enough to be willing to hear the wolf giants out and- after a period of hesitancy- be brave enough to take the leap into the unknown.

As for the in-story why of it all, the reason I'm not necessarily changing the fact that Fynn goes along with the wolfbois and everything fairly easily?
More to come on that in the 'thinly-veiled responses' I mentioned above!

Moving on!! Oh, before moving to the next section!

One other thing that I should mention (which will come back up in another point) is that when I was first writing Wayfinder, I wasn't sure if I should pad it out any more than I was doing. I was worried that if I took too long to get to the meat and potatoes people would get bored and so, having no faith that I'd find an audience (as I mentioned before), I just sort of hit the bullet points of my planned story.

This was the worst decision I could have made. 
I know who my audience is now, for the most part. I feel that with knowing this, I can make a more intricate and functional story.

Moving on!!

Kaiotikid Point Two: MC's Voice

My second criticism: it feels like the MC treats the Wolf Giants like they're pets rather than people sometimes, with all the scratching and intimate gestures that you would never do to a stranger let alone someone who followed you and entered home in secret and uninvited like Arkyn. Other times, MC acts like they're lovers already despite knowing little about them and for less than a week.

I'll still be responding to this but there is a bit of "I have an explanation coming just wait" AND "I can't respond without spoiling much" (which pains me so badly because it's something I'm so excited for).

So, this issue is also in part due to my not being sure of my audience and whether I'd find readership, but now it seems I struck a chord with people who prefer more of the story and intricacy of character development and less of the slice-of-life dating sim. It also ties to (Kaiotikid guessed it a few lines later, actually) one of the explanations for Fynn's acceptance of this whole ordeal. As I said before, there is 'a reason' for it, by which I mean I have an in-story reason- I just think I can use that reason more effectively, so I'll be working on that.

Seemingly unrelated, but I promise this will circle back:
If I were to order the speed at which Fynn falls for each wolfboi from fastest to slowest, Geirolf's romance would be the first, being the quickest to start (with Fynn falling for him pretty hard within just a day and a half), followed by Arkyn's (more of a slow burn) and lastly Biorn's (with him being the one chasing Fynn instead of the other way around).

Though, as I'm writing, I also realize the three treat the MC just as familiarly, which is just as concerning. They all get way too close way too fast under their circumstances. I'm suddenly wondering if this is tied as well to the reason the MC is so accepting of everything, though if that's the case, it doesn't exactly feel like it is.

Absolutely, I rushed in quite a bit.
Because of the pace of each romance, I needed something to naturally draw each one out. So, I decided to have Fynn see the friendly wolfbois more as cute wolf-people and less as actual people, but gradually start to understand that these wolf giants are an entire civilization and aren't necessarily just cute and may not even be friendly- a lesson he will learn at a different pace based on each route. But because the routes will diverge and converge quite a few times over the course of the story, I can't make the difference in pace too drastic in any one route, so it will take some careful planning.

One example is that as the story goes on, Fynn starts to refer to the wolf giants' hands as 'paws', then as 'paw-hands' and eventually he would end up at 'hands'- this is something I'm going to spread further out, however, as I also feel I may have rushed this quite a bit.

I still think the idea of the wolf giants being humanized to Fynn can work with a rewrite, so I'll be keeping it. I think he still can have that transition from "Oh, they're cute wolf people" to "they're people". However, when I do work on rewrites, I am going to be making these come more naturally and fluidly with the story. They'll likely come out to more intimately platonic moments for the first part of the story, but gods be damned I'm keeping the ketchup scene.

I feel that, based on what information is available at the time, a moment to acknowledge or question how abnormally intimate they are might be beneficial. 

Now that I have CGs established and have- in my mind and my plans- how fast I want each individual romance to progress, I think I'm more acutely able to rework things that come off as sudden or out of nowhere, like Fynn immediately scratching Arkyn's ears. Something like that probably won't happen until the scene where Arkyn comforts Fynn in Arkyn's bedroom.
This means something like what is suggested here may not be wholly necessary, but I do feel I still will have something like this pop up along a specific route and in regard to a specific revelation.

On to the third point!

Kaiotikid point three: Finder Abilities

This last bit is going to be a bit different, because this is almost wholly "I can't respond without spoiling much".
So, with that in mind, I'll be delving into this knowing that the public build is a bit behind the Patreon one and that the intended use of the finder powers might not show for quite some time as they're only going to just start appearing on the Patron version soon.

Lastly, the abilities of a Finder seem like an interesting an important piece of lore and integral to the story on paper, but the execution feels more like it's a macguffin -- a magical excuse to advance the story. Ever since it was introduced, it felt like the MC lost all autonomy in his life.

This is mostly intentional. I might have overdone it a bit. I wrote it to seem like it's going to deus ex machina situations that come up at any given moment- this is directly tied to one of the major developments Fynn will go through. His early journey is mainly finding his own way and regaining his autonomy.

It felt less like the MC was pushing the story forward, and more like the story was dragging the MC along.

The irony of this is that Fynn coasted on one single path moving in a single direction, time dragging him along for roughly eight years after the death of his father and in this state, his 'autonomy' only went as far as what he'd eat for dinner or if he'd go out that day or not.
Now, finally after making decisions that moved his life down a path in any other direction at all, he learns he has these powers. Now his situation has reverted back to where it was before. Despite his decision to go with the wolf giants to their world (a decision that led his life into one of three paths, all of those paths are leading in the same direction as one another) the only decision Fynn has truly made is to move along the path in the first place.

Having an ability that acts as a guide for the character is a tricky thing for this reason - the ability starts to feel more important than the character himself.

The wolf giants, frankly, don't need Fynn because he's Fynn. They need him because he's a finder, and that will absolutely come into play soon enough. For a majority of them, his abilities ARE more important than he is.

I hope you're able to place your faith in me and eventually enjoy what I have planned for this aspect of the story! Again, I promise this is at least mostly intentional, and while I'm willing to rewrite it a small bit to increase ease in readability after the fact, for now it'll stay as is.

I hope that helps explain a bit of my thought process on this, please just know that when I do rewrites, I'll be taking everything else into account and can hopefully manage to make this new outlook on Wayfinder work the way I want it to.

As far as the common post goes, that's it!
I'm very grateful to be able to talk about all of this here and very much enjoyed this.
Again, thank you for the amazing comment, Kaiotikid!! For both these juicy talking points and the high praise ^///^

Be safe~

Lavan

Warning, this is the thinly veiled response section that may spoil a bit of the story depending on how good you are at reading between lines!!

These lines were already quoted before, but there are bits of teaser/thinly veiled spoilers below. Read at your own risk!

First up:

Lastly, the abilities of a Finder seem like an interesting an important piece of lore and integral to the story on paper, but the execution feels more like it's a macguffin -- a magical excuse to advance the story. Ever since it was introduced, it felt like the MC lost all autonomy in his life.

There are bits and pieces already (and more to come) hinting that Fynn isn't just a finder, and when he figures out what he's capable of, he might not just be walking on a single path.

Next:

I saw in another comment that this is essentially just the first act of 20, but that means that the MC's reactions change so suddenly that it's off-putting and feels forced for the sake of story progression.

Incidentally, I've gone and divided the story fully into four major arcs (with a variety of acts therein), all with pretty rudimentary names:

Lost and Found  <- We're here
Finders Keepers
Hide and Seek
Seek and Find

Lastly:

I'm suddenly wondering if this is tied as well to the reason the MC is so accepting of everything, though if that's the case, it doesn't exactly feel like it is.

What if magic can influence feelings? And more importantly, who would stand to gain if they could?