Thank you for these valuable suggestions, Wolfram99!
i pushed all the available sliders to the left and some sounds still came through, like background.
Yes, this issue will be properly addressed in subsequent updates.
Adding fake choice for comedy worked very well in games like Projekt passion, where they added humor or some kind of interesting alternative that either way ended in a game over and you were immediately presented with return to previous choice or go to main menu.
But here it is just a frame or two of "nothing" and you're in the main menu.
The girl in the metro/subway says that the MC would probably be able to handle himself easily, but at every "wrong" choice the MC dies immediately.
My suggestion would be for the "Fake" choices to introduce non canonical scenes, like saying fuck this im out, and then a quick "epilogue".
You've pointed out narrative contradictions and gameplay inconsistencies that I definitely need to improve on. I particularly like your idea of transforming "fake choices" into non-canonical mini-scenarios, which would be much more engaging than the simple death + main menu flow. I completely agree that players should receive more feedback and a smoother experience after making incorrect choices, rather than just a few frames before returning to the main menu. I'll redesign these choice points to include more interesting alternative endings and more convenient "return to previous choice" options.
The way you described Projekt Passion handling these choices sounds great, I'll check out this game to learn how they cleverly turn fake choices into added value for the game rather than points of frustration.
in general RenPy games when you right click you are immediately presented with the Save file grid, although you need an extra click for the Load file grid.
In your game you are presented with a Main menu overlay and then you need to click Save/load to access the save file grid.
I think I see what you mean, the original reason I went with this design was because I wanted to design the right-click callout menu to be an in-helmet view of the MC, and to do that I also created a filter layer to make the whole interface look like you're looking at the outside world through an electronic display or glass window. So far this design has not been well represented and has interfered with the player's Save actions, I'll look into improving this. It's nice to show the Save menu directly, but I need to think about it more
when one choice leads to losing all of your progress irrevocably then it is not that pleasant.
There is a reason why RenPy is winning the AVN war, with Unreal, RPGM, Unity being way less used, and a lot of those games in the end transfer to Renpy.
Now you need to pretty much manually save scum with saving at every choice, while normally the RenPy would do that for you.
My journey into visual novels began with gal game, where most titles I played in my youth featured quite unforgiving choice designs. As you correctly pointed out, many options would irreversibly erase all progress, conditioning players to save before every decision. While I've personally become accustomed to this "save-scum" approach, I don't necessarily endorse it as optimal game design, it's simply a habit ingrained from my formative gaming years
But I guess I do need to keep up with the changing times; I've only been working with the Ren'Py engine for about a year, and I admittedly haven't played enough modern Ren'Py titles to fully appreciate how player expectations have evolved. Your feedback has been eye-opening, it clearly indicates that auto-save functionality is something many contemporary Ren'Py players consider essential, a perspective I've overlooked. Ren'Py's success likely stems partly from its player-friendly features like autosaving, which I've neglected to properly implement.
I'll definitely restore the auto-save interface in future updates, though I'll maintain the narrative consistency by only enabling it after players unlock the Save/Load ability within the story.
I feel very fortunate to have received so much suggests and guidance from you, I think we are both trying to make this game better and that makes me deeply touched, thanks again for all the suggestions!
