I'll reserve judgment on the story since it's still so early but I gotta say the card game is pretty good and the music is amazing, probably the best music I've heard in any game I've gotten from this site.
Thank you! I don't get a lot of feedback about the music, but since I composed all of it myself, it's nice to see someone enjoying it.
This on the other hand combined with the whole no saves system is more concerning. If choices are permanent and there are no saves (short of deleting the persistent file and starting from scratch I guess) does that mean we're only able to see the results of 1 choice and are permanently locked on to that branch? Or is the game totally linear with no choices with lasting consequences and the choices that do exist are more just a bit of different dialogue in that particular scene so you can replay that scene and see what would happen if you picked something else without it causing issues in the story? Or is this going to have a weird system where there would be like alternate universes in the scene select with like Path A - Scene 1, Path B - Scene 1, etc.
A lot of this is up in the air still. The structure of this game is heavily inspired by a mobile game called
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, and my current thoughts are to follow a similar structure for "permanent" decisions that they do in that game. It's been a little while since I last played it, so the following is from memory and might be slightly off, for the record.
What they did is that you (very rarely) get asked to make a choice, and that choice becomes locked in for a long time. When you get to the end of the main story (which isn't actually anywhere near the end of the game due to its large amount of DLC), your previous choices are unlocked and you're allowed to go back and make different ones to see what would have happened. I like this concept because it gives choices weight while not preventing you from (eventually) seeing the outcomes of alternate choices and unlocking everything.
The obvious downside is that this kind of system gets awkward when the game is released piece by piece as part of crowdfunding. There won't be an end to the story anytime soon, so what do I do in the meantime? I still don't have an answer to that question, and since I have had no strong need for choices at the current stage of the story, I haven't been in a rush to figure it all out. Suffice it to say, I don't want to permanently lock players out of content, but I also want choices to be meaningful.
I'm also toying around with a small sandbox mode that integrates with the story. This would be presented as a chapter banner that you can revisit as often as you like to gradually explore it, and going deeper into the game unlocks more things to do in this mode. This mode would also unlock story chapters. Again, this isn't something I've entirely figured out yet since it comes with significant challenges, but it's something I'd like to do. Basically, you'd be controlling Michael while exploring the STALWART headquarters and trying to discover the secrets hidden within, including visiting the various girls working/living there at your own leisure.
