At the moment I'm working on updating the rest of Alex's story line. Once it's finished, it will be easier to incorporate Ian's. There is so much writing and planning when it comes to a game with multiple paths. Ian's is the most difficult romance option, and he has the greatest number of conditions that need to be met in order to achieve the better endings. You, the player, will need to jump through a bunch of hoops, but I'm certain it'll be worth it. And oh yeah, there's a good chance I'll be removing the rollback option that's currently in the demo as per your suggestions, so if you've got any thoughts on that, you might want to comment now!
I don't know about you, but I feel like this is one of the craziest little games ever to be Kickstarted. It's such an--ahem--unusual game--a niche game within a niche genre, I feel incredibly fortunate to have gotten all of your support. Thanks so much.
As a person who's played video games his whole life, there is nothing more frustrating than having some objective or path be blocked off because of something you did ages ago which you can't even remember. (I'm looking at you, Fallout!)
ReplyDeleteIf the rollback goes out, it would be nice to have a slight hint as to what sent you to a bad end. "Maybe if you hadn't been so *forceful*, Mark" (even as his mental side notes).
I personally don't mind the rollback. In fact, I thought it was very cool once I learned how to use it. This is a fantasy game, after all. It would take you out of the "mood" pretty fast to be shutdown with no way back other than hoping you saved not more than an hour ago.
Another alternative would be to create autosaves at every pivotal choice, but that seems too easy compared to the rollback feature which gives no clues.
I guess the final and most likely alternative to appease both crowds is just limit how far back the rollback goes (3 choices? 5 choices?)
Anyway, please don't go down the path of the total choose-your-own-adventure bad end, or at least include the rollback option as an unlockable or cheat if you choose to remove it from the main game.
Thanks for listening,
chimaera
I added something to this post, but I'll comment here...
DeleteThanks for the feedback! What I was actually thinking of was turning off the rollback for the first playthrough of a relationship. Once you reach the ending for that guy (or maybe all the guys) (it doesn't matter what type of ending), the rollback feature is now unlocked?
I completely agree with the above comment - when I used to read "choose your own adventure" books, I would keep a bookmark on my previous page to make sure I could "roll back" at a moments notice. So I definitely loved the "roll back" feature in your demo. I can only imagine it would be much *more* needed in a very complex branching full story.
ReplyDeleteI hope you're able to leave the full rollback option intact (perhaps as a on/off function so people can choose if they want it available or not?) in the finished product.
Thanks for listening! :)
Please keep the rollback! Maybe an option to turn it on or off, but seriously, that feature was so useful in the demo!
ReplyDeleteHaving just now finished the demo, I have to say I LOVED the rollback. Unless there's a bug or other design flaw with it, I'm not sure why it should be removed at all? More options is almost always better than fewer options, and the rollback also has the added benefit for players like me of removing the tedium of "save before every single choice in a brand new slot because who knows if -this- is the choice that will screw me out of Ending A/B/C/D/etc" or worse of "play through the entire game again using the skip forward function to get to choice A/B/C/D/etc"
ReplyDeleteThis is especially true when there are, as you say, "a bunch of hoops to jump through" to get endings.