Cool story, love the setting, love the character. Less love for those living object, damn the description of the chair gave me goosebumps, but that mean that is was well described. And that’s good. I really hope the future update will add romance option(hope for Mouse).
Mouse is the only nice person (I think) in the city and that makes him a good RO candidate. The others? Not so much.
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Your forgetting the Mechanic, in your defense though, I can’t even remember her name, lol. However, she’s my favorite so far.
Eh, sounds right. Thanks 
Bailey?
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The donut thing is bizarre.
When you bring an assortment of donuts, it’s for other people to choose what they want.
So this guessing game of which donut for which cop is the opposite of what should happen.
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I think it’s fine to allow the reader to choose what they want. I see no reason to restrict it, since the end result isn’t deceptive in my opinion. It’d be another matter if choosing a “non-cyberized” version lead to a vastly more boring end result, but I think it’s good as it currently is. Especially since one of the Grey War options is the “no direct combat” choice, where the whole point is that you haven’t been at risk. It’s up to the player to choose what sort of “damage” they think they’ve taken.
As for letting the player to choose some of the “lesser” options to make it more sensible that the description is “50%” cyborg, that’s a really good point. I think I’ll allow you to choose a bunch of the Light and Cosmetic choices even if you’re a Medium or Heavy cyborg, since there’s no real not to. However, in that case I’ll have to make a bigger point of being “just” a Light or Cosmetic Cyborg, as otherwise it’s just more content for the Medium and Heavy ones and I don’t want that. I want each of the options to be interesting in it’s own. In short, I’ll let you choose up to two of the lesser options, and maybe make the descriptive text of the retinal augment sound a bit more invasive. Thanks for the feedback.
I’m sorry to hear my writing style isn’t to your liking. It’s too big of a change for me to do anything about the language I use, since it’s what naturally comes out when I write. I can’t really write it in any other way as I’d have to rewrite the entire thing otherwise, and that’s not feasible.
Hehe, thanks. 
Maybe not the only nice person in the ENTIRE city, but as far as the story is concerned, I see your point. I do give a bit more screentime to the more, shall we say challenging characters.
Well, at least if you just take the “standard” characters into account, rather than the “bonus” ones like Evelyn(and partially Bailey) who just exist in certain branches so far(or get more screentime). If for some reason someone thinks Evelyn isn’t nice, I’d really like to hear the reasoning behind it, since the intent is for her to be nice. If that doesn’t come across, I’ll have to rewrite her scene a lot.
Is it a problem that many of the characters are like that? I could make them a bit “softer” at times. I’d like to have a broad variety of characters, rather than them being too much alike. I do think a few of the characters may be a bit too close to each other in personality(like Carrington and Daniels for instance).
Ahh, good point. I was just thinking on the scene from the context of “what sort of choices are possible” rather than “what makes sense”. I think I’ll give the option for the player to choose, or allow the character to choose. There are a few secret reasons for this and a few blatant ones(like if you just have 1 donut of a certain type, yet 2 characters would like that one, you might want to prefer to save it only one to one of them, etc). Thanks for the feedback, I’ll make a note of it and change it accordingly for the big update.
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no no no. The problematic personality of the characters serves the story well. Since the society of the city is messed up and it’s a dystopian story which most people tend to forget. The characters are fine, though there should be good guys here and there, but of course in small amounts. Maybe make them an outcast like Mouse? It’s up to you dude.
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Excellent. I was concerned that they might be too annoying(a common complaint about my characters in the other stuff I’ve written 
). As you never know for sure, I thought to ask to clarify, so it’s good to hear that they fit this particular story. However, it’s always possible these sorts of characters become a bit too common in the story(since I tend to write my characters a certain way), and I’d like to avoid that as variety is good. It’s fine if they’re skewed towards the more “unlikeable side”, but at least one in five should be a decent person I’d say. If the amount of “nasty” characters far outnumber the others, I’d like people to warn me about it, so I can think about whether I need to make changes or not. For now it’s probably fine, but things might change by the time I’m done. 
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If you want to write unlikeable characters without annoying people, I think you need to show their good side that the readers can sympathize with. Take Homelander in The Boys as an example. He is a psychopath, but his relationship towards his son is a likeable quality that you’ll sometimes forget he murdered a lot of people. The Wire did that perfectly too, the cops and criminals have their good side and bad side, to the point that you can never discern who is the good guys or the bad guys.
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Humm, sensible enough. I’ll keep that in mind and see if I can sprinkle such things into certain branches. I sort of would like to make it so, that depending on the perspective the player has due to their choices, the same character might look like a likeable fellow in one path, and a total piece of trash in another. The main problem, I guess, is to try to make it so that on each playthrough at least a couple of characters would seem nice. Might be kinda hard unless I put the likeable scenes into the path that the player on occasion has to take regardless of their choices(the “junction” scenes as it were). I guess I won’t think too hard on it until the basic version is done and I hear some opinions on the matter. I’ll just add that stuff to the scenes where I feel they naturally belong, without forcing them in in some artificial way. If that isn’t enough, I’ll think more on the matter.
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I specifically meant the “only survivor of a weapon attack” choice, since it stated in the game that due to the nature of the weapons used survivors typically had great physical and mental trauma. However, if you want to keep the option not to have any cybernetics available that’s fine with me. I merely wanted to point out where I thought the option contradicted the world building.
Ah, I see. Hmm, I’ll think about it. I’d like to keep the choice open for the player, but I don’t like it if it seems contradictory. Perhaps I’ll give an option of the type of weapon used, or something of the type, and limit that accordingly. I’ll make a note of it in any case.
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jc denton as a name option with this setting? one heck of a coincidence that i reinstalled deus ex today hahaha
Hehe. All of the default name options are from series/movies/books/games that have a cyberpunk influence, that I have cut into a first and a last name. Some of them pretty obvious, others somewhat more obscure.
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yeah i noticed a couple of more too. noted and appreciated! the name jc sticks out like the augmented agent himself tho and love how we can portray the mc with a super similar stoic personality with dry humor and intolerance of corruption and injustice too. the writing, characters and setting are also really great, feels a lot like playing human revolution (cyber shades too heh). worldbuilding is super well done. really enjoying this one!
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I’ve enabled the save system now. Didn’t realize it was this easy. Sorry for not doing so earlier.
It seems to work, but I have no guarantee it won’t cause problems since I don’t really know how it works. If something weird happens because of it, be sure to mention it.
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Gotta say this is pretty solid so far.
Very interesting story so far.
Forgive the disorganized mess of my thoughts. I’m writing this as I read through your story.
Even the smaller details like when there’s a camera that’s monitoring the Detective, ensuring that they’re actually watching the ad for the SymbiFriend is very nice. The little things like that are what make this cyber punk world feel real because honestly that’s something a company would do.
The ad itself is cheesy and makes me feel like I’m watching an OxiClean commercial with Billy Mays. Enduring because it’s so exaggerated. As a story device, it’s well done. It introduces more of the world, a character, and combines the exciting cyperpunk world with the mundane realities of watching advertisements.
Really good attention to small details like that make this seem like a lived in world.
I always like detective stories and this feels like you are a detective. Especially when you’re trying to make deductions. Sometimes detective stories won’t have that, but this one does and it’s a nice change in pace.
At the beginning, would it be possible to say something less aggressive but still along the lines of I don't care that you're a Designer Soldier?
There were some points when I felt like the text was too cramped. Such as when you access data on the Neo-Terminus systems, specifically the Slums and the Mega Corporations. And when Mari Badr is disclosing the information about Jamie Slayton, specifically when you’re given a short summary of her duties.
I’ll be honest when I see a giant wall of text… my brain goes skip! since it’s very hard for me to read. Which is a shame because this world is so interesting! On a smaller screen I can only imagine how hard this would be to read. Yikes.
Like others mentioned, my Detective is a veteran from the Gray War and chose the option to be a victim of an experimental weapon. She do not have any cybernetics because she never saw the need. She was seemingly sent on this case for beuracracy reasons. I chose the Spy background for my first initial run-through but I think I like the ambiguous one better. Feels like a call back to the old black and white noir films in this time of advanced technology.
Additionally she excels in investigation, perception and social skills so it was interesting to see the flavor text from picking those choices. Especially with Stillwater and the kebab and Mari Badr frowns when the Detective refuses to sign.
Also that kebab scene is pretty satisfying if you noticed Stillwater tampered with the kebab.
Should this be “Essentially this means the omnipresent cameras haven’t been able to deduce the culprit.”? Since the suspect is wearing a motorcycle helmet and heavy leather to obscure their identity.
As for playtime, it took me roughly an hour or less to finish the demo. I’m a bit of a fast reader but I slowed down in case there were typos.
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Thanks for the long and detailed post!
Heh, it’s good to know that even the small details are appreciated. It took me a long time as a writer to understand how to write descriptions for things, so it feels nice to hear that it works.
Sure, I’ve made a note of it. Should be there in the next big update.
Ah, I get you. The datalog stuff is definitely a wall of text, I’ll make it more readable and probably go through those things again anyway. For now I’ve chopped them to smaller pieces, but the problem still exists to a degree. I’ll upload the new version for now so it doesn’t bother people, hopefully it won’t break anything. Just so you know, originally that stuff was in the basic text, but I decided that maaaaybe it was a better idea to hide it in the Show Stats screen for those who might be interested rather than to force everyone to read it.
As for the Mari Badr info-dump, that’s a bit trickier. I feel like I need to convey the information, but couldn’t really put it in any sort of reasonable dialogue, so I decided to put it like that and hope it was entertaining due to the somewhat outrageous nature of her explanation. I do understand why it’s “heavy” to read, but I’m not entirely sure how to fix it to be honest. In any case, I’ll think about it it and see if I can solve it for the next version. For now I’ve chopped the Jamie Slayton’s duties text block into several parts.
Hehe, the Mari Badr part is probably to rarest piece of text in the entire thing, since it requires you to have those two exact skills and to choose that particular option.
Ah, good catch. That would’ve been pretty hard to spot for me. Thanks.
I’m pretty surprised at how fast some people read through it. Guess me and my friends are just slow readers.
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Oh no, I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.
I think the way Mari delivers the information is fine! Rather the way the text is formatted is cramped and makes for hard reading. Just cropping it up into smaller paragraphs but keeping the text identical is a good solution!
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