I thought I would add a thought or two I have concerning Navid.
Another possible idea is to give more complete background on how and why the co-dependent relationship formed and evolved into what it is today.
Having lived such a relationship myself, I know that what you are writing is both brave and daunting.
Where the discordance between the reader and the MC occurs is that the reader sees and recognizes the dependency, the problems that the dependency creates and is able to see the need for change, whereas the MC, being in the middle of the relationship may not be able to see all these things.
Just as you should trust your instincts on names, I feel you should trust your instincts here; just realize that the reader behind the MC is different than the MC, so they may need more coaching to be where you need them to be.
I really appreciate this perspective! I think I can strike a balance between giving the player enough sympathy for Navid to make this subplot worth exploring (at least for some folks) and not compromising my vision to depict a codependent relationship in all its messiness. I totally understand why players wouldn’t want to enable Navid. I need to do a better job of showing the complexity of his character and the nuanced history of the relationship to alleviate the discordance you pointed out. Thank you!
Chapter 10 is now up, clocking in at 22K words! Many thanks to Jason and Aletheia for providing valuable feedback. I’m revising Chapter 11 as we speak, and I hope to be able to post it soon.
As with other chapters, these are taking me far longer to finish than I’d hoped. But I appreciate all of you for sticking with me. I’m touched by all of the love and support for this game.
Things you can do in this chapter:
Give a speech at a Legion protest!
Heckle said protest!
Lead a raid on the Legion’s headquarters!
Try to sabotage said raid!
And more!
This chapter also contains more potential (bad) endings. Try not to get arrested or killed!
As always, I welcome any and all feedback. There’s still quite a bit I need to go back and address, but for now I’m pushing forward so I can get Chapter 11 out to you all.
Personally I’ve been reading it as ‘astral • chemist’ but with no gap between the L and C, so that it still sounds exactly like the word alchemist. So a tiny bit more emphasis on the second A, I guess, but it’ll be interesting to see if that’s what was intended, or wildly off base.
Sometimes my instinct is to pronounce it “asTRALchemist” and sometimes as “astralCHEMist.” (I assume “astralchemy” and “astralchemical” are “asTRALchemy” and “astralCHEMical,” so “astralchemist” could go either way.)
To be perfectly honest, I also still find myself pronouncing these words both ways! However, the “official” pronunciations are AStralchemist, AStralchemy, and AStralchemical.
It’s annoying when my MC keeps getting challenged by Farhad’s family. If you don’t trust me, don’t keep dumping your secrets on me and force me to be your accomplice. It’s very tiring when MC has been loyal to them so far.
Fair enough. I’ve tried to modulate this based on how much the player has invested in their relationship with Farhad, but it sounds like I need to revisit this.
It sounds like a lot of people would like the opportunity to focus on astralchemy more and also opt out of certain plotlines earlier. I’ll be going back to address this.
Like i want to build military gear and just invent stuff and the brother i want nothing to do with the guy he made his choice. the rebels i honestly just don’t care about them.
Okay, sorry for the delay! Saves should be fixed now. I didn’t realize they were broken by the last update. Please let me know if you run into any more issues!
Can you give me specific examples? Obviously I don’t want it to feel like stats don’t matter. Either way, I’ll keep an eye out for this during my next revision.
Hey, for what it’s worth, I’m loving this! The pacing keeps things clipping along, the world is so cool, and I’m mildly anxious about the amount of stuff I have to do for each subplot, which for me, reinforces the underlying tension in the society overall. One of my fave WIPs I’ve played recently!
