Wow, just… wow. So much branching in the early chapters, and so many complicated family relationships. This might be one of the few games in which I’m going to use multiple MCs. I am completely hooked.
Don’t know what to make of Harper and Ravenna just yet, but I guess we haven’t seen enough of them yet.
Some bugs I found, spoilered just in case:
When I agree to help the Sublime Guard in chapter 3, Em says: “Well, I should show you what you’ll be doing. And you might as well call me Em, Ms. {surname}.”
Same scene, a little while later I get the option of saying “Are you expecting that woman? Natalia Grimaldi`? Even with her injury?” even though no injury was mentioned earlier. I got a peaceful resolution during the first encounter with her, arguing that the Stars were dangerous.
Upon meeting Harper for the first time in Kelestri, I get this jumbled dialogue option: “Yes, Baz mentioned you! It’s nice to @(met_harp) see you again|meet you}!”
So, I’m back with a few of my ideas on the demo so far. While I haven’t read everything, I like it so far and I’ll be swinging by the thread to see how it develops. A bit more under the cut:
Feedback
I like it. I didn’t really understand the premise of the game until I tried it out for the first time. It felt a bit like being Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, only our parent is alive and it’s a mix between Merlin and Rose Quartz. And the stats page only hints of future relationships to come.
Speaking of the stats page, I think a quick breakdown of the stats would help. I tested out the demo while looking at the game’s code on the side, but for first-time readers, a quick something explaining that “Artistry means this. A character with high Artistry would be able to do X and Y” would help clear up misunderstandings.
I feel like testing the stats together would also make for a more interesting game, giving the writer the chance to make fewer choices, but more creative ones. So, powering your way through drawings would take high Artistry and Resolve, passing a message to a powerful ally would take Ingenuity and Rhethoric, and so on.
Using the MC’s relationships with people and factions from time to time would also be fun, methinks. So, at one point, you could three traditional pick-a-choice-that-goes-with-a-stat and a fourth one that uses high relationships as a currency for success.
I like how the reader is given the choice to dislike the Sorceress from the beginning of the game. I wonder how far we’d be able to act like a model heir in front of her, but actually plot behind her back.
Making the Sorceress not have a physical body is a good touch. It justifies why a type of MC might be repulsed by her and makes the interactions between the two feel more eerie, more alien. Now that I think about it, that makes the MC even more of an outsider: they’re not reallt like the people in the nearby town, but they’re not a star-spectre like the Sorceress.
I’d be okay if the two-pole personality stats kept having the low checks they have (around 55). If they’re going to be checked higher as the story goes on, it might be prudent to also include a few moments where middle-of-the-road MCs can also shine with them. At one point in Chapter 1, when talking to the Sorceress after Vivian leaves, I kind of reached the point where none of personality stats where enough to succeed in any choice.
@KP_Paul - Glad you’re enjoying, and thank you for pointing those out, that’s very helpful! Those should be fixed now.
@Vertigo - Thanks for your feedback, that’s all great! I’ll definitely be adding a stats glossary at some point. There are combined stat tests in some places already, and there will continue to be more throughout the game - I try to mix up how stats are tested and offer multiple different ways to succeed. And character/faction relationships are definitely important and will be used throughout. I think there are a couple places character relationships are tested already in the demo, and there will be more later on.
Hmm…this seems promising the mc is a rather unique blend being essentially a peasant boy and apprentice sorcerer but with the (barely constrained) arrogance and temperament of an evil prince. I gotta say whether it is intentional or not the mc’s antics had me chuckle quite a bit.
Now I realise that with all the options this is far from the only way to play the mc but damn me but this combo sort of reminds me of purple Hawke in Dragon Age 2, which means it’s too much fun for me to try another personality matrix, in spite of the clear amount of effort you’ve put into being able to give the mc diverse personality options to choose from.
Only real criticism I have at this point echoes some of the others in that I too feel it would have helped to have had some more explanation of the various stats and what they do, on the other hand not having that made my first playthrough bumbling through possibly even more fun, as it really resulted in my mc acting like a hotshot while both he and myself as the reader didn’t seem to have a clue as to what we were doing.
Okay, the weekend’s here, so I think I’ll be writing a fuller review on this now. I do like the atmosphere of the games and the extensive choices. The way that the relationships between the various factions work is a big plus for me. It felt natural and when you have the chance to help one or the other, it didn’t just feel mechanical, which is a problem some games with factions have. I wanted to increase the relationship my MC had with the Grim Reminders, and I liked both getting to know Natalia and her parent. The extensive choices I speak of also carry into the MC’s personality. For the most part (exempting one minor thing) I never felt like what my MC felt simply wasn’t in the options.
There were a few things I noticed. There’s an early option to choose how you feel about people celebrating your mother’s “death” and I wanted an option that was something like the MC feeling sorry for these people obviously influenced by rebel/anti-sorceress propaganda. I also noticed a couple of flirt options. Take this criticism with a grain of salt, since they were first-flirt options and I’m not sure exactly where you plan to take the romances. The option to hold Vivian’s hand (I think, after you wake up and talk with him on the roof) felt fine.
When you have the option to flirt with Natalia, though, it was basically suggesting a hook up and felt out of character to my MC (and pretty different from the previous option). I’ve also played Heroes of Myth and was fairly confident that I could play as asexual, and it would similar to Heroes of Myth that it would only be something that came into play once you were in a relationship, so your only flirt option being outright sexual sort of struck me as a bit odd.
Again, though, it was only literally the first chance you had to flirt with the character, and I think it at least half of it was flirt options was the difference between the two options (that I saw during that playthrough) was jarring. On amore positive note regarding relationships: Natalia and Em are adorable and their conservation near the end of this demo has me certain that I’ll probably pursue a polyamorous relationship with them in the first playthrough. Em walking up holding Viv was hilarious and surprisingly heartwarming.
The option to distrust the MC’s “uncle” was something I was thankful for as well. Really just all the chances to decide how you feel about people (the mother has already been mentioned a few times). That’s my review for the moment. I’ll probably try a new playthrough looking for grammar mistakes and the like as well as interactions with different people. Hopefully at least some of it was useful to you.
Thank you! That’s really really useful feedback about the romance options. You will definitely be able to play as ace and/or aro, I’m working on some of the code structure related to that right now. As for the flirt options, I always struggle with finding something that a) is obviously non-platonic enough that people won’t start a romance by mistake, b) isn’t so forward as to be either too sexual for everyone’s tastes or just generally creepy, c) makes sense in the context of the conversation, and d) is something a human person would reasonably say. (Or a star person, I guess.) There were several flirt options in Chapter 3 that I wasn’t really happy with, and it sounds like they definitely aren’t coming across as I intended. (Something that sounds like an obvious hookup option isn’t even necessarily intended as a hookup option so much as me fumbling around trying to write something that works.) I will absolutely take another look at those.
As another note, there will definitely be multiple places where you can show interest in people and start romances - you don’t have to take any individual romance-related option you don’t want to. But I’ll definitely still be looking again at these early ones to improve them. I’m pretty focused on writing later chapters right now, so non-typo revisions to the demo chapters might take a little while, but I’m noting them down for the future and I really appreciate them!
I’m glad people like the options to choose how you feel about characters - I always try to avoid narrating the PC’s relationships with people as much as possible. And of course there are options not to trust Baz! Baz is deeply untrustworthy.
I’m curious about if there are any favorites among the ROs so far, so here’s a poll! (Though I know some of them have gotten more screen time than others at this point.) I’ll probably write something up about the winner - background and family information, fun facts, etc. Again, though, more potential spoilers there with some characters than others!
(Names of the ROs are revealed here, but hopefully the demo’s been up for long enough that that’s not too much of a spoiler.)
No! Don’t tell me that! I love my I’m convinced he’s my father “uncle”!
I truly love Vivian. I like how uncomfortable he seems with a kind MC. His confusion over how they are the way they are is just so beautifully written. You’ve written a story with very interesting and complex characters, and mysteries I am wholly invested in! Excellent work!
Untrustworthy when it comes to the various people he makes and breaks promises to in chapter 3? Afraid so. Untrustworthy when it comes to you, personally? Remains to be seen!
For anyone interested in more visual references for the characters, I had fun making these in this today! I’ve had variable success with dollmakers and sites like these before, but I think these came out well. The main caveat being that Vivian has gray eyes, not blue, and also is a weird lightning ghost, but for some reason neither of those were options.
The poll results are in, and Vivian is the winner by a…significant margin! (I had the poll set to only show results on vote and I wasn’t voting, so I couldn’t see how it was progressing until now, which makes the reveal particularly interesting to me.)
Honestly, since Vivian has had the most screentime and gives you a lot of his backstory at the start of chapter 3, a lot of the background information I might have given about other characters has already been revealed for him. But let’s see what I can come up with! Note that everything here is speculative until it appears in the game (and the final version of the game, at that), so if I end up writing something that contradicts any of this later on, I presumably just changed my mind.
Vivian died at the age of 27, making him two years older than the PC. Unless you want to count the time he was dead before being resurrected, in which case I guess he’s 102 years older. (The Heroes of Myth PC didn’t have a definite canon age, but the Stars Arisen PC does, because the timeline of your birth in relation to the rebellion is fairly important.)
The brother Vivian mentions, Oberon, was 6 years younger than Vivian, 21 years old when Vivian died. They had no other siblings.
The placeholder names I assigned to Vivian’s parents in my background notes, deeply unlikely to be mentioned in-game, are Diana and Casper. (I wrote those notes long enough ago that I don’t particularly remember, but I assume Casper was a ghost joke. It’s much weirder if it wasn’t.) They both died when Vivian was 16 and Oberon was 10.
More thoughts on the parents, spoilered for being especially speculative: My main idea of how his parents died is that they owed money they couldn’t or wouldn’t pay back to people who did not take kindly to that. Haven’t worked out the details just yet, but it’s almost certainly something along those lines.
It was a couple years before Vivian died that his brother Oberon got married and stopped talking to him, both around the same time, but their relationship had been pretty strained for several years before then. Vivian essentially describes what happened in-game: he thought thievery was the only way to provide for them, Oberon really wanted him to do something respectable instead. Vivian refused, and Oberon wound up marrying someone decently well-to-do as a way of getting out. He was 19 at the time, which is still considered a pretty young age for marriage in the game setting. His wife wasn’t super-rich by any means, but far more comfortable than the Grimaldis, who came from a very poor background. Also not 100% determined at this point, but I’m imagining someone like a moderately successful shopkeeper. That’s more or less still the background Oberon’s descendants are coming from in the modern day.
Some thoughts on Vivian and the Sorceress, since that was a topic of discussion earlier in the thread (spoilered if you’d rather see it develop in the game): he’s still pretty sore about the whole “killed me with her own hands” thing. But he also lived in a time when the Sorceress had been ruling unchallenged for centuries, so he views her more as an inevitability than anything else. As you may end up seeing more directly in future chapters, he doesn’t take the present government particularly seriously. Barring other specific reasons to dislike you, Vivian’s reaction to a PC who mostly has a good relationship with him but supports the Sorceress is more likely to be along the lines of “yeah, of course, what are the other options” than “you have betrayed me and I will have nothing more to do with you.”
From an authorial standpoint, Grim Reminders was the name I came up with first, and Vivian’s last name was going to be based on them rather than the other way around. (Vivian as a character still existed and was one of the earlier characters I had in mind for the game, just without a definite name.) It was either going to be Grimwald or Grimaldi, and I decided I liked Grimaldi better. “Vivian” is a ghost joke. Again. (If you don’t get it, look up what the name means.)
Possibly the most important spoiler yet: in chapter 4, Vivian can, under certain circumstances, pet a dog.
That’s what I’ve got for now! For fans of the other characters, I’ll likely do something similar for them eventually, but at the moment I’m fairly busy writing chapter 5, which is…complex.
That’s an interesting question - I was actually just trying to decide recently if middle names are a thing in-universe. I think they mostly aren’t, and when they are, it’s more of a fancy/upper-class thing, or specifically done to honor a friend or relative, or to give a child names from multiple cultures. None of which really apply in Vivian’s family’s case (especially not 100+ years ago when they were likely even less common), so no, I don’t think he has one. Some other characters might, but I’m still undecided on specifics.
Hyphenated surnames like Em’s, on the other hand, should probably be more common than I’ve been writing so far. There are no gendered traditions for passing on surnames, so I’ve been imagining parents decide if they want to pass on just one of their names (often for fame/status/wealth reasons) or both of them. (And if they want to change their own surnames when they get married.) The Grimaldis and the Yaras have definitely been deliberately passing down their names for famous-ancestor reasons (famous for pretty different reasons, of course). In theory, there should also be a decent amount of people passing down both parents’ names, but not many have showed up in game so far, mostly because it means I have to come up with more names . But that’s something I want to work in more going forward.
Hello all! Things in the world are kind of rough right now, so in case it helps anyone distract themselves for a while, I’ve added Chapter 4 to the demo! It contains some pretty big revelations, so I’d encourage people playing it to be careful with spoiler tags for a while. (This includes me, as I have forgotten them several times already.)
I’ve also added a quick stat glossary to the stats page (pretty brief right now, might be expanded later) and tweaked some of the flirt options in Chapter 3. That’s the main feedback I’ve had time to implement right now - if you’ve mentioned something else, I might not have included it yet, but it’s definitely noted down for the future!
As always, feel free to post comments and suggestions, or just ask any questions you have about the characters and the world!
Just my opinion but one could really do with easier stat checks. I find myself failing rhetoric checks constantly despite having chosen a rhetoric boost at almost every opportunity (it’s over 70 now). Other than that, it’s a great game!
Playing through Chapter 4 right now, and I came here with the same feeling. It’s a lot of fun, but so far it seems like almost none of my stat checks work when trying to go with the ones that fit my maximum stats.
edit: me when Vivian disapproves of me petting a dog
I really love this game: every character feels like a real person that exists independently from the MC. Also, Baz may be untrustworthy, but that last scene where he hugs the MC and says that the last time he hugged them, they were so small…that was so sweet.
Whenever I choose this artistry option, it keeps repeating the scene. I believe it’s because the code has *goto baz_returns instead of *goto baz_plan written in it.
@princeraoden - That shouldn’t really be the case, actually - at least, it shouldn’t be Rhetoric checks that you’re failing. I don’t think there are any tests with the difficulty threshold above 70 so far in the game. I think what’s more likely to be happening is that options that test other stats are coming off as Rhetoric tests. I can definitely try to make it clearer what stats are being tested in each option, but in general, look out for options testing the opposed personality-based stats too. There are a lot of those, and a fair amount of them are dialogue-based. Not all dialogue options are Rhetoric tests, because that would make Rhetoric way over-represented compared to other stats. If there are specific tests you’re wondering about, feel free to ask about them.
@stuck_in_bed - Thanks for catching that! Not in a good position to fix that right now, but I’ll do it as soon as I have a moment.
