Is Amara a romance route? Or is she only a side character?
1 Like
Look three posts above yours
1 Like
Dang, will she have more content after chapter 6?
1 Like
Game is only five chapters I’m pretty sure
2 Likes
Yes, Origins ends in Chapter 5, which is the return to the village and final confrontation. Might be an epilogue after that but nothing earth shattering.
4 Likes
After replaying, I feel like the direct / subtle and graceful / brutal stats are a bit redundant, especially in combat.
It make playing a direct / graceful character for exemple pretty awkward since direct choices are pretty much the same as a brutal choice in combat and the same apply to subtle and graceful..
2 Likes
By concept, Graceful is meant to be a finesse fighter—swift, dodging, riposte—whereas Subtle is meant to be closer to dirty fighting—feints, trickery, stealth, misdirection.
Direct is someone that takes a straight-forward approach to the problem. You go in and you fight. A Graceful/Direct character could be thought of as a duelist, for example, a sword virtuoso. Think Jaime Lannister.
Brutal is meant to be emphasis of sheer physical strength over pirouettes and refined technique. A Brutal/Subtle is someone who will feint, will trick the opponent on where they’ll strike, and subsequently overwhelm them under the rain of attacks.
It’s a nuanced approach to combine these that I’ll admit didn’t occur to me could feel awkward when trying to write them from a neutral approach. Given the sheer number of fighting descriptions, I could’ve missed the mark in a few of them.
If you tell me which ones you think were particularly awkward, I can go back and add a second check—brutal vs graceful during a Direct vs Subtle stat check, for example—for description flavor and to make the characterization a bit better.
You’d still have only one stat check to succeed (Direct vs Subtle), but a second check (Brutal vs Graceful) would determine the description, deviate from how you act after you succeed the initial approach.
4 Likes
The big stand out exemples I found were:
The spear feint against the bear, it’s kinda weird to fail it when you’re graceful since you basically spam feint in every other fight.
And the ‘No fancy moves are needed’ vs ‘Feint my next attack’ choice against Liam in the village tournament. It felt kind weird for a graceful character to successful forgo fancy moves and pull off a headbutt when it looks at lot more like Brutal’s thing. At least I can understand the feint failing here because it specifically says it’s to hide your true intention so you can pull off a good feint but couldn’t conceal your overall aim.
Also I just replayed to recheck those scenes and is it normal that you can’t succeed at the bear trap thing? I picked every strategic increase and still failed that check.
Seems like a good way to fix it and would probably help the players understand the nuance more naturally.
1 Like
I’ll rephrase those two instances (the choice itself) and then branch out their description to better reflect Graceful vs Brutal character; will have another look at other choices as well, it’s not too difficult to find them since it’s a subroutine call and I can ctrl+F it
Depending on the scope of the changes I’ll likely push them before Chapter 4, I don’t think it should take too long to redo the fighting descriptions based on stat checks if I’m mindful with the follow up
Thank you for the feedback!
3 Likes
Found the issue with the trap, it was a bug. Stat check was being done incorrectly. Thanks for the report, these things are tough to get even with testing due to the particularly wide branching nature of that bear fight.
Making some adjustments to the overall descriptions. More or less how these adjustments look like at the moment,
Liam's Fight
CHOICE: Trick him with a feint and use the misdirection to attack unexpectedly.
DESCRIPTION:
Your eyes and the position of your sword tell Liam much about where you’re going to strike next. You move the wooden blade to the side, keeping it horizontal—the stance helps you firm your grip for the slash that was coming to Liam’s side, from the right.
SUCCESS:
But you have no intention to slash.
As you step forward for your attack, Liam parries on the right, just as you expected. As he does, you bring your @{(brutal>=50) hilt|fist} right against his throat, making the Woodcutter stumble back, coughing and gasping for air. It wouldn’t keep him long, but it’s just enough for you to (…)
FOLLOW UP -
IF BRUTAL (at or above 50):
follow up with a punch to his nose that sends him reeling backwards, stumbling over until his back is against the fence. Before he has any time to recover, your foot is already on the air, smashing against his chest. The force of the sudden kick sends Liam tumbling over the fence, falling down to the ground beyond it.
IF GRACEFUL:
make a precise strike to his hand, enough to make him drop the sword to the ground with a startled—but mutely stiffled—yelp. The follow up comes swiftly with a strike to his knee and, as Liam falls to a knee on the ground, you push the flat part of your wooden sword under his chin. Though the point aimed to his clutched neck is blunt, it should be enough to make your point clear.
Update is not live yet, I’ll spend the afternoon sweeping through the fights to see if there’s any further things I can improve on related to these descriptions. There’s bound to be a few.
If there’s any further awkward moments like that, I’d encourage anyone to give me a few more examples. Ctrl+F helps to find the subroutine calls, but 40K words per chapter isn’t neatly laid out in a single file, it’s all very spread out, so it may be easy to miss nonetheless.
4 Likes
Glad I could help, the change seems pretty good!
I had thought it was a possibility, glad I caught it then. I think a bunch of other people probably also found it but just assumed their stat wasn’t high enough.
1 Like
CHANGELOG 27/JUN/2025
Be wary of potential spoilers lurking on the changelog.
27/JUN/2025
Coding/Mechanics
Rephrased some Direct and Subtle choices to ensure it has less overlap in wording with Brutal and Graceful.
Fixed a bug on Chapter 1 where the Hunter’s trap was checking a stat incorrectly.
Fixed a bug on Chapter 2’s arena fight where a choice was checking for Direct when it should be Impulsive.
Fixed a bug on Chapter 3’s first battle where a stat is incorrectly labelled as Subtle, though it’s testing Graceful. It should now be correctly labelled as Graceful.
Writing
Branched out a few fighting descriptions where certain stat combinations (e.g. Graceful+Direct) could feel awkward and not very representative of the character’s fighting style. Some Direct and Subtle stat checks will now take into account whether you’re Brutal or Graceful to represent things appropriately. This isn’t a new stat check, only a dynamic narrative change.
Implemented changes for Graceful/Brutal narrative change on several Subtle/Direct stat checks as per Dragomer’s feedback (thank you!) across Chapters 1, 2 and 3. Several bug fixes.
As far as Chapter 4 goes, I’m bouncing between the dungeons scene and the romance scenes on which one I work on, depending on the day. I’ll give a better update on where things stand at some point in July.
13 Likes
I forgot to say but I really like how we can be dominant / take the initiative with Agrien in the sex scene despite her generally domineering demeanor. It works really well too.
1 Like
It seems that this is not actually polyamory and instead polyfidelity.
I have been kinda researching about poly because of its rise in IF and I found that their are two categories.
The open poly the internet calls polyamory, (it’s basically open relationship and even I’m confused why it not just called open relationship, maybe they like jargons?) and the close poly called polyfidelity, where there are three or four or even five people in close faithful relationship with each other (it’s basically group marriage) which to me sound like this IF’s kind of poly.
3 Likes
This update did the fighting scenes justice and make them more engaging. Even I though didn’t do the tournament until now it was fun with our mother Faith being the worrier she is all over us while our father was the opposite especially if we win which actually made it more heartbreaking when the attack happened. I liked that it payed attention to your job for the village as well. You had me with the elf. Please make her a RO with her own relationship bar and tag along with us.
5 Likes
Thank you! Amara has her own hidden relationship bar, sort of. It’s tied to your magic progression because that’s where her personal interest (to the protagonist) lies. There’s a romance scene with her in Chapter 3 if you go with it, but she’s absent in Chapter 4. Depending on a few circumstances/choices, she may make a return in Chapter 5. If you romance Amara, you already qualified for it, so there’s no fear of romancing Amara and her not returning.
I’ll give a post with the current state of Chapter 4 tomorrow or the day after, once things settle down with my uni studies.
5 Likes
Well shoot. I guess that MC was barely qualified for her interests since he didn’t know he could do magic until she told him. Maybe I messed up somewhere since I think we could get told sooner. I’m glad she can come back depending on choice’s made. Glad it’s not just a fling since I like this character
2 Likes
Magic tracker has 3 steps from nothing until awakening. Chapter 2 has one optional bump, meeting Amara in Chapter 3 is an unavoidable bump, and there’s another optional bump further ahead (with the ‘weird machinery’). If you have two bumps (from any source), you qualify for it.
Basically, you don’t really get told about it. She notices it later, by the end of the Chapter, and asks to speak with you in private. Speaking with her in private won’t necessarily lead to romance, that’s an optional choice that you can do, but it’s pretty clearly stated.
1 Like
I didn’t trigger the dialogue with the keeper so I didn’t learn the bare basics but at least I got to see two ways the meeting went with elf being blissfully unaware of my magic potential and being a beginner. I knew there was a way to boost magic earlier because of the checks for it.
1 Like
So is there an option later on to change your surname or something? I’m reaaaaally not feeling the naming conventions on them, they read so awkwardly to me when I look at it.
I guess you can literally be “John Smith™”
but I was hoping for a more normal name if possible.
1 Like