The expanded Chapter 2 has made it easier to up skills, I was able to get Noteworthy in three different ones, that was a nice little thing to have as I like to have a well-rounded character.
It was nice to have a bit of exposition on our situation after the fall, it just felt a bit shoehorned in with the farmers - I’m not against having them there but having a bit more scenes with them or something like that might help a bit. I’m not sure though…
I was initially a bit confused about the once-blessed/many-blessed thing too, but the terms make a lot more sense once it’s explained that they refer to how many blessing ceremonies a person has undergone. I agree about the body parts though; I had stat changes set to visible, but it definitely would have been confusing if they weren’t.
While I don’t think you’re wrong on a “vibes” scale, I think this is offset by the fact that the many-blessed still only have one “blessing” that, for lack of a better word, sticks. They’re not accumulating blessings. Think of “blessings” in this context more as naming ceremonies: at the end, you still only have one name.
This is LITERALLY why I picked the socks instead of nothing at all - thick woolly socks for keeping the footsies warm while sleeping on the road? Yes, please, and I’ll take two (well, four I guess). 
Understood! Next update the wording of the explanation before the choice will be slightly tweaked. As @JBento mentions it’s less gathering lots of blessings, and more like… updating your contact details with Vastan so she knows what’s going on with you, heh. Or having an extra christening. (I’d have called it something like twice-named, but I want to leave the possibility open for trans people to have kept their birth name if they wanted.)
That’s totally right on both counts. The next update will have the stats always visible on that choice because it’s more metaphysical and less immediately obvious than something like training skills, plus it’s a very big stat boost so IMO it’s better for players to know exactly what’s what without needing to switch on the indicators.
I originally thought of whiskers for Discover and it didn’t feel significant enough or the same kind of size to need to hide later, so tooth was a compromise that I wasn’t really happy with. I really like the ear as an idea! I’m going to change it to an ear for Discover and the eye for Recall.
Yeah, I think you’re both probably right on this - even mentioning that the socks aren’t great for walking in, they’re still great for night-time. (I say this as someone who wraps themself in blankets and puts socks and slippers on as soon as it gets even slightly cool in October. I get very cosypilled.)
However.
I have heard from a significant number of people that they eschew the socks in favour of the stuffed tiger.
An example piece of anonymous commentary that I share because it delighted me:
Sure, cozy socks sound like a practical option and the other items might prove useful later but A STUFFED TIGER ARE YOU KIDDING ME I HAVE TO HAVE IT, I NO LONGER CARE ABOUT ANY POTENTIAL ROMANCE OPTIONS OR OTHER CHARACTERS, I WILL DIE TO PROTECT THE STUFFED TIGER
So. I think I will keep the socks as they are for now, because people don’t seem to be (currently) only picking them. If it becomes clear that they’re considered overwhelmingly more desirable, I’ll revisit. (And all the items, including these ones and the ones you can pick up earlier, will be able to be used and called back to in various ways.)
Thanks so much, that’s really helpful! I’m going to be revisiting the transitional section at the start of Chapter 2 to make it more impactful and immediate, in response to this and other folks’ feedback. Much appreciated!
Oh incidentally, it’s not been mentioned here but I got a number of comments saying Idealistic was confusing; I took a look and in its current form it is indeed! That opposed stat went through a lot of early iterations and there were some remnants from before (there were versions where it was about community vs individualism, visionariness vs practicality, as well as kindness vs pragmatism, so no wonder there was some confusion).
So I’m changing it to Compassionate and am tweaking some of the early choice options to make it consistently more focused on generosity/kindness/altruism/martyrdom vs practicality/pragmatism/hardheadedness/ruthlessness.
Never been a fan of compassion and pragmatism being treated as opposites. Compassion and ruthlessness, maybe, or compassion and selfishness, but I don’t like equating being compassionate with being somehow irrational or illogical. Especially since we already have an opposed pair for calm vs passionate to describe how strongly the character is moved by emotion - I noticed in the demo that a lot of the “passionate” and “idealistic” choices were very similar in tone.
I get what you mean. I’ll have a think on this as I go - Ruthless would likely work, but I’ll see how the choice options feel as I write more of them. On my version, I noticed the Passionate/Idealistic overlap as well and have changed some of the wordings (that’ll be in the next update rather than what’s up at the moment).
April Progress Report #1
This fortnight has been a lot more pleasant than the previous one: my shoulder recovered after a few days, and I was able to take a couple of days away from home to work intensively on getting writing done.
I finished drafting Chapter 4 and I sent all four chapters off to my editor! Hooray! As I’m sure people reading this thread will know I also put up Chapters 1 and 2 for everyone to play. It’s been absolutely delightful, and immensely helpful, hearing what people think and I’ve been busily working on improvements. I put up an update yesterday with a lot of corrections and additions as well.
Next up
April is a quieter month for me, writing wise, due to family commitments and a holiday later in the month. However, I’m planning to work on revisions to Chapter 1 and 2 in response to player feedback, and the latter two chapters once my editor’s notes come in. Some of those revisions are going to be meaty, and given the limited writing time for April it’s likely that they’ll go up in a month or two.
I’m very much taking any and all feedback and eager to hear about anything positive, negative, or anything in between about how it felt to play!
Mass Effect did Paragon/Renegade and that feels like a great way to think about the spectrum itself.
For words like Pragmatic, Selfless, Idealistic, Ruthless - those feel like ranges on that spectrum. Like if the score is for Idealistic, 0-25 = Ruthless, 26-50=Pragmatic, 51-75=Selfless, 76-100=Saintly.
And I wasn’t kidding, the stuffed tiger is Mission Critical.
Also, a few of the options don’t really feel fitting for me
The pragmatic option here doesn’t seem that pragmatic to me. I feel like the pragmatic thing would be to warn her because we’d be slowed down and possibly lose supplies if she fell in. On the other side of things, I also don’t really see how “call a warning but she shouldn’t rely on it” is Questioning. I took that pair of stats to mostly be “Do you question authority or do you obey it?” and I don’t see how this is particularly questioning.
I think it might work better to switch the outcomes. Pragmatic warns her, because it might slow you down if she falls in. Questioning doesn’t warn her, because hey, that’s not my job, I’m not her babysitter.
Also, I think Obedient/Rebellious might work better than Obedient/Questioning, maybe. A stat with the name Questioning feels more like a measure of curiosity than your resistance to authority.
I feel like obedient/questioning should be given a bit more prominence compared to the other three sliders. The first three are measuring how you approach obstacles during your journey: do you solve problems methodically or adapt on the fly? Do you act impulsively or stay cool under pressure? Do you focus on helping others or protecting yourself? Obedient/questioning, meanwhile, is seemingly about how you view Vastan, and by extension how you view your role and place in the world.
You’ve been raised to believe that Vastan is the most important creature in the world, to trust in her wisdom and her protection and to defend her to your last breath. That could be the core principle that guides you through your journey, with the hope of restoring her being the rock you cling to amidst all the struggles you face. Or, you could begin to question everything you’ve been taught: what if the stories of her power and wisdom aren’t the whole truth? What if she’s not so different from the demon she destroyed? Or more frightening still, what if she’s not so different from you? I always love when personality stats are deeply tied to the story’s themes in this way, and I feel like that sets this one apart from the others in ways that aren’t really reflected in game.
@KZV That’s really helpful, thank you! I’ll be revisiting those choices, and will have a think about stat wording. I did consider Rebellious but wanted to encapsulate things like questioning traditional ways of doing things as well - I’m not sure if Rebellious feels broad enough for that.
@Haflaen That’s certainly a major theme that I’m intending to explore throughout the game! If that doesn’t feel like it’s landing at the moment, I will take another look at Chapter 2 in particular to see how it feels. Certainly the question of whether Vastan is a guiding light or something you want to push back against (or something in between/with other nuances) is something that the PC will be able to engage with in a variety of ways as the relationship develops and changes.
@emelsi Yeah, it’s good to have words that match in terms of intensity. Also, hee! I didn’t realise it was you who loved the tiger! Your comments made me very happy 
I missed this until just now somehow but HECK YEAH! This sounds fantastic. 
What about traditional vs revolutionary then? It seems to fit what you want without being stuck to the rebellious connotations. Rebellion is generally paired with negative emotional events and less than desirable outcomes even when it’s just a sign of growth, but revolutionary doesn’t seem to get pinned that way.
“Innovative” is one way to reframe the nature of rebellion while minimizing any negative connotation.
@Stewart_Baker yay, thank you so much!
@AnneWest Mmm, I considered this but wouldn’t want to imply that revolution was a big part of the game. “Innovative” as @Clover667 mentions is maybe closer, but I do want to include the feel of the opposite of Obedient in it as well, and Innovative/Obedient don’t feel like a matched pair. It might be possible to do something like “Innovative/Traditional”. I’ll keep it in mind; I’ll likely have a clearer sense of it once I’ve written more.
Unorthodox?
I quite like it, but I’m wary of evoking real-life religious structures which Orthodox/Unorthodox does for me. Obviously religion is a huge part of the game, but although different places in Amikya worship differently, they don’t have formalised denominations; I feel like if I saw that on a stats page knowing that religion’s a big theme, I’d assume the game was more about differences/conflict between religious denominations than it is.
That’s part of why I find Obedient/Questioning useful: it can be grasped at a glance - and once you know a bit more about the setting and what the story’s about, I feel it should be reasonably easy to have a sense of what it might mean and how an Obedient Guardian might act in life as opposed to a Questioning one.
The last few days I’ve been doing a bit of prodding of Chapters 1 and 2 to clarify some of the option text - not just for Obedient/Questioning but for some of the others as well, to give a more solid idea of what they mean in the game context 
“Questioning” works well I think, especially since those options aren’t so much about the character’s actions as about their internal thoughts. “Obedient” possibly runs the risk of implying a meek/passive personality that the character doesn’t necessarily have; maybe “devoted” or “faithful” would work better there?
Obedient/Independent? I like Questioning okay too, though!
(I agree a bit with @Haflaen about “Obedient” implying negativity–I was going to suggest Trusting as a pair with Questioning, but am not sure that quite fits either.)
