16) If you were recommending the game to a friend, what would you describe as its strong points?
Needless to say, I’ll probably refer to the comments made here whenever I’m in dire need of a confidence boost . . . Thank you. 
It’s especially gratifying that many of you enjoy the writing and the depth and variety of the story. The “replayability” factor, overall realism and available Choices also figured highly in the praise, as did the ability to play a gangster / bad guy–or a generally pretty decent guy in an otherwise-bad world.
17) If you were telling your friend not to waste his or her time . . . what reasons would you give?
Far fewer actual responses for this one (a good thing in itself!). It’s even more gratifying to see no single overriding reason being given, just a scattering of vague thoughts–not all of which are necessarily negatives for many people (such as keeping track of all the different characters in the game, or too many options to easily explore them all . . .). I must admit though, “Don’t bother with this shit, it’s only text, let’s go play Cowwadooty!” really tickled me. 
18) How difficult do you find the game? Do you die / replay too often? Or hardly ever?
This is the one question I was most anxious about, because it’s the one thing it’s virtually impossible to assess from the designer’s / writer’s point of view (cuz you know exactly what to choose, there’s no suspense or mystery, and there’s no way to tell how often somebody will pick the clearly? dumbest choice . . . etc.)
It’s great to learn that most of you seem to feel it’s about right, and that it’s not too difficult so long as you pay attention to your stats and always bear these in mind. You tend to die the most when just experimenting with choices, exploring other routes with the wrong character type, or otherwise not really paying attention. Discovering that your chosen character cannot easily do everything / anything he wants seems to have been something of an eye-opener for many of you–perhaps due to being too used to many other of the larger Choice games, where death / failure of any sort is actually a rarity, and only the end result varies? Intriguing . . . but obviously not too much of a problem once you grasp that fact!
19) Vendetta aims for a fine balance between realism on the one hand and satire / “rollicking good fun” on the other . . . Does it actually achieve this? If not, why not?
I admit it, this was something of a trick question, as I did not specifically state that my idea of “fine balance” in this case is about 85-90% realism and 10-15% satire or comedy, not 50/50 . . . Hehe. Still, most of you were far too clever for me, you thought the current balance was about right, and grasped that realism was the overall aim with just enough satire / humor to keep things from getting too dark and broody. Besides, satire and / or comedy, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder! A relatively small percentage seemed to feel that things should be more dark, but are matched by a similar percentage preferring things to be a little lighter overall. On the very sound basis that there’s no pleasing everyone, I think we’ll proceed pretty much along the same vein as we have to date.
20) And last but no means least . . . In your character’s shoes, what would you really like to see / do more of? What particular aspect(s) of Vendetta do you most enjoy?
Once again a huge variety of individual preferences, with the single most common theme being romance and / or sex–directly leading to the recent playtest experiment with the “Carina seduction” sequence, and subsequent decision / game policy on that subject . . . Business and rackets featured a close second overall (which is just as well as there are many more to come!), and there are some intriguing new ideas, or at least possible expansions on existing features, stemming from the answers to this final question.
Overall, it’s fair to say that this has proven to be a very useful exercise, giving me much to think about & ponder. It will certainly influence the way the game develops in future, as well as providing some great ideas for new scenes and even entire sub plots. We’ll probably have another survey about halfway through the game and then a final one after the last chapter, for any last-minute tweaking.
Thanks once again everyone for taking the time to submit a response; it’s very much appreciated.
