In my mind, you play as one lone Space Overlord conquering the galaxy. You do command armies, spaceships, and advanced weapons (which you upgrade), but at its core, the player is still a single individual. And yeah, I didn’t realize that but the current warfare upgrades feel off - they make it sound like you’re building more units rather than growing your own power. I’m now considering changing the upgrade system to focus more on personal power and make everything clearer.
Pyra Valeria (the second girl) is intentionally written as stupid - all bark and no bite, constantly overestimating her own abilities. However, I do want some guardians to feel genuinely powerful and threatening. I’m still figuring out the best way to make that work mechanically while keeping the story consistent.
Yuki (the ice fox girl) isn’t meant to be physically strong. Instead, she’s smart and tries to exploit the player’s main weakness. The core idea is that the protagonist is an overwhelmingly powerful tyrant, but his thirst can be used against him by sly guardians. And I want this to be main theme of the game. For example each guardians ask to spear their planet and if you do you they will join you, but if you agree you don’t actually destroy their planet on that run - something that gives extra Dark Matter. Same goes for the Simulator - its better to spend Dark Matter on upgrading your power until specific thresholds until unlocking specific guardian’s scenes becomes cheap.
Thanks for pointing this out - it really confirms what I’ve been feeling. I need to put more work into both the lore and game mechanics. Right now I’m focused on adding more planets and guardians (patrons voted overwhelmingly for new content in a recent poll). Once that’s up to speed, I’ll spend more time improving the overall gameplay and story consistency.