Hey hey! You're not bothering me at all :3 I really love hearing from you guys <3 It means so much to me when anyone takes the time to comment about the game ^-^
I'm super duper happy you enjoyed the game :3 I know it's not exactly your standard otome, but I'm really glad that there are people who still like it. Positive comments like yours really brighten my day, and as a sufferer of anxiety and depression, it can have a huge impact on my mood, so thank you very much for being so sweet <3
I'm a big VN fan myself and have also struggled to find stuff I really enjoy lately! I've got quite a big backlog built up which I've been working on very slowly, but it seems like a lot of the stuff I've been reading has been quite samey, almost as though all the characters are just copy pasted into a different setting and given a new look >.< I'm sure there will be something in my backlog that will blow me away though! I just have to be patient, haha. I feel very honoured that you consider SR to be amazing :3
It also makes me really happy to hear that the game helped distract you from the virus situation for a bit :3 Honestly, those last few months of making SR helped me deal with the lockdown due to the virus. I think if I didn't have the project to finish/work on, I might have gone insane x3 When the lockdown was announced, I was in pieces cos I was due to go back and visit my family, but that plan was ruined. I knew I wouldn't be seeing my family for ages (and we're super close to the point that my normal life involves traveling up and down the country between my boyfriend's place and my dad's so that I can live with both of em equally) so I was pretty devastated. Focusing on SR was a real saver for my sanity!
SPOILERS BELOW
Aww, that's cool that you liked mage Kuro the best :3 I don't think anyone else has mentioned him being a favourite so far!
I really wish there was more male yandere content around since they tend to be my favourites in any games with romance, haha. I will always include at least one yandere romance option in any game I make in the future cos they absolutely need more love and attention :3
Speaking of yandere characters in general, it seems to be quite hotly debated what actually makes a yandere a yandere, and not just a psycho, or a yangire. I know Kuro isn't exactly a typical yandere, and that yandere characters generally wouldn't kill their S/O, but I'm really hoping that the ??? route explained things well enough for anyone who plays the game to see that Kuro isn't a monster at least x3 Cos I know one or two people started the game wanting yandere content, but got to a few bad endings and stopped playing cos they said Kuro isn't yandere >.< The trouble is, unless a player finishes the ??? route, they won't have the full picture, so I guess in that sense, Kuro could come across as a psycho instead of a yandere.
I would like to think 339 and 13 are happy :3 They got to go out on their own terms, and in a way, they both live on inside the heart of OG MC, so they're not completely gone from the world. They ended up becoming my favourite pair (339 and 13) so I think they accidentally stole the show from OG MC and Shiro x3
*High five* for the rambling :D I'm terrible for rambling on myself, haha. I don't mind people rambling at all, I just hope that you don't mind me rambling right back at ya xD I'm more than happy to answer questions :3 I know that in regards to the ??? route, I didn't actually write anywhere near as much of what was in my head into the final story, so there's a lot of backstory and stuff that never really got touched on in the game cos I was worried people would get bored if I did a big lore dump on em, haha.
1. I left this kinda open to the player the same as I did with not really stating for sure where the Kuro's from those routes ended up (mainly cos I couldn't decide for sure exactly how I wanted it to go.) It can certainly be interpreted that both the MC's + the Kuro's were terminated, but in my head, I liked to think that all the Kuro's were the weary Kuro that you meet in the white training room (the one you kill to set free), and all the MC's are number 26 (the protagonist who commits suicide to try and escape the whole cycle.) Meaning the pairs you play as in the initial 5 routes are all that particular Kuro and 26.
They are a successful pairing cos despite all the horrible stuff that happens during bad endings, that pair always make it to a good ending together :3 26 has her memory wiped each time, so she doesn't really have much awareness as to what's going on, whereas poor Kuro only gets partial wipes, so he pretty much remembers all the horrible stuff, but can't do anything to stop it, which is why he's so worn out and hollow when you see him in the white room.
However, where it gets kinda confusing in terms of stuff I didn't explain in the game, sometimes a unit may be destroyed even if it's successful due to various reasons. Isaac just keeps transferring the mindset of each successful version of the MC into a new body whenever old bodies begin to fail. And even though there were only 5 routes for the player to go through, in my head, this had been going on for a looooong time, so there would have been tonnes more simulations going on. 26 basically has the minds of every successful MC inside her + her own sort of consciousness too.
Then when 26 commits suicide, her experiences get transplanted to 339. Of course, Isaac always gets the lab workers to make tweaks so that the subjects only remember what he wants them to, but Raine interferes with that in 339, so that 339 can access all the experiences of 26 and the other MC's that were a part of her. That then happens again when 339's consciousness is transferred to OG MC to save her, so then OG MC is herself, but she also has countless versions of her clone's minds inside her head as well, including 339 and 26.
I'm sorry if that's super confusing x3 I know I just basically splurged all my head ramblings out there and I don't know if it makes much sense, haha. At the end of the day, I'm happy for people to interpret it the way they want to, but in my head, all those previous MC's the player plays as are a part of 26 in the ??? route, so in a way, they're alive still, and stay alive by being a part of OG MC at the end.
2. This is another thing I didn't really explain in the game, but in my head, there were about an even number of Kuro's to MC's in the lab. However, they went through more MC's than they did Kuro's since she was being more heavily tested than the Kuro's. So a lot of the Kuro's they made would have remained sorta in storage xD I was imagining that there were huge blocks of cells, separated into Kuro's and MC's, with some blocks just containing units that hadn't even been activated yet, and others being more like prison cells where awakened units were kept under tight control when not being tested. In the game, you only really see Isaac and Raine working there, plus the odd few unnamed lab workers, but in my head, I was thinking it was a huge lab with loads of workers doing the same experiments that Isaac was doing. It's just Isaac paid more attention to the candidates most likely to succeed, so the story focused on his work, rather than the countless unsuccessful trials going on throughout the rest of the lab.
In general though, the experiments were more focused on the MC than they were on Kuro, cos it was the MC that Isaac wanted to weaponise. The Kuro's were more like a tool used to cause extra pain and suffering for Isaac to extract I guess >.<
3. The page should still be available, and provided it's still functioning correctly, you should be able to access it using the password: Anathema (I think I set it so you have to type it like that was a capitol A at the start, cos it didn't give me options to allow multiple versions of the password.) There isn't a whole lot on the page just yet, but I plan on expanding it. For now, it's just a tiny little bonus :3
You absolutely didn't take too much of my time! As I said earlier, I really love to hear people's thoughts on the game, and I enjoy discussing it :3 Sorry for rambling on in my answers to your questions, and sorry if I didn't answer them particularly well >.< Feel free to ask away if you want anything clarified or you think of other stuff to ask :D
Thanks again for your kind words, they mean a hell of a lot to me <3 I hope you have a wonderful week + that you're managing to stay safe in this crazy world ^-^