Thanks dude, lots to reply to here! Music was a key point since not only is it obviously a stage play but I am just as obviously hungry for that Marsha's Melody award and those five Hamiltons. Happy the musical number in act 1 rubbed off on you; that was such a pain to compose and time!
Honestly yeah, the grading is a little counter-productive to Harold's character. He's the total dumbass we still love at the end of the day; why punish the player for making Harold act like how we all see him? You're absolutely right on the multiple endings thing; I really should have taken that approach instead of grading. I almost want to put that in the post-jam build, but between focusing on a prototype for my passion project and never wanting to touch Show-Stopping Hero again I'm not sure how I'd feel about such a radical overhaul. HawkZombie did mention he wants to see something like Show-Stopping Hero on a larger scale, so maybe in the future I could do a more fleshed out game like Show-Stopping Hero with those multiple endings.
Interesting approach on combat. I am going to have to defend myself here and say that since it is a RPG stage play, naturally the combat would be inspired by RPGs. Defeating your enemy is just as important of a choice as choosing the right line; no one wants to see the hero fall halfway through the play. I tried to keep the combat relatively simple while adding gimmicks here and there, such as the guards that alternate between attacking and defending and the stagehand which Defend is indeed the right choice for.
Surprising you actually get Broadway vibes from it! Early into development, I was asking around for a theater kid in the server to make sure my dialogue sounded enough like a stage show but eventually took it all on my own. I don't even think I was in a school play let alone any big Broadway production, and my theater knowledge is extremely limited. Glad you caught the feeling of everything falling apart and the supporting cast and stagehands having to improvise on the fly. I've organized events that went that way so it was something I personally associated with. As I said to everyone else who had this gripe, I definitely should've made the backstage dialogue last way longer. That might have to be done for the post-jam build.
Thanks for the 3D love! I wanted to practice MV3D for Harold Jam to see if my passion project would be feasible in it. Even though I'm set on switching engines regardless, it was a great experience nonetheless and my prototype will indeed use MV3D so I can practice 3D mapping. It's not hard to make MV3D look awkward, but thankfully the room/stage setting was in theory blocky enough so I could get away with MV3D. MV3D was also a godsend since it let me model the curtains as single events spanning multiple tiles, control ambient lighting and spotlights, and create an audience-level perspective which would have looked absolutely horrible in 2D. I think the extra time spent learning MV3D was worth it, and the MV3D community deserves all my love and praise for helping me along.
I need to take good note of those last suggestions. While I'm hesitant about incorporating them into Show-Stopping Hero since I frankly don't even want to open the file again, I think they're fantastic and I would absolutely put those in a similar game should I make it. Thanks again for the insightful critique!