Post by Arekushi in Scene Guide comments

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I distinctly remember on my first playthrough going for normal mode good end thinking "this is so hard, how are you supposed to not get fucked when every enemy can insta-stun you, slowly draining you into submission. So cruel, but i adore the challenge."
and three playthroughs later i learn you can unequip ear clippings, avoiding all hypno content entirely. and i felt so silly for not trying the first thing you do in this situation.

In conclusion: i adore the author for providing means for brats like me, sadists who enjoy watching the hero fall, and horny fucks in the middle who like getting fucked but not receiving permanent damage. Truly magnificent. Hat's off to you for not choosing one direction and sweeping the rest as unnecessary.

that being sad, i would enjoy a still little cg for good end. just text on a black screen created implication you got the wrong/unintended ending.

bitshiftgames1 year ago

Aw, thanks! Yeah, that was an important consideration for me: the fun of these games is the interactivity, not just in clicking a button to advance or choosing a choice from a menu like in a visual novel, but actually piloting the main character in a meaningful way. It was important to me that it was always theoretically possible to play the game "right," because that meant if Mezz did come to "harm" you had no one to blame but yourself. It puts the player in the same shoes as Mezz: he should really be staying pure and heroic, but that temptation is always dragging him in a different direction. I also kind of enjoy the meta nature of the clips in that respect: Mezz technically CAN'T take them off, because he doesn't know they're there, but YOU can, as all-knowing Game Player, and spare him a bit, if you want.

And yeah, in an ideal world I'd have some graphics for both the normal end and the intro, but graphics/illustrations are the hardest part of this for me, so I have to stick to the high-priority stuff, the battles and the big scenes that need them.

Also, I'm sure you're not the first, but I'm still humbled that people are playing through my silly little game three times (or more!) Thanks.

Arekushi1 year ago(+1)

not to be annoying, but i'll ask one of a long shot questions: would you actually make remaining scenes for intros and good ends after you're done with all the mechanics or even after completing all 5 games? Either by yourself or via commission to another artist is fine, we get it.

bitshiftgames1 year ago

After completing everything else for GT? No way. The reality is I'm under a constant rolling time crunch: selling a game gives me runway to make the next game, which gives me runway to make the NEXT game and so on. As-is, it's a bit risky just doing the additional content for GT, since I'm burning time I should be spending on 3. Thankfully, the support on SubscribeStar helps with this somewhat, and I want to make sure the game is content-heavy enough for people to enjoy and more or less matches my vision for it and what I initially proposed. But time is always a pressing concern.

Now, the hope is that the runways will get a little longer with each major release, as more people hear about the games and there are more games to buy. So is revisiting something like visuals for the intro and outros possible at some point? Sure, maybe. But certainly not for a while. And contracting/commissioning work has its own issues. The core stuff has to be me, to keep the visual identity of the game contiguous. But there are things I'm open to paying for help on, and even there it's tricky to actually make it happen. I've been trying to get a few pieces done for GT for example to go up on e6, FA etc in order to get the word out, but I haven't been able to find anyone who'd be a good fit in terms of skill and style and is actively taking commissions.

But, long story short: right now, no. In the distant future? Possibly.

Arekushi1 year ago(+1)

Good enough for me, and thank you for keeping in touch with the comment section.

itch.io

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