Hello! Thank you for playing through it, one of the endings for chapter 1 is up too, another one is coming. So far you will only be able to reach them by using the cheating room. Thank you for your very kind comments.
“although I must admit I find the wilderness music more appealing than the city stuff, although that might be on purpose because that place is gross in general.”
The music is themed to the locations and will change with the chapters too, chapter 2 will have its own musical styling etc. I quite like the citysongs, but they are supposed to feel more oppressive and “modern”.
“but reclaiming the mariner set is far too tempting because it's the only one where you know exactly what you are getting ahead of time. It's also significant for the story and Sarah's personality.”
Once I have gotten further along the game is meant to be played several times, some of the choices are weighed to give points against different results and endings, this goes for the abilities too. Going full “bad choices” do give you the strongest Sarah at this moment, depending on how you set her up you can defeat her final bosses in two attacks or something like that, but it takes some optimization. Thematically reclaiming the mariner skillset is a way to put her on a brighter path, it is a requirement for the most “happy” ending.
“By the way, I was rather impressed by how Mosca's card was the only one available for a long time, I didn't expect it to have that much relevance.”
Yeah, I wanted it to have an impact, it will be usable by later characters as well in the future.
“On an unrelated note, I wish the toaster robot had more to say, I tried talking to her multiple times but she only repeated her introduction every time.”
An additional “social scene” is planned for her, like the ones you can get with Gordon and Sally. She is a part of the “Saviour Ending” for chapter one too and getting that ending will trigger her making a return in a future chapter.
“He also loses his one nice attack buff near the end of the demo.”
This is actually a bug I need to fix. His attacks are tied to his weapon category, he changes weapon category once he gets “Manhunter”. Your comments here are very appreciated, the combat system still needs a lot of work, the lack of descriptions for some skills will be fixed someday too, it is lack of polish. His role in the future will be more clearly multihit glass cannon. Anger stat keeps certain enemies from using special skills, not usable against most bosses though.
In general the combat system has improved, but still needs some real balancing.
“On that note, the idea of having 2 separate stories playing at the same time was pretty cool and served to greatly increase tension so that was a good idea.”
More of a hassle to set up than I initially thought, but I think it did give act 3 a unique sense of pacing. It also has another purpose, the “Billy parts” will be completely exchanged for another story depending on player choice once I am done with the new alternate act. It's a darker version you get with Billy´s father, Arthur, as a companion.
“When it comes to the item system, I beat the whole demo without spending a single dollar on consumables and I'm not sure what to make of that. I also butchered some enemies and never used the items they dropped. I think I'm an idiot.”
Game is beatable with minimal grinding and not a lot of item use, you can do some crazy things by using the items though, such as making child Sarah more or less unkillable. One of the key ideas behind the system is to make it intentionally very abusable, there are some things planted there for the purpose of breaking shit, not a lot of people have done so however. This goes for the entire combat system, not just the items.
“Finally, I think we might have a similar taste in literature or perhaps the volume of references is so big that I managed to get a bunch of them. The one about the Night Land caught me particularly off-guard for some reason. Perhaps because the end of the world scenario in that book is the opposite of what someone like Billy would expect, that is, the wilderness becomes uninhabitable and the only "safe" places are cities, or city, strictly speaking.”
Whatever you choose for the comparison at the beginning of act 3 you get actual information about the world and its characters, although poetically described. The Night Land is a very difficult book to read, but I did love it and it has influenced the narrative in some big ways. You will get to see more of how it is relevant in the future.
I am very thankful for your post, sorry for the late reply, working fulltime and using most of my freetime for the game is getting a bit hectic. The fanart is lovely.