Astra: Game Design Upgrade – Choices (Patreon)

Hello Patrons!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far. Today, we’ll be discussing game design upgrades that we have planned for Astra! Before we get started, let’s identify what they are. Based on feedback we’ve received for the last 3 projects, the two biggest notes that keep coming up is that our storylines are too simple and that choices, while plentiful, don’t feel impactful. We’ll have two posts to address each item individually; today will be for choices.

The hallmark of PixelFade games is the abundant amount of choices… it’s pretty much our signature! The note that we’ve gotten is that choices themselves don’t always feel impactful. Let’s take a look at the different types of choices that PF games have had (or didn’t have!) and the impact level. We’ll also evaluate how we feel the implementation was.

Traits

This is the choice that was in ACE where you picked to either be strong, intelligent or charismatic. Based on your selection, there was unique player options, different tidbits of information, and even some scenes played out differently. A small adjustment was when you could tell Shou was trolling you if you were charismatic (since the MC was perceptive), whilst a bigger change was you were able to lift the 200 pounds and impress Kaori during the gym scene. Traits let the player give their MC a unique flavour!

IMPLEMENTATION:

ACE – Great

Crystalline – None

Ethereal Enigma – None

IMPACT:

Low to Medium

Action Choices

Action choices are decisions points the player made that created branches in the story. These types of choices are typically impactful due to the variance they provide but also costly since they spawn a lot of divergence from the ‘linear’ story. Some examples include in ACE when you choose between taking the bus or bike and in Crystalline whether you got drunk with Zack or not. The note about action choices if that they could have a momentary branch split, or have lots of alterations down the line. Please feel free to take a look at the attached PDF to see how complex action choices can get!

IMPLEMENTATION:

ACE – Fair

Crystalline – Fair

Ethereal Enigma – None

IMPACT:

Medium to High

Romance Routes

I’m sure you guys saw this one coming! Romance routes are the different waifu options you get in a game. Suffice to say, this one has the highest level of impact since it fundamentally changes how characters behave with you since your romantic partner will act differently, and the other ‘possible’ romance options will also change how they interact with you. This also has the potential for jealousy scenes! Examples in ACE include the four waifu options and also how scenes would have romantic or  platonic variants. In Ethereal Enigma, there were two waifu options and jealousy points (and even a major confrontation!) if you were trying to romance both. These choices are by far the costliest but also the most impactful and add the most to replayability!

IMPLEMENTATION:

ACE – Great

Crystalline – None

Ethereal Enigma – Fair

IMPACT:

High

Personality Choices

This is pretty much the bread and butter of PF games! Personality choices is all the options you get on how you want to react, how you want to flirt, how you want to respond…etc. We have a general principle that the MC will always have the personality of being a ‘good guy MC’, a ‘sauve MC’, and a ‘badass/no nonsense MC’. These choices also sprinkle in some troll options and even some really outlandish ones to give the player a wider spectrum on how they want to interact with other characters. Examples of this is literally all the choices you make that don’t fall under the other categories. While these choices are plentiful, they are really a ‘flavouring’ and don’t create branches beyond a couple of line changes and reactions.

IMPLEMENTATION:

ACE – Great

Crystalline – Great

Ethereal Enigma – Great

IMPACT:

Low

The thing with choices is the more you add, the more costly it gets. As you can see, ACE had the most flexibility between all the projects, however it was plot-wise the shortest (with an abrupt ending) whereas Crystalline was low on general choices but had a more fulfilling start to end since we spent more resources on other elements (mainly more artwork, longer linear story…etc). Ethereal Enigma was aimed to be a mix of the two however the lack of action choices made it feel quite ‘linear’, despite having multi-romance options.

So this brings us to Astra, what is our plans with this project? Simply put, this is what we are going to do:

ASTRA

Traits – Great (At least 3, potentially more or a combo variance of values)

Action Choices – Great (Open ended ways of handling missions with multiple outcomes)

Romance Routes – Great (3 romance options)

Personality Choices – Great (this is a PixelFade staple!)

We are going all in with no compromise!! Everything we have learned from all our games will not only make Astra full of choices, but those choices to feel impactful. There is obviously a higher cost and time commitment needed for this, however we want to make Astra the best that it can be. Since I am able to work on this full time, the time commitment will be offset by me being able to put significantly more hours in a day towards Astra’s development. As for increased cost, we just have to hope that Patreon continues at a steady pace and game sales from the other PF projects allows for re-investment to Astra.

This basically wraps up choices and our plans to make sure Astra feels like a truly unique experience for the player even between multiple playthroughs! Our next Game Design Upgrade segment will talk about Storylines and what our plans are to improve that as a whole. :^)

As always, please feel free to share your thoughts below. Thank you for your continued support!

TL;DR

MOAR CHOICES!!!!!!!!