Astra - June Update: Episode 2 Feedback + Stats (Patreon)

Hello Patrons,

Hope everyone is doing well this weekend! Just here to share some feedback and stats we received for episode 2 read only version as well as some changes / adjustments. This post is spoiler free so feel free to read on if you're curious how things went for the Episode 2 read only!

Firstly, lets begin with the stat we are most happy to see and something we were careful to do when we created the waifus:

Whereas our other games had significantly more polarized romance options (poor Mayu...), Astral Ascension hit the perfect ratio. The key here was that while they are more distinct in their personalities, we have more overlap as to avoid super shoehorned waifu interactions. Also since the characters are older and in a different circumstance than school, we were able to make them more 'mature' across the board.

The second tidbit is the romance itself is feeling just right bordering on cheesy which is basically the PixelFade M.O. so that is good to see! I get the feeling ecchi might be higher in Episode 3 though. o_o

Speaking on the waifus, during the playtest it became apparent that a few routes were too hard to get into. We tweaked up the numbers so that the player can pick a greater range of options rather than the 'you need to click this' which feels more organic for a game. With that being said, I think we over tailored to being easy so we shifted points from choices to spending time with characters (which brought up the overall point requirement but not tied to choice). This will help with not being curved balled where a character is behaving like they like you when you were just trying to be friendly. And if you somehow STILL ended up there, we left 'back-out' choices so you can let the girl you are being friendly/platonic with them and it'll hard lock the romance (friendzoned!).

All in all, we have like 4 different things working in unison and branching whereas Crystalline  was pretty linear given one romance, and ACE / EE had mostly 'pick your waifu at every opportunity' rather than a more 'point based' system. It's far more complicated for tracking and developing however I think it feels far more rewarding as well and given we can understand player choices better (with all the variables), we have some pretty interesting branched and unique scenes upcoming in episode 3. ;^)

Let's move onward to the next stats!:

These stats are looking healthy and are basically higher than Ethereal Enigma but lower than Crystalline. This makes sense since Crystalline never forced you to interact with any character except Leanna whereas EE and ACE you interacted with characters you may not be invested in. Overall it is an improvement though I am hoping we can hit higher numbers for character interactions (at least 80%+ at Excellent). I think the upcoming types of scenes in episode 3 will help with this given there are ones that incorporate the point values BETWEEN characters that will feel quite dynamic. It is basically the characters know what is going on so they recognize the decisions you as the player made which will feel far more realistic.

Finally, this is the stat  we are having the most discussion with among the team:

I will start by saying that this stat is improved over Crystalline and EE, both of which had 'Fair' and 'Poor' values. That being said, Astral has a lot going on in terms of branching but maybe it isn't as noticeable/obvious? Or is it because PixelFade games have a precedence of being choice heavy in general so the bar is slightly higher? Please feel free to give your thoughts on branching choices / impact including what you think from our past games as it may help give us an insight on expectations as well as what you'd be looking for!

As a general note, we have a lot of variables being stored so as we go into future episodes, we have a lot more 'understanding' of what options the player made and the game can play unique scenes as such. I am happy to report one thing that I really wanted to do is currently in the episode 3 storyboard which is that if you are pursuing one girl heavily and platonic with the others, the other girls will recognize this. That means that during their scenes, they may comment on how you are X are going and possibly teasing MC about it, whereas the same scene if you happen to be romancing that girl it'll play out differently. Pursuing all the girls also leads to more subtle 'jealousy' cues as oppose to just one hard ultimate scene that EE had during the cottage scene. My hope is that since the game will 'recognize' the players choices, it'll both feel and be more obvious of the branches that has happened which should in theory make your choices feel more impactful.

That was quite the wall of text! I hope this provides a better insight on what we are doing with Astral Ascension as the development continues as well as how we use your feedback to improve our game as much as possible. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts below and thank you for your continued support! :^)