Team Q&A Session: 06/12/2020 Transcript (Patreon)

Panel

• Sam (Samu-kun) - Founder
• Ben (Nemjen) - Community Manager

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Due to this being a voice chat orientated session there are spoilers for Love in Space IPs that come in and out of discussions, if you haven't played through all our games then please be aware there is a chance of having something revealed that you weren't yet aware of.

Question by Taihou

"During the Battle for Ongess, Fontana and Cosette engage the Alliance in a surprise attack, forcing Grey to pull a gambit where he threatens to nuke Ongess and its population in a scorched earth policy to force PACT and the pirates to retreat.

This topic has caused never-ending discussions in the discord, so answering "Maybe" is not an option. Should the PACT/Pirate forces have never stopped their attack, would have Grey pulled back himself and give Ongess back to PACT (and the pirates per Fontana and Cosette's deal), or would he have carried out his threat, committing the genocide of the Ongessian civilians in the process?"

Samu: That’s a pretty good question. And since it never happened, we don’t actually know. Would he have dropped the bombs on Ongess? It’s really hard to tell because, you know, he made the threat and would he have dropped the bombs... well I can’t really confirm one way or the other because it’s part of the story that hasn’t been told, and so...

Samu: This is more like a two-part question: since Admiral Gray, as the head of the Alliance Military, would [he] have dropped the bombs on Ongess? You can see later what happens on Cera, would the Alliance have dropped the bomb on Cera if it meant completely wiping out the PACT fleet? Admiral Grey gave the order, but he was shot so, that’s questionable there too; whether he actually intended to give the order or whether he was just delirious from being shot and caught in a moment of passion and gave the order to nuke Cera.

Samu: The truth at the end of the day though, he did order the TPW to be used on Cera and doing so would have killed nine billion people and would have constituted a war crime... I think there's an argument that could be made that that he would have dropped the bombs on Ongess as well [considering his actions on Cera], but that’s something that we will probably never know.

Samu: Nonetheless, we will come back to what Grey did on Cera in Sunrider 4, so there should be more exposition about it because it's obviously important, [much] like the question of whether the Alliance came to the Neutral Rim as liberators or just as new dictators is something that’s very important to the story.

Nemjen: Sounds like that question has woken you up. [laughs]

Question by Powerless

“Will Sunrider 4 be more lore focused in regards to Arcadius as well as exploring the backstories of the cast in the form of side stories?”

Samu: In terms of Arcadius, I can’t spoil the future too much, but Arcadius will not factor too much in Sunrider 4. There’s stuff here that hasn’t been announced so I’ll have to come back to this question some other time, unfortunately. I’ll answer this question later though. Ask me later.

Nemjen: One thing that will be quite nice that we've already started teasing a bit about on Patreon is [that] we're going to be incorporating a specific “Lore” section when it comes to Sunrider 4. This will contain entries that outline the narrative, but will in general be a useful tool for those looking for more information about the Sunrider universe when it comes to revisiting past events, factions, ship, etc.

Samu: Yeah, thanks Ben for the shoutout.

Question by Roberuto-kun

“In front of current events of the series, Arcadius has been killed by the crowd. is it possible that this is the machination of Alpha fearing the authority of the leader of the Compact revolution?”

Samu: This one is also in the same vein; we’re going to revisit this at a later time. We’re going to answer a lot of story questions about Arcadius later and it’s something that we can’t talk about right now.

Nemjen: If we keep this up eventually the chat will be able to piece together their own Sunrider 4 story based solely on the topics that we can’t comment on right now. [laughs]

Question by Panadero

“What was the inspiration behind Sunrider, the game?”

Samu: I think there’s so many inspirations, I would say Science Fiction and Anime in general? At this stage there’s so many inspirations. Everybody talks about obviously how there are shades of Mass Effect [in Sunrider], but there’s also shades of other stuff, like Star Wars, Star Trek, Evangelion... there’s Gundam... so many inspirations. I would just say Science Fiction in general and if you pay attention to Sunrider 4, you’ll be able to pick up a lot of references to other genres, maybe a few shoutouts too.

Question by AdamRebellion

“Will Lynn get more screen time?”

Samu: Well, yes! She’s one of the girls on the ship now. She has a lot more screen time in Sunrider 4.

Question by KalWinters

“FBI here, mind telling us exactly how old Cosette is?”

Samu: Uh, she’s actually pretty old. The main issue with years is that on different planets the years are different lengths so it’s really hard to get a consistent idea; Ongess revolves around its sun at a different pace than Ryuvia and Cera. Either way, Cosette is actually pretty old, she must have been around for a long time since she would have been a kid when the New Empire ruled Ongess, it should be about ten years since the fall of the New Empire... so let’s say she’s about ten at that time, you’d have to add another ten... so even during Mask of Arcadius she would have been over twenty. It's also unlikely that... it must have been longer than ten years, because that was just the fall of the New Empire, she would have [also] been on Ongess during the height of the New Empire so... yeah, she’s actually pretty old.

Samu: There’s a bit of lore that due to the pollution on Ongess that she never really grew to her full height, so that’s why she’s shorter than the other characters.

Question by akliyen

“How extensively has the Alliance used their brand-new Paradox torpedoes after conflict restarted with PACT?”

Samu: This goes into spoiler territory. All I can say is that we’ll see the paradox torpedoes (TPW) again in Sunrider 4.

Question by Taihou

"Imagine you're developing a DLC for Sunrider Academy or you are making Sunrider Academy 2. This time everyone is going to be part of the cast, which roles/clubs would the girls that didn't directly appear in Sunrider Academy have? (That is Icari, Kryska, Claude and Cosette.)"

Samu: Yeah, I've thought about this.

Nemjen: This is definitely a fan favourite [topic] that comes up from time to time, so you’ve now got your chance, without the need for “excessive budget” and “game development,” to give the masses what they want, Sam!

Samu: [laughs] I’ve thought about this, so:

Icari - you’d think like, Track and Field or something generically athletic, I think.

Kryska – I think she’d be Ava’s rival, trying to become the Student Council president. She’d be trying to get involved in the politics of the school, so maybe the rival candidate that runs against Ava at some point.

Claude – Would probably just be the school nurse.

Cosette – she'd be like, a “banchou” from another school. She’d be the head of a delinquent group that would try to beat up Shields for his lunch money or something.

Nemjen: [laughs] A opportunity for a bit of a turf war in the making then.

Question by Atom 7k

“Who's LiS favorite Sunrider and SSS Waifu?”

Samu: This is a neutral zone. This channel is a neutral zone.

Nemjen: We have to be careful here, because this is specifically saying who is the company favourite. I do remember though for the longest time I started steering things towards a mascot Mika, didn’t I? But... in terms of official stance I think we’re going to have to maintain this neutrality, aren’t we? Can’t risk our quotes ending up on some waifu propaganda posters...

Samu: Wait, Mika? “Ben lied as naturally as he breathed.” Mika, huh. I think we know where your loyalties lie, Ben... and it’s not with Mika.

Nemjen: …

Samu: No comment?

Nemjen: Don't do this, I’m trying to maintain the promised neutrality here.

Samu: [laughs]

Nemjen: Now you're starting to look like the bad guy. [laughs]

Question by Please step on me Lynn!

“Will we ever be able to choose our own love interest for our Kayto during Sunrider 4 or a future title?”

Samu: For Sunrider 4 there’s going to be... well I haven’t made it yet but we’re going to make this relationship thing that’s more like other games. I guess for our past games, we’ve never made one so... it was too complicated. You know how [in other games] you build up your relationships with characters and it unlocks new abilities and features? It’s going to be more like that. In the past games, the game engine didn’t support it for the gameplay.

Samu: In Sunrider 4, each girl is going to have her “relationship scale” and as you level it up, she gives you more and more abilities that you can use in the game. It’s going to be more like Persona... roughly like Persona.

Question by Zima

“Do you plan to railroad Ava’s sacrifice choice? I see great depth (also love her missing limbs design) in that option and there are not many other choices where as a moralist I can agree with her. I see it as at some kind of early apology to Kayto. For the first time she used emotional Kayto perspective instead of cold-hearted calculation. She wasn't happy herself with this suicidal mission idea but still she went for it and potentially died to sate his thirst for final judgement of the Legion as she just probably didn't think that she can comfort him through "love".”

Samu: In Mask of Arcadius, you can choose to either try to save the ship or she can just stay on the bridge. The narrative is going to go on and what’s basically going to happen is “Well that happened in Mask of Arcadius” but then in Liberation Day, Shields ends up getting his ship blown up and goes into exile. That’s a pretty big deal. Regardless of whether Ava tried to destroy the Legion or not, the events of Liberation Day are going to weigh more on her mind and she’s going to have had a long time to think about where things went wrong; why they couldn’t liberate Cera and why really things ended up the way they did.

[Samu gets interrupted by something in his room - sounds like an approaching vehicle]

Nemjen: For me personally, another way I look at some of the legacy choices that are made is that it still shows you different shades to that character. Even if you specifically choose a certain decisions that progresses the plot and so paints them in a certain light, it still reveals dimensions about how they as a person are approaching more general interactions. It's a bit of lore building in itself. That’s just my personal take though.

Question by Taihou

"Sometimes Kickstarter/Patreon funded games have tiers before they are released where they allow founders to pay for specific tiers and give names to planets/ships or even characters, just like it happened in SSS with song names.

What is the highest level of "founder customization" you're willing to offer?"

Nemjen: This is sort of discussion we have at the start of each project. It’s difficult to say something like “the highest level you’re willing to offer” because it is often context sensitive and we’re looking at what we’re making and what we can be offered. We need to have a bit of internal Ping-Pong first like, for Sunrider 4 one of the customizations doing this has meant we’re going to be offering ship NPC names as a reward as its something that would suit the gameplay. This hasn’t specifically gone live just yet though, we need to make a bit more progress in development before implementing things like that. Anything else you’d like to add to that, Sam?

Samu: Yeah, I think what we can offer up right now is NPC ship names. If there’s no issue with the name [itself], we can put it in the game.

Question by Raiden7284677

"How much development did you go through when you did the PACT vessels, which I like more than Alliance ones. How did you determine the names of their ships, and where did you get them from? And mind if you give me at least the theme of the ships’ names? The fact one is called a Dagger-class narrows it considerably.”

Samu: We do have the [PACT] Fast Cruisers referred to as the Dagger class, but we don’t know if that’s actually PACT’s own designation or if it’s a nickname that the Alliance made. “Dagger class” I would say is more a nickname than a designation. As for other PACT ship names, we’ve heard the Legion and... I don’t know if we’ve heard other ship names other than Legion.

Samu: For PACT vessels, you can see [progressive] development in the PACT vessel designs. A lot of the early PACT ships are just repainted New Empire ships. They look different from more recent PACT ships, which are a lot more dagger-like in appearance, more angular in nature. They look like they have much sharper angles than the former New Empire ships. The newer ships take into account bullet ballistics; in the olden days they just spammed lasers at each other. Now that shield generators have gotten stronger and stronger, ships have to get closer to each other and bash each other with ballistics. Thus, newer ships have much more angular armour and much slimmer frontal profiles so they’re a lot harder to shoot at when the fleets are engaging. They are basically jousting, so they are designed to be hard to shoot and for bullets to bounce off. As for names, I don’t think PACT really has a naming theme, it seems to be around random stuff, so...

Question by Sorzo

“Love in Space recently took a bit of a break from space operas to explore the idol genre. Were there any other genres/story premises you were considering before settling on what eventually became Starnova?”

Samu: I’ve always wanted to make an Idol story for a long time. Ever since I was a fan of AKB48, I really wanted to make an Idol story. There’s still other genres that we want to work on. Love in Space isn’t just Space Opera, we can do other stuff, but right now we’re working on Sunrider 4 so that’ what our priority is right now.

Question by Powerless

“Can the symptoms of Ongessite be cured?”

Samu: In terms of Cosette’s height, I don’t think that... we’re kind of beyond being able to fix THAT. She could try a holographic suit if she really wanted to, but that’s not really going to change her physically and I don’t think she’d use it because she is what she is.

Nemjen: Is that confirmation we can’t put her on the rack, then?

Samu: [Obvious confusion] Put her on the rack?

Nemjen: Yeah! You know, those medieval devices that would stretch people!

Samu: Oh. Oh. No [laughs]. That would be would just be torture, I think. It’s not going to fix her height.

Nemjen: It might remind her genes what it’s like to grow and she’s be properly cured!

Samu: Oh dear... no I think that’d be simple torture.

Samu: Anyways for other health issues related to Ongessite, those can be cured. Like, if you have a damaged lung or damaged liver, things of that nature there’s medical technology in Sunrider where you can just get a lung or liver transplant and on advanced planets those are done very easily. So [things like] internal medical issues can be cured.

Nemjen: Considering the [Ongess] environments, you’re probably not going to see the populace getting these sorts of benefits though. After all, its primarily slums.

Samu: Yeah, definitely on Ongess those techniques are not available. Maybe if you were lucky or special and moved to a more advanced planet, you’d be able to get that procedure, but on Ongess that’s not readily available.

Question by padlis1

“Will the next Sunrider game focus on story over gameplay more? Don't get me wrong I enjoy the gameplay a lot but I imagine most people like me are here for the story.”

Samu: We’re working on making the gameplay better, but obviously we’re going to have the same ol’ Sunrider Visual Novel segments. We’ve actually made our own visual novel engine in GameMaker, which hopefully will make the visual novel sequences easier, but it could also be a mountain of bugs. It’s probably going to be a mountain of bugs. Once everything is up and running though, we’ll be able to get good visual novel sequences.

Nemjen: I’m glad you didn’t say that the bugs were my problem. I’m very happy you’re going to take responsibility for this Sam. Thank you for that.

Samu: [laughs] Yeah, Ben finds the bugs, then I kill them for everybody.

Question by TheAdrianbbc

“Is Asaga awakening mental strain going to be more explored in SR4? And two more questions: who is going to be new Alliance President? And is Tydaria now on PACT side?”

Samu: Asaga awakening’s mental strain goes away the better you get at awakening. So, we might not see much more of it since Asaga has gotten better at awakening over time; it’s just something that you learn to overcome.

Samu: As to the Alliance, well the Alliance has elections every uh... I don’t think we ever said how often, but they have regular elections, so we’re going to see a new Alliance president.

Samu: For Tydaria, we haven’t... this could be potential spoilers... but this will be answered in the game. We’ll have to punt this one.

Question by Siglak

“Will we have waifu-choosing agency in Sunrider 4?”

Samu: We’ve previously answered this one, each girl is going to have their own relationship scale and you can chat with them to up that scale.

Question by KalWinters

"What’s is your favorite piece of music in the Sunrider series? Can be anything from a battle track to the main theme.”

Samu: I would just the main theme, the one found in Liberation Day. That’s a nice song. What about you, Ben?

Nemjen: I’m quite simple, I’m also going to say the Liberation Day theme song too. For me I’m quite a big fan of songs that create ambiance and I feel like that this one is a lovely case of doing as such.

Samu: Yeah, it’s a nice song. We licensed it, it’s not even custom made, but it really fits well.

Nemjen: They’ve also got a bit of a naming scheme going on, haven’t they?

Samu: Like, with colours?

Nemjen: No, with the naming of the theme songs.

Samu: [Obvious confusion] I mean, we don’t even pick the names.

Question by Raiden7284677

“Do you see Sunrider being part of Super Robot Wars at some point? Visual novels are nothing new to the franchise as Muv-Luv and Demonbane can attest, so it possible. And if so, then what series do you see it tying into? It doesn’t even have to be mecha or already in the list (i.e., Legend of Galactic Heroes).”

Samu: Yeah! In Super Robot Wars! A man can dream!

Nemjen: I’ve never played Super Robot Wars. I’m constantly being told about it, but as far as I’m aware we don’t have anything like that in the West, do we?

Samu: I mean, you can bootleg it; the Taiwanese version has English localization, I think there’s English text. Or was it the Singapore edition? I’m don’t know, but there is an edition available with English text, but it’s never been released outside of Asia. You’ll have to import it. I’ve never played it myself because of that.

Nemjen: I had a friend who was quite fond of it, we when had regular board game meetups, he’d be playing it. There was a Game Boy Advance version of it? I wouldn’t know the name, though. I just knew it got a bit frustrating because he’d end up focusing more on that than the [board] game we were playing. [laughs]

Samu: Somewhat of a pipe dream, but yeah, we can all smoke our AsaCoco™. Sunrider Super Robot Wars! What series would it tie into? Hmm, I vaguely know that they have storylines and such, it would be pretty nice to have a VN arc, where it’s Muv-Luv and Baldr Sky and Sunrider all together. That’d be quite... Aww man I’m really tripping on AsaCoco™. That’d be pretty wild.

Nemjen: Okay, take some deep breaths, get it out of your system. [laughs]

Samu: Muv-Luv and Baldr Sky and Sunrider all together... [Excited Samu noises]

Nemjen: I mean, one way I like to occasionally muse about, considering we’re a part of the Sekai Project family... perhaps we can tie all those series together. I’ll bet there's some interesting combinations just waiting to be made. [laughs]

Samu: We can have our own Super Sekai Bros, like Super Smash Bros!

Question by Shade

“Did the Great Waifu Wars really happen?”

Samu: Well, it certainly continues to this day in the chat!

Question by Powerless

“Who are your favorite vtubers from Hololive JP and Hololive EN?”

Nemjen: See, I’ve recently managed to climb out of HoloHell. The rabbit hole is no longer a place of residence for me. [laughs] For the most part anyway, when the lockdown quarantines were going on, I found that the VTuber genre as a whole although I didn’t focus on one specific channel – I’d dabble in compilations - helped add some normality back to my day. During these moments I could just have a bit of a relax away from it all. It was quite nice in that regard, but now that things are starting to pick up again, I’m actually not watching as much as I used to. The only two in particular that I’m keeping up with are both HoloLive EN talents, that being Gawr Gura and Ninomae Ina'nis. I find their streams quite chilled and enjoy their chemistry when they choose to collab, that said I wouldn’t call myself a simp. [Laughs] There’s more dedicated people that me out there but if you stare hard enough you’ll see me pop up in their stream chats from time to time.

Samu: As for me, here two hints: “Ahoy!” and [hiccup noise]. There you go, two hints.

Nemjen: Was that second one a hiccup? [Confused Ben noises]

Samu: [hiccup noise]

Question by Atom 7k

“If LiS had infinite budget, what type of Game (FPS, TPS, etc.) would you like to create a spinoff of Sunrider?”

Samu: Well, I get asked this question a lot... and honestly if Love in Space had infinite budget, the type of game we make might not be very different, but I would make those games on my own island! [laughs], If we had an infinite budget...

Nemjen: So, you would be surrounding yourself in Sunrider as well as developing it, is this what you’re getting at? Might be our making as a theme park operator.

Samu: I don’t know if the type of games we make would really be different, but we definitely would be able to get more accomplished and have more content. But in terms of the vision, I don’t think it would really change much, it would just be a matter of being able to put in more content, and all the content that we envision and that’s the only difference it would make.

Nemjen: For me I’d likely play around with more platform systems. Experiment with things that suit consoles and others that suit handhelds.

Samu: Yeah, we’d be able to add more minigames and stuff like that.

Nemjen: Or, we’d find ourselves in a situation that Kingdom Hearts currently finds itself in, where it’s on basically every other platform under the sun and has spread its story pieces are thin across these different platforms. Ugh, it’s so much effort trying to keep up with the plot.

Samu: Yeah, I haven’t even been able to get into it because it’s just too much and I’m too far behind, it’s hopeless for me to get in.

Question by Akliyen

“Given how Kayto is stranded on a backwater planet, how much space combat gameplay will we get compared to previous games?”

Samu: It’s still a space combat turn-based game so hopefully, we have a better engine now, so better space strategy than in previous games... and it’s kind of a spoiler, but Kayto is not going to be stuck on that planet forever, so. Hopefully more strategy than in the past!

Question by NoobRage

“Will there be battles fought from perspectives other than Kayto's in the future?”

Nemjen: I like the premise of this question.

Samu: Maybe! Never say never! I don’t think there’s anything made right now but maybe one day!

Question by Please step on me Lynn!

“How drastically will the player choices (Large and small) from the previous games affect the story progression for the upcoming Sunrider entry? Will they lead to large branching arcs or are you planning a more linear story progression based on previous choices?”

Samu: Okay! For this will actually come into play though, you’re going to need the save file from Liberation Day. And honestly, I know the vast majority of people will have lost it after this time so we’ll need to make the game run just as well for the large amount of people who won’t be able to find that save file. If you still have it, you can probably stick it in, it’s pretty easy to load that save data into the new game. As for it being required, like you don’t have that file and you’re going to miss out on a whole route? No, we can't design the game in such a hardcore way, because that’s going to be very difficult for lots of people and they would be annoyed if that was the case.

Samu: Yes, I would say Sunrider 4 is more focused on the narrative and it’s not going to be an like an open world game, there is a Sunrider 4 story and an on-going space opera narrative you’re going to go through.

Question by Elikuz

“Sam, will there be some more waifus in the S4? Like really new girls that have big enough role comparing to others.

I don't mean I need anyone beside the Sola, buuut...”

Samu: Yeah, there’s going to be new characters in Sunrider 4, but we haven’t revealed anyone yet, but there will be new characters so please look forward to them, but they are going to be more in supporting roles. The only girl that has been added as one of the main girls you have on the ship is Lynn and she’ll be there.

Question by Kaylee Brown

“Will there be major story choices like in the previous games?”

Samu: Yeah! In previous games we had the moralist choice and prince choice and that was the whole point system, and the more you think about whether something is moral or prince the more it becomes confusing, so I don’t think we’re officially going to take choices as moralist or prince anymore, or have point system at all. I think makes more sense to track the choices and have consequences for the choices instead of having ‘This choice gives you five moralist choice, or five prince points’.

Samu: The more you think about it the more for debate it is, I don’t think it will be scientifically databased, just choices you have and things where you get different consequences, you’re not going to want to look back on Ongess. The more you think about it, the more debatable it is whether it gave you five moralist points or seven moralist points, or eight, it’s completely arbitrary.

Samu: It makes more sense maybe if you liberated it or if you allowed the Alliance to take Ongess then you just get Ongessite boosters or better Ongessite fuel, or vice versa you get more Ongessite fuel, it makes more sense to just see the consequences instead of the actual numerical stuff. The more I think about it, the more I think ‘We should ditch numerical because it’s totally arbitrary’. But yes, there will be more story choices and hopefully they will be more morally ambiguous, even more, no matter what you choose there’s no real right or wrong answer.

Question by Roberuto-kun

“In Liberation day I found unused "cover" skill for Ceran gunboats. I'm curious what this skill was supposed to do.”

Samu: That was unused? I thought Ceran gunboats had some kind of support skill where they give you defence or something, that might be some junk code from that skill but I could be remembering totally wrong. Do you remember, Ben?

Nemjen: I’m just trying to think because I swear this came up in the beta with something flak related, but I’m actually really struggling to remember where. Sorry old man memory.

Samu: We might have gotten rid of it. Maybe it was just not that used for, or unbalanced. But I think it was some kind of support skill where you can buff up an allied unit’s defence.

Question by Atom 7k

“Question, how does the idea of a NSFW SSS OVA sound? Do you think it would be great to attract more public to the game?”

Samu: Well, it would definitely attract some kind of attention, but you know, we’re kinda smoking AsaCoco™ again because fully animated porn episode... I like the strain of AsaCoco™ this guy is taking.

Nemjen: Let's put it this way, if we were to do it, we would have to find something to degrade from the instant ramen in terms of our food budget. [laughs]

Samu: Yeah, how much lower can you go... [laughs] I guess we’d have to live purely on AsaCoco™ from now on.

Nemjen: I mean, I’m not necessarily against us doing this in loyalty to the chairman...

Samu: Maybe one day we can find a gathering of coins under the sofa to fund this porn episode, but yeah, I get the feeling this would be more for our own personal gratification than the actual company’s business strategy.

Question by Sorzo

“Are there any notable political bodies in the Sunrider galaxy beyond the Alliance, PACT/New Empire, and Ryuvia? I'm thinking more in terms of relatively small conglomerates of a handful of systems rather than other superpowers.”

Samu: This is heading into spoiler territory. So, there’s basically two superpowers right now at the beginning of Sunrider 4 and that is the Alliance and PACT. And there’s an infinite number of much smaller powers like Ryuvia, because it’s a large galaxy out there and the more you travel, the more minor local powers you’re going to find not directly controlled by the two superpowers, and we’re going to see more of that in Sunrider 4. So, I cannot really spoil anything specific in that regard.

Question by akliyen

“How extensively can we have Kayto choose between pragmaticism vs moralism in Sunrider 4? How much will this affect Kayto's relationship with the girls?”

Samu: The usual choices again. We’re not going crazy, you’re not going to have some crazy choice that Kayto would never do, because Kayto still has his own character and there’s still a narrative, so you’re not going to be able to choose to randomly shoot Ava dead and then join PACT. That level of choice is not really going to be there, but if he’s in a situation where it’s really ambiguous and Kayto himself could see things one way or the other you will have to make a choice.

Samu: I don’t think Kayto would do anything that evil, I mean, these choices are meant to be very ambiguous choices, moments where Kayto Shields, being who he is, could still choose one way or the other and it’s still going to be debatable. I don’t know if a girl would really lose all her respect for him, it's going to be situations where anybody could see it one way or the other. And yes, the relationship skill is going to be its own thing and I think it will be complicated if we tie it with the choice system, so I don’t think both systems will be tied.

Question by Roberuto-kun

“Does PACT believe in Veniczar Moroz or Alliance in Santa Grey?”

Nemjen: I don’t follow sorry. [laughs]

Samu: Santa Grey, interesting.

Nemjen: Who’s Moroz?

Samu: I don’t know.

Nemjen: Is this referencing other series?

Samu: I guess there’s probably memes both in PACT and the Alliance, I guess it’s probably there on the Sunrider internet.

Nemjen: Eh, okau I'm just going to completely hijack the question and... ‘Does the Sunrider Universe believe in Santa Claus?’ Yes, yes, they do, although he yet to make an appearance. And... yes there we go, Moroz is the Russian version Santa Claus I think?

Samu: Yeah, there’s Santa Claus in Sunrider.

Nemjen: He’s an expert in using lost technology, expect some secret boss fight at some point.

Question by Taihou

"In some of the Patreon releases we can see some chibi design for the girls which I can't really imagine where they would fit in SR4, are you aiming for some kind of joke mixture within the seriousness of the game? It does worry me it will kind of break those serious moments or deliveries that should leave an impact.

Also, where does Pokez mix in all of this, I'm very curious about it."

Nemjen: They do have a purpose but just so you're aware Sam I haven’t shared that purpose yet on Patreon yet.

Samu: Yes, those chibis are going to be UI element. We used to have that ship map with those chibi icons, those chibis are going to be used in a similar manner, so I don’t think it will really break the serious moments.

Samu: And where does Pokez mix in? Oh well! We haven’t been able to work on it right now because we’re just too busy with other stuff, but it’s going to be a card minigame.

Nemjen: There's essentially going to be some opportunities for downtime aside from the main narrative, so think of it as additional space to spend time with your waifu.

Samu: Ah yes, Kayto is going to, between fighting PACT, travelling the galaxy pursuing his dream of becoming a Pokez master.

Nemjen: Never underestimate the appeal and power of card games, people. Even in Sunrider they are a very soft power.

Samu: Even in Sunrider there’s no escaping the card minigame.

Question by Please step on me Lynn!

“How has the events in Liberation Day affected the politics and policies of the Ryuvian government as well as the views of the average Ryuvian citizen?”

Nemjen: First as this is quite a few times now, we have to answer a particular question first in regards to that username. Please step on me Lynn? She says no she won't - now canon.

Samu: Yeah... she says no. Moving on, in Ryuvia the big event is obviously their king being shot and Asaga becoming the new queen, and that’s definitely going to capture most of the headlines, so some of the other events might be a little... it’s going to become more impactful by Asaga becoming queen. We can’t really spoil too much and this is a part of the fan imagination, some of this stuff is going to be ‘imagine it’, and because this stuff happens in the background, we might not see it in the story but it’s still part of the larger universe.

Samu: You would think like we would hear about how their queen fought in this war and they would obviously have a negative opinion of PACT because we know they, PACT, showed up in Ryuvia and shot the king, ransacked the palace for lost technologies, so they obviously have a very negative opinion of PACT and largely support Queen Asaga fighting against PACT, taking what has happened.

Question by GaegeTheLuckySniper

“What future projects does Lis have in mind? do they plan to continue Sunrider after 4 and another SSS, or make an entire other series?”

Samu: Right now, we’re going to be working on Sunrider 4 for a while, so we don’t have really any other IP.

Nemjen: What we keep in mind is we tend to focus on one main project at a time and maybe side stuff does go on in the background but it wouldn't be shared, what I’d encourage you to do is that we actually have a location on the Patreon page, the forum or this discord server dedicated to project progress and you can refer to it if you’re interested in seeing what we’re actually working on and what’s been touched on in the past but that we haven’t necessarily had any new information for a while.

Samu: Yes, we’re just working on Sunrider right now.

Nemjen: If you meant this specifically for ProM and Wonderland you'll have to wait I'm afraid.

Samu: Yes, one day.

Question by TheAdrianbbc

"What do you think about Monster Girl Quest?”

Samu: I’ve never played. Have you, Ben?

Nemjen: I have not, I’m afraid. [laughs]

Nemjen: I’ve seen some users on the Love in Space discord that have posted some images with some wacky enemy designs that appear in the series but it’s not one I’ve actually played myself, my backlog is vast and there are many things before it.

Samu: Yes... I haven’t really played much Monster Girls stuff, I just watched the Monster Girl anime once, the one with the snake girl and the horse girl and bird girl. Yes, I just watched that and aside from that I don’t think I have consumed much any of that.

Nemjen: It’s going to be on you guys to sell it to us to play these quicker in the future.

Question by NoobRage

“Will there be more male characters in Sunrider 4?”

Samu: Yes, we will be introducing more side characters but we haven’t confirmed anything just yet so... You’ll see it later!

Question by alanaktion

“Any chance of official dakimakuras returning at some point?”

Samu: If you have some time to draw ones, go for it. And in terms of the past ones...? Maybe! If there’s enough interest, yes, those dakis do look really nice.

Nemjen: It’s definitely something we keep our eye on, but I suppose part of the thing you have to be careful about is if there’s isn’t the right level of demand what you’ll find is the cost of logistics and producing them can be super-duper high in which case it can put even people who were interest off as they then take the brunt. But definitely keep the noise going and if the right environment is in place it makes it easier for these things to happen.

Samu: And yes, about the physical stuff, it’s actually Sekai Project handling it for a while now, so I prefer to stick on the development side, but if there’s money to be made I’m sure they’ll do it! It’s just a question about how much would people pay for it and how much it’ll be worth their time, but well, this one is hard to answer.

Samu: But yeah, the logistics of producing these in a factory, getting them shipped and the packaging and all that mailing stuff is something really complicated so it's not something we can really do as a game company. It’s something that gets handled by other people that we hire, but that’s kind of why we're kind of stumbling and just giving vague answers here. [laughs]

Nemjen: It’s difficult balance, isn’t it? But yes, keep letting us know guys what you’d like to see and we’ll bring it up when the conversations are happening. Unfortunately, we can’t commit to saying anything today about if those original dakis will make a return, but if a situation was to arise, we’d definitely promote it through our communication channels like social media so keep an eye out.

Question by Powerless

"Will there be a harem end in Sunrider or will we have to choose one girl in the end, also there will be more girls to choose from?”

Samu: Well, we did add Lynn so never say never about if a new girl might go up! But in terms of harem... that would be quite a spoiler! Let me think... I don’t think there’s anything... any bonus that happens if you have all girls maxed. It’s really all part of the narrative so a lot of the girls... I don’t think they would really go for the whole harem thing, and for some of the girls... like Queen Asaga, it would be quite scandalous for her to be part of a harem, so it’s controlled by the narrative and each girl is also going to be controlled by the narrative so it’s not ‘anything goes’ kind of game, it definitely got its own universe and the story line that has to be continued and the characters which have to be kept consistent.

Question by Bob

“There was mention of "if the Alliance controlled Ongess, you would have access to their fuel resources" Is there going to be more planet/resource management elements in the coming game?”

Samu: No, I didn’t really mean it in terms of the game becoming a city building or planetary management game, I meant more like if you make certain choices, you get consequences for that choice, like some items open up in the store or an ally might stay with you, or you might gain an ally but lose another ally, I meant it in that sense. The game hasn’t become a management game.

Question by Powerless

“What exactly is Sophita's role and or goal. there's clearly more to her than she lets on, also can the chibis be used as pfps?”

Nemjen: If it’s the Patreon ones (chibis) they’re going to have to be something that is enjoyed in private a bit longer I'm afraid.

Samu: Yes, I don’t know how long... When everything is out in the open and it's no longer a spoiler, once it’s not going to upset people and people are not going to be ‘Oh you spoiled me! I didn’t want to be spoiled!’

Nemjen: Yes, once we're around release team and the period closing in on the release then you can start waving the colours of your favourite girl.

Samu: And about Sophita’s role... You might see her again! You might! No guarantee though, that could be a spoiler so I will only say, you might see her!

Question by Nanashi

"Referring to the latest art in #fan-art what are the chances of this being in any future games?"

Nemjen: Oh, this is brilliant, it’s... you’ll be very familiar with this by now, Sam. [laughs] This is a character I’ve been pushing in your face for a while now.

Samu: [laughs] It looks like we have a new guest character in the game and it looks like she has her own mech.

Nemjen: Her story starts in the indie underground scene of Ryder piloting before she ends up to the rest of the cast on the galactic stage. [laughs] I’d definitely be worried for everyone that bumps into her on a dark night. Brilliant bit of fan art though Nanashi. That’s really made me smile.

Samu: Yeah, but that’s definitely awesome, it never gets old. If I make it into the game-

Nemjen: For those that are joining today and might not necessarily know about the context behind this. Back when we were working on Idol Empire, one of the things I was messing around with quite early on was furniture collision and how different items interact with each other in terms of layering, and one of the first things I did was decide to try and stack objects on the idols and as you can see Sasami gained the ultimate protection, those desks have developed a mind of its own since. [laughs]

Samu: Yeah, we’re going to have to... if we add this mech into the game, then we can add our entire lore chapter for it.

Nemjen: Maybe this is a lynchpin, the gift to the fans that marks the official connection between Starnova and Sunrider.

Samu: Yeah, it’s definitely Mechasas that is going to take down PACT. This is true...

Question by NoobRage

“Is the western half of the galaxy simply empty or has it just not been featured yet?”

Samu: It just hasn’t been featured yet. The western half of the galaxy is more bit of Alliance space and it will be featured later but that goes into spoiler territory.

Question by Taihou

“Sam, can you give me Cosette's hand in marriage? Before you say anything, yes, I know what I'm getting myself into and I still want it.”

Samu: It’s your funeral, bud.

Question by Please step on me Lynn!

“Will Kayto & co be able to travel to more locations across the expanse of space? The previous games had us only travel to a dozen or so planets across the vast galaxy.”

Samu: Yes, you will be able to travel to new places in the next game.

Question by Snickett

“Did you have fun writing the Onsen event? You know which one I'm talking about.”

Samu: Yeah, what Onsen event? I just took a couple sips of Julie’s brew and uh, it just happened.

Nemjen: His finest fever dream. {Laughs]

Question by Mattarayer

"Do you know about the Danganronpa series? What are your thoughts on it? Please, do not mention any spoilers from the series."

Samu: I played the first couple ones, yeah. I really liked it, I thought I had a lot of fun with them.

[We ran out of time so unfortunately this question ended up getting cut short].