Matsumori Days

There's going to be a bit of weapon switching. Katai will be the axe user now (totally not a Brutal Legend reference), Goho's getting the club/mace category, which leaves Joruri carrying the spear.

While giving Katai earth affinity now appeals to me for irony's sake, I don't think I'm going to perform any elemental shifting.

The usable items will have gameplay-related descriptions. The flavor text will probably be removed, as I was fumbling those descriptions (not to mention the names themselves) to begin with. Equipment may take a similar route, even if they have very similar statistics.

Granting character abilities based on personal characteristics (or club-related activities) would flesh the characters out more. However, I'm not particularly keen on making such skills. I have name fumbling problems as is!

There's going to be some terminology changes. Instead of skills having "Basic", "Advanced", and "Master" as damage descriptors, they will instead have "Small", "Light", "Medium", "Heavy", and "Severe" as damage descriptors. The first set of descriptors is, admittedly, convoluted. I think players would prefer the easier-to-understand second set.

I've been considering all the feedback I've been getting from the "Thickening the plot" blog. Outside of getting more feedback than I anticipated (which is good!), there's a few things I may want to try. First and foremost, I want to re-examine, in greater detail, what I already have. I will take what suggestions I believe are appropriate to my situation and see what I can do to about them.

I think Masako answering questions before they are finished being asked is something she should do in-game. If done right, it might even come out humorous. She's not the character who's main purpose is comedy relief *cough*Toshie*cough*, but Masako allowed to have her moments.

Why does Masako dislike Katai? I'm usually inclined to say that Katai is the epitome of sloth, and that trait is something Masako loathes. However, I'm not sure that's the answer anymore. Then again, does it matter why she dislikes him? Probably not, in the end.

Currently, the Wind Trial has a very limited scope of answers to it's riddles: it accepts only a response in lower-case. I want to allow players to type whatever they want, but force the response into lower-case, then check the word to see if it's the correct response. That way, even if the true answer is "light", a player could type in "LiGhT", "liGht", or any variation thereof, and still be correct.

When I was making the Fire Trial, I was vaguely considering putting in a specific encounter for the guardian statues. Why I ended up with three consecutive "normal" fights was probably more about me being lazy than anything else.

Should I allow players the option to have Masako lead the party in Chapter 3, or even after her trial in Chapter 2? This is something I've had in my head for a while now. All I really know at this point is that if I allow players to switch protagonists, it will be in Chapter 3 at the latest. However, since Chapters 2 and 3 is outside the scope of the demo, this is mostly a moot point.

This is supposed to be something of a story-driven game. In that respect, I should have a picture of what the characters are like before the game, a picture of what they are like after the game, with the events of the game relaying, in part, how they get there. With the interview series, I'm confident that I know the "before" picture. However, the "after" picture is still slightly out-of-focus for about half the cast of characters. Might want to rectify this!

Ah yes. Mapping. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with the school itself. The issue is with the dungeons. I'm not sure how I'm going to change them because I have a system that works on a very basic, fundamental level I'm terribly lazy on this front.

Considering the way I've handled feedback so far, I've been getting nowhere fast. Therefore, after I make what changes I can, I will post one more update to the demo. After that, I will not post another demo, but continue working 'till I complete the project. How long will that be? I can't really say. However, I will continue blogging about my progress, though perhaps not in as much detail as before. Or I just use hide tags in an attempt to contain spoilers.