I wasn't planning on making a blog post until the end of this week, which is my deadline for myself regarding working out the specifics of each case, but I've actually had a few questions rolling around in my head recently that I'd like to get some input on, so I figured I might as well just make a blog post now. Because why not?

But before that, I want to mention that recently I've actually been working a little bit more on the overall story rather than the cases themselves. I've made some major changes to the underlying story and the ending I had in mind. These changes won't affect anything in the cases I've already planned out, but they will play very heavily into the story from case three onward. And believe it or not, it's because of those changes I made to the underlying story that cases/chapters three through five have become much easier to write. I now have a much better idea of the direction I'm going with case three in particular (and to a lesser extent cases four and five). Plus, I have much better idea of what conflicts will arise in-between those murders and how certain characters interactions/behaviors will change as the story goes on.

In other words, I think the overall story is better now than it was, and that will in turn make the individual cases in the last 2/3 of the game better. I hope you like despair, because I'm laying it on thick!


I'm lazy and used my laptop's touch screen/MS Paint to make something to break up all these paragraphs. Sue me.

Now we come to the questions I have for all of you! First of all, let's talk about this game's endings. That's right. Plural.

There are three endings planned for Danganronpa Team. Two of them are actual endings while the third is a joke ending reserved for the joke difficulty Hope is Dead. The joke ending is, funnily enough, the only ending set in stone. That will be something that people insane enough to play Hope is Dead alone can get. That said, I'll put it up on Youtube or something a week or two after the game's out so other people can see it as well. But the question becomes, how do I handle the other two endings? They're nothing you have to fulfill certain vague conditions for or anything (like spending time with only certain people outside of trials. I hate stuff like that as much as the next guy). It'd basically just be a choice near the end of the game. It'd be pretty clear when the time comes.

However...I was thinking of tying these two endings to the game's difficulty settings. One ending, the 'bad ending' if you will, is accessible in any difficulty (except Hope is Dead, because that'd just have the joke ending). The other ending, the 'good ending', is only accessible in the Harbinger of Despair, Ultimate Despair, and Foxy's Island of Fun difficulties (so the ones with a little challenge to them). Let me just say that doing things this way would work better with the game on a thematic level. But I don't want to make this decision solely based on that. I want to know if you guys would find that frustrating or not.

So I've made a straw poll that I'll link directly below this paragraph. If you would, please take the poll. But by all means, don't just limit yourself to the poll. Feel free to say something in the comments of this blog as well.

Click here for the poll.

Next question! I was just thinking ahead to the game's release, and I was wondering how that should be handled as well. Would everyone rather wait for the whole game to come out before playing it? Or would everyone rather I release the game episodically, by which I mean releasing a new case every few weeks or so? The issue with that is that each release would contain not just the newest case but the ones before it as well, and you'd have to transfer your save over to preserve all of the variables and such that will be changing over the course of the game (like any DR reductions you have from hanging out with different groups of people).

I could do it either way. Once I have the details of all the cases hammered out and get this show on the road, I shouldn't really have any problems knocking a new case out every few weeks. So it's up to you guys. Do you want a short wait in-between cases and some time to cool down/process everything? Or do you want a longer wait that'll result in you being able to binge the entire game in a weekend?

Same deal as the last question. There's a poll below, and feel free to voice your thoughts in the comments of this blog as well.

Click here for the poll.

Now for the last order of business. Game testing!


I may have gotten lazy when making the '3D' table, but at least I gave them hands this time.

This was going to come up sooner or later. Until now I've basically used my friends to test my games, but they're not really reliable when it comes to testing them in a timely manner...or testing them at all. So I want to recruit a team of beta testers. And their job is basically going to be making everything runs the way it's supposed to from start to finish (no graphical errors/crashes/whatever) as well as to check my writing for spelling/grammatical errors and such. I've made a visual novel before, and I know that you can check your writing yourself over and over and over again and still completely miss some mistakes, so it's really essential that I have some people besides myself checking that.

What beta testing will not entail is suggestions regarding the story, characters, music, mechanics, etc. HOWEVER. There are exceptions. Like if there's a plot hole the size of Texas that I didn't catch for some reason, I need to know about it. If a character is acting really out of character in a scene for some reason, I need to know about it (assuming it's not intentional for whatever reason). If a piece of music really doesn't fit a scene, I need to know about it. If some mechanic is really not fun at all and sucks, I'll hear you out.

So basically, if things are objectively bad I need to know about it. But as much as I may enjoy hearing subjective opinions, I do not want to hear people telling me I should change something like the end of the game just because they don't like it. You catch my drift?

Also, I may ask you to do certain things as you play through the game. Like I may ask you to play through the game on a certain difficulty or only spend time with certain people outside of a trial. I can't just have everyone playing on the easiest difficulty. I need to make sure every inch of the game is as polished as possible before it gets released. So keep that in mind before you volunteer to be a tester.

If you're interested, send me a message here on RMN or on Twitter and we'll see what we can work out. If you do message me, I'll ask you some questions and get back to you sometime within a couple of days. I may or may not decide to add you to the team depending on your answers and if there are other people applying who are better suited to test the game. But please, anyone at all who's interested, feel free to shoot me a message. I'd rather have more applicants than less.

Anyways, that's all I wanted to say. Again, please take the poll if you have any intention of playing the game, because your opinion does matter. And again, please apply to be a game tester if you're at all interested! I don't bite. Although whether or not you'll walk away full of despair is another story.

Thanks for reading! I'll put up a progress report as soon as I've finished hammering out the details for the rest of the cases! See you then!