BACKWARDS_COWBOY'S PROFILE

To avoid the whole "equipment in treasure chests being worthless if you purchased it earlier" issue, you can use conditional statements like "If 'Leather Armor' in Inventory" or "If Character(X) has 'Leather Armor' equipped", "Player (Gold or some other item to replace armor) + X". Otherwise just give them some sweet, supple leather. It helps with the linear equipment progression issue, and helps prevent people from feeling ripped off.

In terms of WHEN you should get new equipment, it really depends on how many types of equipment any given character can use. I like to give each of my characters at least two or three different options for weapons, minimum. Example: Say you have a Holy Knight character. Overly cliched, but that's not the point. You could give them the option of Swords, Magic Tomes, and Axes. Swords are your standard Attack equipment. Magic Tomes strike all enemies, but do much less damage or are based on magic. Axes do 2.5 times the damage of swords, but are less accurate. The increased damage makes the trade-off worth it. If you do that, you might want the character finding lots of equipment, such as five different elemental magic tomes per every four character levels, two swords, and an axe or two. The player has to choose which is best for the situation or play style, and in the case of tomes, needs to pick an element that will benefit them on the current quest or dungeon.

You can also have better armor reduce your agility, or some armor providing a little defense and magic defense as opposed a lot of defense. A player finds some armor that gives them 20 more defense points, but is it worth the -12 agility trade-off? Or do you want to survive magic attacks more than physical ones? Once again, the player can choose based on their own play style or current dungeon needs. Mage tower? Take the magic-boosting armor. Strong boss that was already faster than you? Take the strong heavy armor.

While this could technically be considered an 'illusion' of choice, due to the fact that the player may feel forced to choose a certain type of equipment for that part of the game, it does add a lot of variety.

author=bulmabriefs144
Having to do more planning on game two (episodic is actually in some ways harder) than I did on my first game.

Anything done episodic is always harder. Not only do you have people who are going to be continuously throwing out what they want to see in the next episode, but you have a short window in which to release the next one before too much interest is lost in your game. On the plus side, nobody can spoil anything in reviews or comments because the next part of the game doesn't exist yet.

No problem, always happy to help.

author=bulmabriefs144
the idea is to have something cute yet very unsettling. I don't want cheap (stuff jumps out suddenly) scares, and it's not really survival horror.

Quiet little children are creepy. One day the family dog disappears. The next you see your daughter playing dress-up with the cute little dog ears and tail you bought her. Only you realize you didn't buy them for her. Then you find the mutilated dog corpse crammed into her dollhouse, and the dolls inside its throat. She revenge killed it for eating her dolls. The dog becomes the dolls, and the girl becomes the dog.

The horror is the lack of a child's full ability to comprehend right and wrong, accidents, and taking things too far. There's so many variations and ways you could take it too far and just disgust people, yet there's no jump-out horror screaming. No idea if that's what you're looking for, but it just fits the non-survival "everyday life" thing I felt you described. I mean, children are all around us, but what is their thought process?

Mana Khemia 1 & 2 (2 has a Hard Mode so it has a little more replay value, although both have several endings and extra bosses. You actually have to play 2 a minimum of two times to be able to actually complete the game), Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, and Rogue Galaxy are my recommendations. If you want something REALLY unique, you can probably find a copy of Mr. Mosquito for a dollar.