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[penguinofhonor]

Congratulations and thanks for having the giveaway! I'll have to keep my eye on this game now.

[Bauglir]

It's occurred to me that, as somebody involved with this thing, you might know the answer to the question I've been trying to resolve through tedious savescumming:

Spoiler: Midgame Spoilers (click to show/hide)

Is it possible to progress through the story without a Reactor module? Or does the game just stick at the Survive stage until you give in and build one, thereby allowing the plot to proceed with the sabotage?

[Vector]

-snip-

[Bauglir]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, I just spent a solid month doing Exploration after stockpiling enough resources and supplies to survive the bleed that long without losing. At this point, yeah, I think you're pretty right - the plot won't progress and I don't think it's possible to encounter one of those sinkholes or something.

I think whether certain kinds of linearity is good or bad is dependent on context. In the context of a game that advertises itself as being about tough choices, as this one does, I think it's not exactly great. They present "not building a Reactor" as an option - a difficult one, but an option nonetheless. Giving no indication to the player that the plot's frozen until they make the "right" choice is probably not a great way to go - making it some sort of race against time, given the long-term impossibility of stabilizing without one, would be a better approach. It'd still want to link up with the main plot thread, perhaps by allowing the player to discover a sinkhole early and let that trigger the children's illness plot and the questions about Elysium. Or maybe the saboteur blows up something else, with even more catastrophic results. You're absolutely right that the game wants to be structured in a way that revolves around "What does this choice say about your character?" more than "What doors does this choice open?" - it's just that this particular one is no choice at all because your character has to make it one way in order to progress.

Likewise, specializations that lock you into progressively more-narrow niches are great in games with a strong focus on character-building, but not in ones that expect on-the-fly planning to deal with immediate threats. Generally what gets me is when a game has limitations that seem to be fighting its strengths, or has so few limitations that you can easily miss those strengths by accident if you're unlucky. This game is really good when you're faced with choices that keep the plot moving or help flesh our your character, so that's what the limitations the engine puts on you ought to be geared toward creating.

A game like this, for example, probably shouldn't have dialogue box choices that just give you more exposition and return you to the original menu with one option checked off. Just feed us those by default, and save the dialogue options to offer as many different choices as possible beyond "Yes" or "No". Or at least, that's the advice I would've given the devs.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

[Vector]

-snip-

[Bauglir]

Oh! Yeah, that wasn't a "You're wrong" post, it was mostly my answer to the question you posed. Game design is a fascinating topic to Bauglirs, so we tend to ramble at length when we see an "Is X good or bad?" question we have opinions on >__________>

if i came off as argumentative that's on me, sorry

also the spoilers do all contain spoilers so don't go back and click on them if you, dear reader, thought the rest of this post sounded interesting and forgot that you didn't want to be spoiled

i think i will go do that posting thing you mentioned

[Vector]

-snip-

[Bauglir]

I like you so I wanted to be sure that we were getting along friendly :>

the sentiment is extremely symmetrical <:

and the post is made - in related news it's interesting to see other Bay12 folks in non-Bay12 contexts (Sirus)

[Tiruin]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I...uh, I think I broke the game one time o-o

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. ALSO MANY SENTENCE FRAGMENTS AND ELLIPSES.

I've been hunting those spoilers after finishing it and--yep, linear-y is OK-y.
But it feels...very weird and disjointed at the end if you...do stuff that doesn't lead to knowing more stuff?

Like in one playthrough of mine. Parts marked with ">" are important notes.
> I had no idea where the Elysium city was.
> It seems the RNGod exists in this game.*
> I kinda made sure to MAX OUT EVERYTHING because I'm silly that way (since there's no difficulty in the game--it's like HARD mode at the start XD Though I do believe that mimics an emergency colony setting...I felt like there was a lack of stuff your colonists could individually do, though I bet that's in the way of things in the future).
-- By 'individually do', I mean 'aren't these *specific dudes without character portraits also important*? D:
++ By that I mean I kinda quicksave/loaded the intro and found out that you can at least lost 0 people but have your transport in need of repairs for the first crucial day, or you can lost 1 engineer-guy and use the transport on the first day (and then no repercussions whatsoever in game mechanics other than losing -1 dude.)
...I still love how attach-ful the game is to the player. I prioritized the deputy and the engineering mooks enough to make silly choices D:<

I'm SO glad there's a...well, not really 'so glad' but 'I nod' at that there's a whole roster of 100+ deceased people That immersion. I was trying to find the youngest and...
Just imagining these people in the context of whoever the protagonist is is daunting, to say the least. [Also dessicated corpses...](Lucy FTW :V)

So let's skip to the endgame :3
I kept redoing end-scenes to check several options and it seems...the linearity is showing a bit more than what's usual [that or me getting memory errors and debug lines o_O?]
--This is the timeline wherein we meet Mr.Mastermindbehindthescenes (also Dan), and pull up a truce with him [wait 3 days]. We get grumpy at each other during the truce and...then the choices come up to prepare for war.

...I do muchly believe that there could've been more choices than 'pick one ' [ie Train colonists + wait one week + fortify!] because my vehicles are doing nothing else than gathering supplies (And armed with LASERS) but the content is lacking in part of that the only mission I can send my LASER rovers on...is keeping watch!
Then...something happened and then our base is under attack. :<
All my base is belong to Elysium o_O out of nowhere. Then...the rebels attacked! Then...what the heck Shen?!
I've no idea if any of these are triggered by me getting morale at critical, then on the last day getting the French/Spanish probe as a monument to get morale into Good (from Game Over-y Average) but wha.
I feel like I skipped a ton and ended up both knowing:
> The Elysium base and their people and,
> Messing up with the protagonist characters (because somehow I then entered a love-hate relationship with Shen despite being his buddy as Lucy, and why don't I get more interaction with Mary :I)
> There's a silly thing with choices. At the end of the war (wherein people...just surrendered after I retook the Recycling module), is that in one quickload (actually the real thing post-memory error bug refresh funtime), I chose to spare everyone and that ended up with adding ~66 people into my colony of ~500.

The NEXT reload had me grumpy to choose the 'keel all soldiers' and...it ended up adding 278 people to my colony. So the only conclusion I can draw is RNG had more people despite me killing off their soldiers on a quickload. (What the fish, Mr. Mastermindguy. YOU HAD ENOUGH PEOPLE AND YOU CHOSE TO KILL US!? You needed 212! That's even more than the 50-person-limit for genetic stability as Mr. Dan said!)

But I had fun. Wish I could talk to Mary more though. Gah. :I
Tons of space in this game for development and added content! I did love that scene with Dan and Mr.Mastermindguy and...beautifully written tipping point/cross the line bit ._.

> I still have no idea why when I called out Mr.Mastermindguy on his 'bluff' after winning the war, he breaks down and 'snaps'.
> There're a bit of many typos out there (heh, attitude thrusters ) that add to the silliness (Shen was a she?! [when I sent him to heroically de-gas the area]).
> Why is there a colony size limit? I had extra modules out there that were just...being in my inventory! D: I could've scrapped them for parts or something! With the current limit in place, it feels like I can only cover 2/3rds of the map--and that's in the shape of a right sided triangle with the base much larger than the height. :I It's a bit silly that I've the option to drain the tanks and scrap 12 good people's...lifepod, and yet can't do anything with an Entertainment, Habitat, and extra Hydroponics module in my inventory.

> Mining modules are your friend. I've somehow NEVER had to worry about supplies other than my Health going into Bad or worse (because then, people die unless you double ration/search Medbay luck).

> I seriously feel like I skipped an Objective # up there by bypassing...something. That ending was a bit strange since somehow I viewed the Elysium city (despite rolling 'can't find anything' or 'blow up those holes' with my las-rovers).

Spoiler: Tiny question w/ spoilers (click to show/hide)

I'm a benevolent colonist overlord, but why can't I even meet or talk to Connor after choosing to spare his life by not giving him to the court//doing anything bad? :< It says I have the choice to talk to him but...he's not available after that, ever.
Even Mr. Mastermindguy references his survival when I talked to him at the endgame.

I'd also have sorta liked to talk to Dan and the rest more--especially when I got to know that Mr. Mastermindguy is something important to him ._. That'd help the endgame wartime feel a LOT.

[Vector]

-snip-