computer games

Heileen: endings and sudden death?

I’m at chapter 4 of the game. I plan to have 10 chapters total, for a very LONG game

Now I’m thinking about the various endings. Better have many of them? I mean, the more, the better? or would be better fewer ones, but with the story that really branches out?

Let me try to explain better… most dating sims just show a different ending based on the skills you raise during the game. Heileen doesn’t have a schedule/planner, but a sort of quest mode to raise points, and has some internal values to store player menu choices (but without showing him exactly how much impact had his last decision heheh).

So I was planning to have at a certain point of the game completely different stories based on player choice. For example at one point you could have to decide if to leave the ship and help a friend of yours in a town nearby, or stay in the ship. Choosing the first option would lead of course to a different end, but also to a different part of the story. I mean not just a few paragraphs but really 1 whole chapter with your adventures helping him in town, like almost a separate sub-story inside the main game.

Another thing I am evaluating is the “sudden death” – very popular in the “Lone Wolf” gamebooks, mean that your character could face a sudden death without any real warning (like happens unfortunately in real life). I am of course aware that this isn’t a good decision for a casual game, but I always liked that feature.

I mean maybe I’m a bit weird but when I was reading the death description in those books, was cool to see how the main character was ending his adventure (also because I knew I could just go back a few pages and choose another path!).

Since I plan to have a “rollback” option, I don’t think that should be a problem. It means the user can use the mousewheel to go back in the game timeline so can choose another path that won’t lead him to the fearsome sudden death