CSdev
Just finished a playthrough. Fun game! Wasn't really playing for the sex-related content as I was too busy figuring out the mechanics, but I liked what was there. I don't know what your future plans are atm, but as this last release introduced the final battle, I'd recommend some end-game scenes with the surviving Chosen.
As for my gameplay experience: I spent the majority of the game at the sub 10k circumstantial trauma mark, unsure of how to move forward. I only paid any attention to the dangers of breaking minor weaknesses after I tripped over one and saw the bonding scene. After that, I tried over and over to break the T2 breaking points without any success. After grinding for a while for EE and investing in the commander, I eventually hit an explosive battle where everyone got up into the billions of trauma. I wish I could remember what exactly the tipping point was; I
think it was getting two captures, doing all four "captured" options, and then setting up a T2 traumatizer (Inseminate+ etc).
The next problem I ran into was that I ended up with all three Chosen using slaughter and striptease. By that point it didn't matter so much since all of them had enough trauma to meet any breakpoint I wanted, but it did mean I couldn't max out the T4 breaks for the last Chosen.
Some thoughts and suggestions:
Chosen personalities are cool! I love the
concept of having to figure out what would work on a given Chosen by reading their dialogue carefully. Given how much dialogue there is and how much care went into illustrating each personality, I can't help but wonder if the Psychic Reading ability was a later design choice? I'm personally torn between having it and not; If it wasn't there I'd probably be complaining about how troublesome it was to note down the best techniques to use on each Chosen, but with it there I feel like it takes the fun out of paying special attention to the Chosen dialogue and guessing what their ethos is. One idea I had was to give a bonus at the end of the game if you never took the upgrade. (It might be better to have it presented as an off/on option at the start rather than an EE upgrade to prevent savescumming. Take upgrade -> check personalities -> load save and never buy.)
Increase chances of Chosen using an advanced defensive technique if it will cause a break. I had a few boring battles just waiting for them to use the right ability to qualify for the T3 breaks that relied on being captured by a commander.
Related: you should be able to Capture even if Surrounding is an option. I
might have been doing something wrong, but I resorted to using the Flight upgrade and waiting for certain Chosen to take to the skies in order to Capture them. Using a Punisher upgrade circumvented the issue; it's possible Suppressors/Defilers do as well.
Put the upgrades in their own tab. I had a few times where I wanted to go check dialogue etc from the last battle but the screen was full of multiple copies of the upgrades screen.
Change the low-end curve of EE gains, or make bonus EE more readily available. Despite what the guide said, I never saw a way to get bonus EE on any particular screen (unless it was referring to breakpoints.) While I could probably skip the doldrums I ran into (10 days of grinding for EE), having a more forgiving "slope" of EE rewards would've been a nice quality of life change. I have to pull these numbers out of my ass because I can't remember the old thresholds, but doing 1k trauma and doing 10k trauma rewarded the same 4 EE per battle. I went from there to getting 15-40EE per battle after my previously mentioned explosive battle, so something in between those two to enrich the mid-game might help. Or maybe I just suck
The tutorial needs a tutorial. I had no clue what was going on when I was watching it. Trauma? Chosen? Surround? Capture? None of those terms really meant anything, so I had to read and then re-read the guide.txt file to get my bearings. I think a graphical explanation would go along way to show the core mechanics. The main points I struggled with were:
1. Trauma levels add up to opportunities but nerf your circumstance gains.
2. Trauma levels have conditions eg. Fear only triggers if an ally is being surrounded/captured.
3. Each circumstance is a buff with a different effect.
I don't think I realized that you only need one other active condition to use Shame until Day 40. I would always set up
every other trauma condition before applying Shame.
Good luck with further development. I look forward to seeing how it turns out.
