In order to save data, the game needs to create a file called "saves.sav" in the game folder. My best guess would be that your antivirus is preventing it from doing that. You might also be able to work around it by downloading someone else's saves.sav file and then just starting a new game in that file.
Campaign mode will eventually have difficulty options, but I want it to be more "complete" first. There are also plans for a set of items which will let you basically create your own custom Forsaken to immediately add to your roster, so the framework will be there for an advanced start option.
This particular pronoun bug will be fixed in the next version. In general, every instance of a pronoun needs to be manually connected to a particular Chosen or Forsaken, so I appreciate it when people bring these to my attention so that I can correct them.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention - it's actually a bug that's sometimes causing Chosen to improperly cease to be virgin when they become Forsaken. It'll be fixed in the next version.
Thank you!
I can answer this one. The bonuses from multiple loved ones do stack, so having a lot of them can give you a very large consent modifier. Regarding the penalty for high Obedience, it only checks how much higher the loved one's Obedience is than the subject's Obedience, so the Confidence Breaks don't directly matter. Also, if the loved one is a Negotiation Forsaken, then there won't be any penalty regardless of how high the loved one's Obedience is.
This is another typo in the code. It'll be fixed in the next version.
In addition to the consent penalty, there's also a large flat one-time corruption increase for performing the break. This could be relevant if you, for example, wanted to save that flat increase for when her Disgrace is already high and it's hard to perform trainings to get it even higher.
The expected trauma percentage can seem like it swings around a lot, because it also looks at the allies' downtime action preferences. For example, suppose that on one day, she performs a +2 EE SHAM-based action alone, and it says you're 80% of the way to the +5 EE SHAM-based action. But on the next day, you deal some SHAM to her and her ally who doesn't have the +5 EE SHAM-based action unlocked. Her and her ally will want to do the +2 EE SHAM-based action together, and so the percentage toward choosing the +5 EE SHAM-based action might drop to 70% even though her trauma increased.
I do think that this effect is currently too strong. The next release will make Chosen less willing to perform lower-tier group downtime actions than what they'd prefer to do on their own.
Thanks for catching this, it'll be fixed in the next version.
I'm not sure whether you're referring to the solo quiz or the group quiz (because the lines you mention don't line up with either quiz in the source code as I view it), but they share some traits in common. For each Vulnerability, they look at how many of the answered questions are related to that Vulnerability (basically, letting Vulnerabilities with fewer answered questions be more "flexible" than those with more answered questions), they assign a 0-100 score based on those answers, and then they nudge things as necessary to make the distribution valid (i.e. at least one of every Vulnerability strength). I'd be happy to explain more if you have a more specific question.
I believe I've caught what was causing this bug, but if it's still happening in R38 after it comes out, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a save so I could test it.
I've found what was causing this bug as well. It'll be fixed in the next version.
The game doesn't use as a single unified interface for those left-right menus (definitely something I'll be improving in the next game I code), so the hotkeys would have to be added to every menu separately. Still a good idea whenever I have the time.
All of them give you bonus EE for Core Vulnerabilities broken, but they each look at different tiers. The Day 15 event looks at T1, the Day 30 event looks at T2, and the Day 45 event looks at T4.
My intent is for the "type" of Demon Lord to be something that emerges through the player's own actions. There are even some planned characters in campaign mode who will comment on you based on how you seem to prefer to conduct your corruption. Achievement and item bonuses are meant to also sort of touch on this.
During campaign mode, the player will get a chance to see the result of a Demon Lord-Chosen coupling.
The lore explanation here is that as long as the Chosen are fighting the Demon Lord, they can avoid suspicion. If the Demons attack and one of the Chosen fails to show up, then the military brass will immediately start to wonder whether she's gone rogue. And if she manages to kill the Demon Lord, then she'll be hailed as a hero and given plenty of leeway before the pregnancy starts to show.
Basically, they're just buying as much time as they can until they're forced to publicly go rogue.
Bonuses of different types are pretty much all multiplicative. So, in your example, it's the first formula.
It's less straightforward than it sounds. Even for a given set of Chosen, many of the scenes also have branches depending on whether some specific Vulnerability Breaks have happened yet.
Chosen who get impregnated will never return - they'll always get an epilogue where they're removed from the story. This is the case for all Total Breaks.
Oh, this is actually a bug. Currently, Rampant Forsaken always behave as though you have the Psychometer. This will be fixed in the next version.
It's intended that the item and species options sometimes force a difficult decision on you.
Relationship adjustments only happen during post-battle scenes. This means that Vulnerability Breaks and Distortions in the final battle will never affect relationships. However, Temptation and Negotiation can't be triggered for the first time in the final battle at all.
To expand on this, Distorting a Core Vulnerability (i.e. performing a Distortion which puts a ~ in a Core Vulnerability box) causes a post-battle relationship scene just like Breaking a Core Vulnerability does. However, the resulting scene will always negative unless the Minor Vulnerability Chosen has the exact same Distortion. So, triggering Negotiation (the Morality/Dignity Distortion) will cause a negative scene with an intact Minor Morality Chosen, with a broken Minor Morality Chosen, and with a Tempted Minor Morality Chosen even though both of them are Morality-related Distortions.
Originally, this was meant to be a benefit of Distortion paths, since it's generally harder to create rivalry, and rivalry was generally the stronger option to pursue. This might end up being changed, particularly since the Empathy upgrade is getting buffed in the next version to make friendship-based strategies more viable.
Very nice! Maybe I should add another section to the sidebar on the blog for portrait packs which don't necessary aim to cover the default Chosen names.
Thank you for the feedback! Regarding starting item choice, it's not exactly that I want to discourage savescumming, but I do want to encourage players to try new things. I guess a nice middle ground might be to assign the player a random item, but let them manually swap it to a different one if they can be bothered to open up the menu to do so.
Forsaken combat styles share every part of their flavor text with 2 or 3 other styles, although they never share any of their flavor text with the style that is diametrically opposed to theirs. This means that most players will probably see all of it even if there are combat styles they never end up using.
The amount of effort which went into Demon Commander flavor text is just an example of poor planning on my part. During the first year of development, it wasn't even possible to obtain Forsaken.
I'll have to rework some of the code, but I agree that the stat sidebar and the portrait sidebar have no good reason to be connected.
I think I've finally found a good way to code a quicksave/quickload system. It won't be in the next update, but it should be coming soon.
I have been looking into adding more AI-generated art to the game. Some sort of "final defeat" image for each face in the portrait pack wouldn't be too tough at all. A different image for every possible end (one for each Distortion, and maybe one for each epilogue where they escape the final battle) would multiply the work, but it still seems basically feasible. I'm less enthusiastic about adding images for routine in-battle events just because it seems like they'd quickly become background "noise."
For differentiating characters more, I'd like to focus on letting them "become" unique over the course of play, like the specifics of their corruption or their relationships with other characters. One idea which has recently been pitched to me is to keep track of which vignettes they've been part of, and have each of those leave some sort of mark on them. So, for example, a Chosen who shows up in the petplay vignette might develop a fetish for it and have that fetish be referenced in custom sex scenes and Forsaken downtime actions. As the number of vignettes continues to increase, this should result in a lot of different traits which can distinguish the characters from each other.
I definitely agree about adding more alternatives to the current static events. My original plan was to have them only differ flavor-wise (and keep the same gameplay effects), but I suppose that attaching them to different gameplay incentives could be interesting too. I'd be interested in hearing ideas about what kind of incentives could replace the usual "break T1 cores by Day 15, break T2s by Day 30, break T4s by Day 45."
Each action has its own logic for Chosen deciding whether to use it. In general, the current circumstance level acts as a multiplier on the weight assigned to the action, but they have their own unique factors as well. For Fantasize, they want to use it to "plug up" whichever trauma type is currently lowest, and they also like it use it to block trauma of types which haven't hit the T3 Break threshold yet. For Surrender to Instincts, they like to use it when their trauma levels and defense level are low - basically, trying to stop you from creating openings against them.
Depending on how their Cores and Minors match up, it can be impossible to get two Chosen on two specific Distortion paths to become friends. If two Chosen have a Core/Minor matchup on a Vulnerability which either one isn't allowed to break, then it'll be guaranteed that the scenes there are negative - either because the Core gets Distorted and the Minor isn't on that Distortion path, or because the Core gets broken and the Minor is guaranteed not to be broken. This means that Temptation/Aversion and Negotiation/Rampancy pairings will always become enemies.