Your friends aren't entirely helpless in defeating the bosses, though; before each fight, you can pick to bond yourself to one of the girls if you've managed to get them to trust you fully (through conversations and typical VN stuff).
Doing this will allow you to tap into their innate powers, so for instance, in this first boss battle, bonding with Alice (the pink haired woman) would give you an extra life. Bonding with Sylvie (the girl with the glasses) would give you twice the movement speed, and so on.
The bond Melinda (your character) shares with someone is also represented in the pictures shown when you bond with one of the women for that battle.
- Ruth is Melinda's boss, so they have a pretty formal, sort of "mentor/student" relationship.
- Sylvie is Melinda's best friend since childhood, so basically they're basically bros/trust each other to get the job done.
- Alice is Melinda's girlfriend, but before you ask, there's no NTR in the game; Alice is in an open relationship with her, and actively pushes Melinda to experiment with other women as she feels it'll broaden her horizons, not to mention she knows Melinda will still love her emotionally regardless of who she sleeps with.
Buffs of course would be relevant to each boss battle, as each boss battle is vastly different than the last.
For an example of just how different, here's some animations of the second boss battle (these are all WIPs, especially the background which is a complete placeholder), in the Parietal Lobe;
This battle is a combination of Osu and Punchout, so expect each boss battle for each area in the game (all 8 of them) to be fairly different in style and functionality.
If you're wondering what the hell they're fighting, it's another tentacle machine, but this one's been bashed into the wall by one of Ellie's punches (the girl in the last gif), a woman with augmented strength/bionic parts, so it's stuck there while it fights you.
It uses two legs for locomotion, spinning the shafts in opposite directions, while the third leg is used as a counterbalance. Its body is made out of Oobleck, so when it's hit hard, it hardens up, but normally, it's gelatinous and soft, with its core in the middle being its actual weak point.
I also wanted to just show off this epic CG that our artist, Reddart made for the Patreon banner;
Finally, yes, there's sex scenes; I'm not going to show much of them off given the nature of the game, but here's two versions of two of the scenes;
We're not done yet, though; there's also the music. On the topic of the sex scenes, there's even different event music based on whether the sex you're having with the person (because of your current relationship) is romantic, intense, awkward, or comedic.
For example, Alice would have romantic music, Ruth would have intense, and Sylvie, being your best friend since forever, would be awkward.
As the game progresses though and your connection with characters changes, the sex scenes you'll have with them will change, too.
You also have options to disable all tentacle machine sex scenes in the game, or disable all yuri scenes in the game, or vice versa. They still happen, but they'll just be glossed over quickly and you won't see anything.
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has all the music we've posted publicly for the game so far, just keep going down the list and look for anything that says (Reclaim Reality) on it. (The same musician does music for Future Fragments, also!)
Here's some of my personal favorites from the game;
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(that's right, EVERY character in the game gets their own theme song!)
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(played when the characters are discussing what to do next/figuring out a problem; there's multiple "event songs" throughout the game for things like despair, comedy, crisis, etc.)
Songs have motifs too that give away cues/references to the relationships between characters; for example, Briley, Melinda's ex-girlfriend, was forced to re-think her worldview after getting influenced by Melinda's own view of the world/people, but she's still coming to terms with this, so a small part of her song (from 1:16 to 1:35) has a portion of Melinda's motif in it.
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Polly and Karen both ended up meeting each other in college; Polly as a single mother, and Karen as a horribly unlucky, but still very happy office worker. The two became fast friends with Karen often babysitting for Polly and Polly sort of "grounding" Karen's rampant energy, as well as them working together under Ruth and with Melinda. So, their theme songs feature a single motif which they both share as a result.
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There's other interactions like that throughout the game, of course.
That's about all I can think of though for a brief surface level of the assets/game, there's lots more I haven't shown, but I hope that gives you some faith that we are working hard on this and do plan to deliver something just as solid as Future Fragments with it