Hey @
eccma417, I have some criticism that's meant to be constructive so I hope you don't mind me sharing it. I really, really think this is a fantastic game, so my criticism really isn't coming from a negative place.
To me, the most fun aspect of the game is just playing it somewhat casually/carelessly and allowing Lona to get into all sorts of trouble, and then watching her slowly crawl out of trouble and try to put her life back together, bit by bit. But usually that doesn't really happen. For example: getting captured by bandits and becoming a sex slave. That's fun to me because I like all the dark sexual content you've made in this game and I think it makes for good drama. But too often what happens is that the "bad" outcomes and scenarios are complete dead ends, as in they may as well just be "game over" screens because there's no way out. Lona gets captured by bandits and then get gangraped by loads of people. By the time that's done, she is so injured and she moves so slowly that she has no chance to outrun anyone to escape. And there's no real way to heal her because she's had all of her items taken away and she gets repeatedly raped everyday anyway. And even when sneaking (I have 11 points in Scoutcraft and I'm relatively early in the game) I can't sneak by the guards, no matter how many times I try. So she's just stuck. Game over, basically.
My problem with this is that you have all of these enjoyable/interesting/unique "bad" outcomes in the game, and I want to play through them and enjoy them. But I don't want them to be complete dead ends. It feels like most of them ultimately lead to "reload an old save and try again." I think the game should definitely be HARD, and I think it completely fits the narrative and the tone of the game. But it shouldn't be so hard that every time you hit one of these "bad" outcomes you instantly feel like you need to reload an old save. Otherwise it actually DISCOURAGES the player from experiencing those events and they miss out on all that interesting content and drama. I want to enjoy all of that content: I want to see Lona struggle through it, and then eventually escape and desperately try to figure out a way to make enough money to get her shackles removed, etc. It makes for a more interesting scenario and story.
I hope that makes sense. Anyway, it's just my opinion. I just keep running into really interesting situations, but it feels like there's no way out so I just have to reload. I feel like from a game design perspective, you've made all of these really cool "bad" scenarios so you should integrate them more into the game. The less that people need to reload saves and the more that they're encouraged to just live with the consequences of their actions, the better.