RPGM Completed Star Knightess Aura [v1.0.2] [aura-dev]

[smkey21]

Good to know this. Was going to play this again, but if it's not finished-finished, I'll just wait till it is.

It won't be finished when 1.1 comes out either. Unless the plan has changed relatively recently there's going to be similar content patches up to at least 1.4 that will take similar amounts of time. All of the planned content for the game from now on is going to be expanding side content and polishing that shouldn't really impact any of the main story.

The game has the completed tag for a reason, and you'll be able to put a ton of hours into it without seeing all the content it has. Besides under the hood stuff there are, so far, four things being added this month for the 1.1 release. First is pre-festival of greed content with Arwin. Second is alternate clothes options for Earth Aura that are basically just up to the player's preference. Third is additional difficulty modifiers, called NG-, that will mostly be of interest to people who are interested in challenging themselves or trying to maximize their NG+ score. Finally, there's been work done to make the game easier to mod.

 

[Efilia]

It won't be finished when 1.1 comes out either. Unless the plan has changed relatively recently there's going to be similar content patches up to at least 1.4 that will take similar amounts of time. All of the planned content for the game from now on is going to be expanding side content and polishing that shouldn't really impact any of the main story.

The game has the completed tag for a reason, and you'll be able to put a ton of hours into it without seeing all the content it has. Besides under the hood stuff there are, so far, four things being added this month for the 1.1 release. First is pre-festival of greed content with Arwin. Second is alternate clothes options for Earth Aura that are basically just up to the player's preference. Third is additional difficulty modifiers, called NG-, that will mostly be of interest to people who are interested in challenging themselves or trying to maximize their NG+ score. Finally, there's been work done to make the game easier to mod.

So up to 2.0 (final?) there will be similar type of content added. Side events, clothes etc?

I also wanted to wait some more but guess I will just try it before the next update. I will strangle my ocd somehow lol.

 

[smkey21]

So up to 2.0 (final?) there will be similar type of content added. Side events, clothes etc?

I also wanted to wait some more but guess I will just try it before the next update. I will strangle my ocd somehow lol.

I'm pretty sure getting to 1.4 was expected to take about two years with a shift to only working on this game's development every other month. Note that a goal of development after 1.0 is to not have "to be implemented"/"in development" roadblocks anymore, so everything worked on for 1.1 will be feature complete for that release. There's a public post on the patreon, but it does spoil bits of the plot.

For relatively non-spoiler things there are a couple things I remember off the top of my head. Eventually, there's a goal for Aura's reactions in scenes to be more consistent with her level of corruption. An example used was heavily corrupted Aura doing the alchemist's discount scene is currently very jarring. Some of the ending cutscenes will reflect her corruption/lewd stats more than they currently do. There's also a plan to add some variety to the repeatable content. The game has a single artist being commissioned for art, so low priority stuff like clothes will probably depend on how much work is needed for required CGs and such.

The four releases will each have lewd content added that will lead to bad endings being added for already started chains of lewd events. I already mentioned that 1.1 is Arwin, 1.2 and 1.3 are two of her potential Royan cheating partners Roland then Hermann. 1.4 will be about further corrupting Aura's companions.

 

[FluffyBunnyCarrotStick]

It won't be finished when 1.1 comes out either. Unless the plan has changed relatively recently there's going to be similar content patches up to at least 1.4 that will take similar amounts of time. All of the planned content for the game from now on is going to be expanding side content and polishing that shouldn't really impact any of the main story.

The game has the completed tag for a reason, and you'll be able to put a ton of hours into it without seeing all the content it has. Besides under the hood stuff there are, so far, four things being added this month for the 1.1 release. First is pre-festival of greed content with Arwin. Second is alternate clothes options for Earth Aura that are basically just up to the player's preference. Third is additional difficulty modifiers, called NG-, that will mostly be of interest to people who are interested in challenging themselves or trying to maximize their NG+ score. Finally, there's been work done to make the game easier to mod.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I played this one early in development and have been waiting to come back to it. I get disinterested with playing unfinished games over and over and want to just play the 'finished' project. If he's fleshing things out and adding more stuff, even if it's just cosmetic, to me the game isn't actually finished. So I'll wait, as I said before, and if it takes years and I'm still interested, then I'll come back.

 

[Sir Edward Ross]

I think the idea with NG+ is that you use it as a sort of stepping stone towards whatever your goal is. So sure, if you have the best possible score already, it might not be doing much, but you don't even have to beat the game to start over with NG+ bonuses, let alone beat it with the best possible score. If you get stuck, you can start over with a boost, and maybe that helps you get further. And if you have already mastered the game, well, you can go for a faster completion or something.

 

[TrickyL]

Interesting news for 1.1:

You must be registered to see the links

Hidden Alicia - I am very pleasently surprised I was able to implement this this week. I thought I would at most be able to present a technical proof of concept or be forced to abandon this concept, but I found a nice architecture that allowed me to engineer this mode quite nicely. What this mode is about: You will not be able control Alicia as usual and you won't see her actions in Aura's mind. Instead she will apply mental changes automatically and except for a random sound effect that occurs when she successfully applies a mental change, you will have no clue as to what's going on.
This mode is aimed both at role-players who want a higher level immersion as Aura, and to experience the game in more of a mystery-mode and to those who have problems with the two-player nature of the game and would rather be able to just focus on the Aura-side.

I have tried my best to implement an Alicia strategy that avoids getting locked, but I still need to figure out a good solution for the case where Alicia cannot progress due to some lewd stat being too low (e.g. 20 Lewdness for the Temperance Orb). Since the player cannot see the mental world, they don't know which stat they might be lacking for. For the checks that require Lewd Knowledge, Exhibitionism or Cheating, Alicia will use the Lewd Token Machine in order to generate those stats if necessary

I was able to perform a full playthrough in this mode but I only recently finished its implementation, so bugs will most likely ensure. In particular since I developed the feature as I went deeper into Aura's mind, so there is a good chance that I might have broken something from the earlier / middle parts I didn't retest.

 

[torkenstiem]

Although others have said its finished, sounds like some really nice features are still being added to the game. I think I'm just gonna wait till the game is completely COMPLETED for good, before playing it again.

 

[Manju]

Just to be clear, the dev currently plans to develop another game alongside the updates for SKA, and because of that the planned content for SKA for now should only finish releasing in about two years at least. As we mostly know exactly what the updates will bring (you can check it on the open post on patreon "Long-Term Development Roadmap Post-1.0"), you could have strategic saves to check the new content as they release on Steam/here every 6 months (or less if someone keep posting the patreon updates here), as they're mainly bad end branches.

 

[LazyAsIam]

i want to change my device so i will put my save here for a while if you want to use it, go ahead. it's not 100% but you can use it as a new game+

 

[bleachedturtle]

I would play again when the hidden Alicia mechanic is out

 

[Terix3]

Few days ago I was this close to dropping the game,I think the feedback could be useful so here are the sources of my frustration.

Enemies hidden behind environment – I’m not a fan when loot is hidden this way but argument can be made that finding it can be exciting and you don’t need to find all the loot to progress the game. But ask yourself what is gonna happen when player gets ambushed by enemy he didn’t see ? Yup a load, that's fun eh ?

Extra fast enemies – if you don’t want given enemy to be ambushed, fix their location in such way that they can’t be or make them unable to be ambushed in some other way. This is nothing but invitation for save scumming.

Hidden passages – not the cracks you need to blow up but the holes in the ground that you need to walk into to discover them. It is one thing when you expect there is a passage and you look for it it is another when you casualty walk around and then suddenly screen changes. I had three of those situations that I walked into a passage and that begs a question how many have I missed. Now ask yourself what type of gameplay this promotes? Face checking like a lunatic every cranny that is obscured by environment.

Why do you think enemies got levels in RPGs? (those that don’t either employ “you can finish game at lv1” approach or have some other way of communicating/controlling difficulty). In this game there is no way of telling how hard is the enemy other than saving and face checking it. There is bestiary but it is inaccurate and you need to fight the enemy first to have info while its not accessible in combat and you can’t run away from fights.


All and all I feel like the game got many outdated design choices from times where one game would have to last you for months. That is no longer the case, I don’t need/want to be playing same game/ piece of game until I get things right, that is not fun. Also do not mistake it with me wanting to game to be easy, I enjoy challenge. Read on the difference between challenging and punishing games, SKA is more of the latter.