Glad you like the characters. What you describe is actually how it was originally going to be. The whole plan was for it to start as a VN, and then expand into a sandbox game once they got to the academy. However, I faced fairly hefty backlash about this concept right from the very start, and ended up changing it somewhat. Normally I wouldn't advocate for changing the creative vision for a project just because a lot of people dislike what you're planning to make, but I'm glad I did in this case. Mostly, because making this ghost hunt has taught me that sandbox devs are crazy. The amount of work, and general complexity is much greater than standard VN stuff. The game likely wouldn't be very far along at all at this point. I'd still like to make a sandbox game at some point, though hopefully avoiding a lot of the things people dislike about them (Grinding, waiting until X day at X location for event X to trigger, progress X character's story to unlock the next event with unrelated character, etc) but for now I like what I've got going on. The ghost hunt is kinda my dabble into sandbox stuff, and while it's had mixed reception so far (Mostly negative here, but this isn't the only place I gather feedback), it has taught me a lot about making them in general.
The gatdam system was orignally envisioned with this sandbox plan in mind, and had to be adapted, so it's totally understandable why you'd think it would suit it well, given it was originally gonna be something of a trainer game as well. When I first started the game I was very much one of those "I'm gonna make a game, it's gonna be best game ever and have all this crazy stuff that I don't know how to do yet, but I'll learn and then I'll do it and it'll be great" kinda people you see sometimes. Only difference was that I actually ended up making something, and dialed back the scope to make it actually something I could make.
Assuming I don't get caught up in some weird terminal illness faking scandal or something, I'll see you in a few updates time ;D Thanks for playing.
Not for this newest version, but I believe someone made a port for 0.2.02, which is the last version. I haven't played it, so I don't know how well it works, but I haven't heard of any complaints about it.
https://f95zone.to/threads/stormside-v0-21-01-atemsiel.115722/post-9374683
Fair points. I think I've spoken enough about the issues with the ghost hunt in this thread, so I won't repeat myself too much, but generally, yeah I know the navigation is a bit shitty. I can fix this to a certain extent, but for the most part, it is what it is. Though the planned fix may also make it easier to find the boiler room, which will fix the issues for some people. I originally wanted to have a lot more actual events in it, but I didn't really allow myself enough time to firstly learn how to make the thing, and also actually make it. Not to say I overestimated my abilities, I think it's more that I underestimated the time required. It's part of why I want to do something similar with ghost hunt 2, but using all the lessons learned from this one. The fact that people are offering constructive feedback on the section, rather than just saying "Terrible idea, don't do it again" is an indicator to me that with better execution, the concept could work well. It's a while away anyway at the moment, so I'll forget about ghost hunt 2 for now. Sasha's gotta find another ghost first. I don't really have much to say about the sounds, since they're intended to be unpleasent, however the section wasn't intended for people to get quite as lost as they've ended up getting, so they weren't meant to be subjected to the sounds for as long as they've ended up being. In truth, I probably won't change the sounds themselves, and hopefully the navigation changes will help to reduce this as an issue as well.
The thing about the scenes is kinda the nature of the game. I intend to take the branching quite far, so making choices will give you some scenes, and lock out others. Sometimes the update to update playstyle can have this effect too, because yeah right now it looks as though the MC just doesn't get any release if he goes with the dom stuff, but the update doesn't cover what happens the next morning. A few updates from now, since the player will be able to go straight to the next morning without having to wait however long for an update, the issue won't be there as such. I don't really have too much of a way around this without just making every update its own little self contained chapter, but that doesn't really work with the overall plan. Essentially, I'm not really trying to make a series of little chapters which all come together to eventually make a full game, but rather I'm trying to make a game, and I give people access to it as it's made, which sometimes results in things like this. (Though I do try to end updates in a kinda sensible location, but it's not always completely seamless).
Either way, glad you like it despite the flaws. I have no plan to stop making it, though hopefully I can get a new GPU soon, because that placeholder scene with the stickmen was no joke, I legitimately cannot render out that scene lol. I will at some point, because it's really not supposed to have MS paint graphics.