It is way too porny for jufot's list, but I find that game curious. It bored me, despite having many elements that I found appealing, such as realistic LI interactions (when they found out about each other, for example, they dumped the MC).
The main problem is the story. The stakes involved usually felt very, very low. Yeah, the MC was going a bit off piste professionally and trying to start a band, but his father and sister are super rich.
If the MC fails, there is a feather bed waiting for him. He was hardly a working class Paul McCartney scraping by in late-1950s Liverpool, or Kurt Cobain living by a thread in the depressed logging town of Aberdeen, WA... he's more like an even richer, more annoying Marcus Mumford.
I have to admit I have a soft spot for
Become a Rockstar. The writing is very weak in places and the start of the game (with the MC creeping on Selina) is rocky, but it eventually cleans up its act and creates some surprisingly compelling character dynamics. The visuals are downright gorgeous in places, too, which helps.
I think the problem isn't a lack of stakes per se. Just because the MC has a theoretically cushy lifestyle to fall back on doesn't mean it'd be a painless outcome. Being a rock star is the MC's dream; going back to the family means having to give that up. Moreover, he'd also have to toe his father's line going forward, effectively abandoning all the non-conformist quirks that make him who he is. The stakes are very real... on paper. In reality, however, very little of that danger makes it through to the player.
The MC is preposterously confident and
exceedingly laid back, which already filters out a lot of the threat simply due to his rose-colored glasses. On top of that, the story structure gives no weight to the obstacles that do manage to cross our path. The MC's dad takes away the band's practice space and the band instantly gets a better practice space. Dad hires the MC's ex to sabotage the band, but she decides not to without the MC having to lift a finger. The MC is supposedly the black sheep of his family, yet Julia (the family member we see most often) is his close friend and ally. The band comes together automatically with no real effort on our part, and the only professional setback they suffer is a last-minute contract dispute that is brought up *and* resolved in the final chapter. We hear often that dating within the band isn't a good idea, but that turns out to be just another paper tiger: dating Lisa and Jade is not only possible, it's the only polyamorous option that won't blow up in your face. The MC's rise to glory is pretty much bulletproof... unless you try to sleep around
outside the band. Then you'd better be on your best behavior.
When you get down to it, there's really only one serious threat in the entire game:
Julia nearly dying from a stray bullet. That's a major curveball and it's treated the with appropriate gravity. It really does shake up the otherwise unflappable MC. The problem is that by the time it happens the MC has already patched things up with the rest of his family so the crisis is entirely self contained. Before you know it
Julia's out of danger and the MC can go on with business as usual.
If the game had been restructured so that the MC's father was a genuine obstacle to the band coming together and he remained one up to the point
Julia was shot, the story could have benefited immensely. Not only would that make the band's early success feel far more earned, but now the MC's darkest hour would reinforce the family drama rather than supplant it. Without
Julia at his side, would the MC be able to make peace with his family? Would he even want to try? And can he sort that out while still negotiating the band's first contract *and* surviving any fallout from his potential romantic misadventures?
Alas, it was not to be. What we got was still worth playing (IMHO), but the MC's eventual triumph was a foregone conclusion.
Oh man. The amount of "forced content" complaints I got on my first release... hoo boy. I eventually acquiesced on 50% of it (there were 2 instances), but the other half I remained steadfast.... I'm glad I did tbh. (And all it was, was a single sex scene with a mostly disposable character!). And my game is most definitely NOT even close to harem. (In fact, if you try to play harem? You straight up get murdered. Game over, try again!)
It's so odd. People insist on being able to fuck literally everything that moves in the game, but simultaneously demand they be the ONLY one do to so, WHILE demanding that they always be given a choice whether or not to do so.... it's fucking weird is what it is.
In my experience the set of people who insist on being able to opt out of everything is a slightly different subset than those who insist on being able to collect everyone with a vagina for their pokeharem. Still, there's no question it's hard to hit the sweet spot between railroading the player and watering things down to the point the MC is too bland to have reactions at all. There are few things more disengaging than when the MC is drooling of an LI you can't stand, but there's only so much time and effort a dev can spend on a game.
I do think you can get a surprising amount of mileage out of dialog options, though, as long as you structure them carefully. Even if the MC is ultimately required to fulfill the needs of the plot, it can be cathartic to snark at the person/place/situation the player dislikes. If you combine those options with some built-in explanation for why the MC is unhappy, you can simultaneously help establish the MC's personality and how our control can influence it. This works best if you start early in the game so the players will get a sense of what they're likely in for and can learn to embrace it (or drop the game), but it's still a balancing act.
Of course, this isn't a substitute for having meaningful choices, just a way to take the edge off it when choices do need to be forced. You still have to pick those battles carefully. You can't can't please all the people all the time so in the end you need to figure out what's most important about the story you want to tell. Focus on that first and only add deviations from it when time and resources permit. Better to stick to your guns and signal your intent early on so everyone knows where they stand. (Just try not to imply we'll get to make meaningful choices early in the game only to railroad us into forced paths later because you *really* want the game to go a certain way.)
For the record, I enjoyed
Alive but I did find the romance paths a bit awkward - particularly Mary's. We learn early on she has a crush on the MC, but we can't act on that crush until later in the game (as apparently the MC never noticed). That strongly suggests the MC doesn't know Mary much better than we do, but the game still requires us to start dating Mary almost immediately after it becomes possible otherwise her path will close. Personally I'd have preferred if we could either return her interest early in the game or if we had more time to consider dating her after the MC finally realizes that's an option. I'm willing to handwave the exceedingly short courtships since this is a game, but it's a lot easier to do that in cases like Nikki or Erin where the MC has only met the girl recently. It's a lot harder for me to buy in a case like Mary where there's a platonic relationship than needs to be revised first; the transition feels way too sudden.
It's not a major problem, and as I said I enjoyed the game. But it did stick with me, so take that for what you think it's worth.
