Conviction Chronicles blog post #4 - Updated Alpha

2 weeks ago now I uploaded the alpha, and I got some feedback on it. A lot of feedback and I didn't realize how many bugs there was and things to change. Aishia has to have some of her animations replaced, but I'll do that later.

Link: https://evilous.itch.io/conviction-chronicles-alpha

Mostly making this blogpost now mainly so I can get it out of the way, and there has been a lot of changes.

Tina Redesign

I did some polls, only one person did the poll, but I had multiple people talk to me about the designs. To my surprise, people liked Agatha and Aishia for the female designs the most. I was worried about Aishia with how people would respond, but so far she hasn't gotten a negative response yet. The characters people didn't like the most were Tina, Stripey, and Lily. With Tina being the worst. I'm keeping Stripey the same, since his design is integrated with their character's backstory and such. Tina was the first one I made, so it's the most flawed. I scrapped the original and made something new.

The new design is closer to a school girl outfit, with a modest skirt and a blue t-shirt with a yellow medallion around her neck. Her hair is long like the original Tina's, but is more refined.

I'm still keeping the "average mystery protag" vibe with her, but her outfit and her dialogue has much more of a personality behind it.

Bianca rework

Bianca was too aggressive for some people, so she was toned down with her dialogue. She wasn't liked as much as I thought she would be. She now as a tired like tone at times, where she can be aggressive, but it's mostly when she has to be.

Her theme had to be remade because of this, and that it was too fast for dialogue. Slowing down the original track didn't come out well, so I ended up making something brand new. I think it flows a lot better now.

Skipping reactions and reference

People had a problem with the eating and watching the reactions for the influence game and breakfast. So I made it go by faster where it goes through the text automatically with options to skip the dialogue all together, which can be set in the menu. Makes it go by much faster. For the influence game, since info is lost, but for people who don't want to read everything for it, they can skip it automatically. 

Since every new object having a tutorial tied to it, people didn't like that either. Tutorialization is hard to get right and I don't have a perfect solution. So I added a way to skip every tutorial in the game at the start of the game, which should be heavily helpful for replaying the game. Since the overall structure is being set up for that purpose, to give new reasons to replay and try new things out.

There are two refences. An item refence which shows each item once discovered once in a game, and a general reference. 

The General one has different categories for characters, story/lore, gameplay, etc. And they can be selected to read up on a special topic. I think this is the best way to handle it, so when things change, you can remember things quickly using the menu instead of repeating it in game.

Rewrites

Most of my time recently was for rewriting everything. A majority of dialogue and text had to be rewritten to be shorter and more unique for the characters with fixing any problems. This took a long time.

Some of the characters I had to switch around the personality and a couple of other aspects of them so there isn't too much overlap between each character in terms of characterization. Mainly to prevent anybody from being too similar from each other.

The Influence Game has the most where every character now has unique dialogue for it. Before I was planning to wait until after the character's free times were written and integrated before adding this, but I decided to add it now. Depending on the character they react differently when certain things happen. Some will be impressed you managed to fool them. Some will be mad. Some will be sad. Etc.

The only thing I wasn't able to rewrite yet was the characters in the day time when they are walking around or doing something before asking them if they want to hang out. Mainly since that will take a while due to how it's set up and I want to be sure the character's personalities are fully set before doing that.

Influence Game additions

With everything above, there are two new features.

Storage for overall for each character before a trial. Basically it stores the average of collaborates and sabotages done against them and it makes them react a certain way.

Life Savers have a 20% chance to be gotten for free when buying at the shop. This allows you to change what vote you receive against you randomly when used. So if you believe you didn't get the right choice in due to your partner for the game, you can use it. it's very easy to get. It adds strategy for the Influence game with more dynamics with the inventory system as a whole. It also covers up a small bug for the AIs that changes what vote they get for little good reason.

Ui changes

I Changed the dialogue boxes to be more uniform to be like Biancas. Where hers is pink, talking is red, and the player's thinking is blue. Makes everything highly distinct and uniform at the same time.

For the thinking and talking art. I changed it to be of an image of the MC thinking. This is so it can handle as many options at a time on screen with showcasing it is a separate option menu and making everything readable. 

Doing this helps with making the game much less like danganronpa and persona for these aspects so it stands more on it's own. 

Status Screen

This is a small visual screen that shows everybody currently alive at a time. It also has a daily anagram and there are 20 randomized anagrams. Solving them can prove useful, but they are mostly from the bias of Bianca, who might be trying to manipulate the game with non-complete information. 

Lily rework in the future?

I'm still thinking about how to do Lily the best, since right now she can choose between multiple personalities, but in game it isn't exactly showcased well yet. Right now only one personality is showcased during the influence game with her dialogue, and that has to change. And her general design might need a rework too, since it was the second least liked female character design by a long shot. I have to figure out some ideas that fit her more too.

I might do this right away to get it out of the way. 

New game plus related stuff

If the player dies or makes it past a certain date, the game will end. The game ending is saved and the tutorials are auto skipped on replay with informing the player how to reread anything they might want. 

But this also means I can save whatever I want across save files and the start menu. I'm not sure how expanded upon I'll make this, but this is extremely good with only showing information the player doesn't know at certain times, and to make the start menu more dynamic later on. I do want the start menu to be something interesting that is dynamic. Right now it's simple but bland. 

Anything else?

I'll make a steam page once the AI is done and the free time events and release a more public demo, along with a good intro and some other features for the main menu, etc. The free time events are going to take a while, mainly due to how I want to do them and how much editing while making them is needed for it to go well.

But so far the game is on track, and I did get more feedback and people playing the demo than I expected. For itch.io, 1000 views without any sort of promotion is insanely good. Since you get downed out in seconds if not reposted anywhere else. So I do believe this has a high chance of doing well. It just needs a lot of time to refine and to make sure it's ready.