Naked Ambition .31 Changelog

I'm going to try something a little new here. This is the change log for the upcoming Naked Ambition update that should be out at the end of the week. But this is no ordinary change log, this is an annotated change log. So I'm going to go through the changes one by one and tell you why I'm making them.

Gameplay changes:

Changed Festival of Flowers to allow the player to chose the event the Princess partakes in.

• While I personally find the idea of training the Princess to be a master swordsman and her deciding to drink tea hilarious, it wasn't landing with a lot of people. For these events where it's possible for the player character to be there and direct her, as in the Festival of Flame, you will no longer be at the Princess's whims.

Changed the first conversation with Adelin from a "Yellow" check to a "Conversation 5" check                                                                                                            

• This decision has minor story implications usually and major implications if you want to pursue any of the endings that involve Adelin. The check as is i 100% random, and while it's early enough to make resetting not a big deal, this check really should be something the player can control.

You can now force the princess to let in Cecily or not with stat penalties for doing so, like the vizier

• Continuing the theme above, whether or not you allow Cecily into your kingdom is one of the most important decisions by far. It determines whether she can be your advisor, whether Evette and Ulric can be you advisor, and will also determine some aspects of endgame activities. As such, having this check either be random or require intense planning just of this event, especially so early in the game, was detrimental to the experience.

Lowered lesson bonus from choosing matching color dialogue from 1.5 to 1.4

• Previously it was a little too easy to gain through these bonuses, making taking advantage of them generally more important than the other bonuses conversation options provide. Lowering this bonus should make planning for relationship stats or deck colors factor more into the decision process.

Choosing the pink dialogue option now increases Fitness and Strength lessons gain by 1.4

• The pink option having no bonus and the Physical stats having no way to boost them incongruous with the rest of the system. Now if you make the Princess more oriented towards lust, she will be all about getting that bubble butt.

You can't have the princess study a skill if that skill is over 40 and more than 2* it's pair. No more having 100 wisdom and 5 knowledge

• Previously, you used to be able to push a single stat to 100 far earlier than should be possible for story reasons. Making it so the Princess can't keep gaining Strength if she doesn't have enough Fitness both makes logical sense and will help keep min-maxing for very specific things in check.

Story changes:

Added new summer random event here the Princess visits the player character.

• This event was added to add more variation as well as have another instance in the early game where the player-Princess relationship stats come into play.

Added new summer random event where the princess has her fortune told, leading to minor reputation bonuses based on what sings she draws

• This event was largely added because I had the code for the "most color drawn" system already made and wanted to use it somewhere after it was cut with the Festival of Flower change. It also draws more thematic attention the the signs system.

Changed the post festival of flames love scene if Princess is a futa to be more penisy

• Previously it was kind of penisy, but now there's more penis involvement.

Made the reject Cecily sequence less insane (It made sense in an older version I swear)

• Older versions of Naked Ambition used a completely different system for the Princess's personality system than the current card based one. In that system, this scene triggered if the Princess had high enough "Cruelty". But with the new version, this scene makes no sense and makes the Princess seem insane. So it has been changed to be more quirky than malicious.

Interface Changes:

Moved the Princess relationship stats to the Subconscious menu from the People menu

• These stats are of minor importance in the current version, but play a big role further down the road. Some players had no idea they even existed largely due to being in a not very obvious place. The new location should bring much more attention to them.

Added chibi Princess to Subconscious menu

• 
• Aw, what a cutie. Chibi Princess is a visual representation of the Princess relationship stats.

Calendar available one week earlier

• It was previously too hard to plan for the first council member meeting

The calendar now tells you what the target skill number is for council member encounters

As I expect the player to have to learn and remember these numbers anyway, there's no reason to not include them in the game itself.

Made it harder to click through color checks without seeing what cards the princess drew

• Previously some players were under the impression that they had to click the cards themselves and were just clicking through them by accident as they sped through things. The change to timing should make it more obvious what it happening.

Skills that have their lessons boosted by choosing a particular color conversation option now have a visual indicator that the boost is active on the lesson select menu

• Previously this mechanic wasn't telegraphed very well. Now you won't have to discover it by accident.

Changed the fail check sound effect to be less negative sounding

• The sound effect made failing sound more bad then it actually is.

Added  a message at the start of a playthrough to try and set expectations for the experience better

• This game looks lie a VN, talks like a VN, but is actually a rougelike. People have been going into the game with the wrong expectations about hoe the game will work and what they should expect. This new start up message should set expectations better.

You can save and load the game with a few concessions. The decisions the Princess makes (card color checks) are saved permanently for each run.

• The big one people have been begging for. For this game to function, the Princess's decisions have to be absolute (except for story critical ones). The game is about guiding the Princess, not controlling her actions. If you can just reload and have her choose something different, it defeats the point. Now, if people are going to cheat and change things with console commands and such, fine. But ruining the core game shouldn't be a part of the basic interface. 
• However, I've decided that for most aspects of the game, I'm fine with reloading. So I've made a system that will save the Princess's decisions every time you reach one until you start a new game. This means you can go back and choose new lessons, new dialogue options etc. But if the Princess decides she want to play lawn bowls. Then she's going to play lawn bowls every time that run.

To reset the Princess's decisions, you must restart the game. This will also delete your saves to prevent the old save data conflicting with the new randomized run

• Because of the randomized elements, loading an old save into a new seeding in a different run can make things go very strangely. Different events happening multiple times, meeting some council members repeatedly and none at all, etc. So when you start a new run, the old run's saves will be deleted to prevent this.

Changed the phrasing of color tests. It's no longer Test: X Passed/Failed, but something more gentle. This should make the intention of those checks clearer.

• When the Princess makes a decision, not drawing the color isn't really "failing". There's lots of options that are only opened up by not passing the check. But the old phrasing of pass/fail and the old sound effect made it seem like a bad thing was happening.

Bug fixes:

Fixed white box over text in android version

Fixed a bug where multiple affliction cards being healed at the same time could cause the wrong cards to be removed from the subconscious

Fixed the week indicator on the calendar disappearing if you changed pages.

Fixed a crash in the noblewoman route after gaining the submission card

And that's what's coming in .31! If you liked the annotated changelog and want me to do more in the future, let me know.