Naked Ambition Round 3

The version of Naked Ambition I released in the last test build was an overall failure. I didn't receive very much feedback except from a small group of people, but here's the results.

Problem 1: The card system while an improvement from the first version isn't the right fit for this particular game. Naked Ambition is about following the princess and seeing what she does, not being the princess. The card system was much more engaging, but provided too much of a sense of ownership over what the princess did.

Solution 1: Using the colored cards is much more intuitive overall than the sliders, so the card system will stay in a more limited format. Cards that boost stats are gone, instead the princess starts with a deck of colored cards. When she makes a decision she draws five of them and if she draws the color of the check, she'll play the card. The game of trying to keep cards in hand to anticipate future events was a fun system, but didn't achieve the games goals.

Problem 2: The player has no self insert character so they default to inserting themselves into the princess. 

Solution 2: The story is being changed to give a play avatar character. Every week the princess will go talk to the player insert character and you will have a choice of dialogue options. These options will directly correlate to a color of card which will then be added to the princess's deck. This replaces the previous system of "activities" which would add cards. However this adds...

Problem 3: Without the random selection of three out of five cards, with the new system it is easy to manipulate the princess's deck to the state you want and at the point, much of the player interaction becomes routine. 

Solution 3: The dialogue options will have consequences beyond just adding cards to the deck. Different options will boost the lesson output of the lesson associated with that color. In addition, the princess will have personal relationship stats with the player avatar character. Focusing too much in one direction or the other will cause negative effects as the princess starts to dislike the main character, become less reliant on your advice, become confident enough to occasionally ignore what you say, etc. Ideally, these changes will make the player have to choose between getting the right color balance and maintaining their relationship with the princess in the manner they want.

So those are the changes to the core gameplay of Naked Ambition coming up. Thanks for bearing with me while I keep iterating the systems to make the game as good as I can.