Astra - Design Philosophy: Story Arcs, Character Arcs, Romance Paths

Hello Patrons!

This is going to be one of the phatter posts as we discuss a bunch of different things today! We’ll be talking about a few of the design philosophies regarding Astra, namely Arcs (story & character), romance/routes, and how jealousy is handled given the new romance/routes design. So without further delay, let’s jump into it!

Let’s go ahead and set a benchmark of how we designed our previous games to get a better understanding of our thought process for Astra! One thing to keep in mind that is fundamentally a huge difference is our design philosophies were done ‘on the fly’ for our previous games since we had so many unknowns, resource constraints, and of course we were inexperienced as a studio. Astra on the other hand will be our next halo project utilizing everything we learned!

First, we can discuss ACE. Please review the chart:

As you can see, it was pretty linear for the most part where we had a story arc segment followed by a single character choice which followed into a single character arc and then pivoted back into the story arc. The benefit of this is that choices felt like they had larger impacts (since they literally did!) but the downside is that you only really got to explore one character arc. There were even instances where if the variables lined up a certain way, you got stuck with a character that you don’t know anything about except it was in act 3 so the scene comes completely out of left field as if you knew them! In the context of the game, this is true since MC has been with this characters daily for months. In the context of reality, you as the player spent such limited time with them that it felt like ‘huh?’. Let’s not talk about how the flow chart ends. :^)

Game number two, let’s take a look at Crystalline’s chart:

Crystalline was one of our big decisions to go with a single romance option. In that way, it followed a very linear path and since we didn’t want the other characters to be forced, what we did was make all their events optional but at the same time make them all doable within the time span. I think this felt like fake choices to the player since it didn’t matter if you picked or not, it could have just been part of the main path. Our thought process was that you could hang out with the characters you wanted and pass on the others however from a players perspective, it just made choices look fake. This feeling was also exacerbated by the fact there was only one romance option. On the other hand, since the game was linear we could design a more intricate story arc and character arcs and they could all be experienced. It was almost the ‘opposite’ of ACE in some ways!

And now to our most recent game, Ethereal Enigma’s chart:

We decided to mix a bit of ACE and Crystalline where the side non-romanceable characters were put into the main path as side character arcs and the romance characters were the choices into their individual arcs. We had filler scenes to bridge these gaps that were slice of life in nature but didn’t propel the plot forward. There was a core issue with this, the romance option of Erilynn was a MAIN PATH plot, however Kira was not. If you played the game romancing Kira, things felt smoother however if you played the game romancing Erilynn, Kira felt forced/out of place. This was definitely unexpected but in hindsight made sense since ONE of the romance options was integral to the main plot whereas the other was not. This is why we had an abundance of filler scenes to help flesh out everyone but then that took away from the main story arc.

With all that being said, we finally arrive at Astral Ascension’s chart:

The first thing that is immediately noticeable is that it is a simplified flow on a clean loop but with variance. To explain our thought process, the story arc will always be the core focus of the game which is why we’ve created a couple story arcs for the MC that will also grow and even have some plot twists along the way! The second thing we did is make all the character arcs part of the main flow in the chart. This will help develop each of the characters whether you are pursuing them romantically or not and give more story.

Speaking of romance, the waifu events will appear organically in that you don’t pick them. One thing I saw is that people will just keep picking the girl they like/want to romance so that choice also feels a bit ‘pointless’ stacking them against other options. Instead with Astra, you interact with everyone in story arc and character arc, but as you build points with characters you will get optional romance events periodically (and without you picking them). In this way, you can also technically pursue all the girls because if you are flirty with them in all their character arcs and main story, all their optional romance events will also trigger!

What makes this even more delicious is that if you continue to pursue them in their optional romance events, we now have the data to make jealousy scenes more intricate. In this way, we can also see if you are only pursuing one waifu and make those adjustments too. It can also be granular that we can even take permutations of two (let’s say you only flirted with Iris + Luna but remained platonic with Vaela, we can pick that up and make scenes to reflect this).

The last part that I am personally very excited for is that if you are pursuing one girl romantically but you have a character arc scene with another girl, the other girl can COMMENT AND TALK TO YOU about the girl you are romantic with without it feeling forced cause it’s part of her character arc (and platonic in this instance) and that exact scene can play off completely different IF YOU ARE romantic with them. And now imagine she is jealous of another girl and the scene can PLAY THAT SCENARIO as well. Honestly, I am getting giddy with how some of the future chapter scenes will play!!

If you survived through that wall of text, congratulations! :P I hope this helps give a greater insight of what we learned and what our design philosophies are regarding Astra! As always, please feel free to share your thoughts below.

Thank you for your continued support, we are working extremely hard to make Astra a benchmark when people think of visual novels, not just English ones! I believe we have a talented team that can achieve that and with your support we have the means to develop it. <3

Thanks again!