Astra: Game Design Upgrade – Storyline

Hello Patrons,

Hope everyone is having a great week so far! Today, we are here to continue our segment on the game design upgrades that are planned for Astra. If you haven’t had a chance yet, you can see the previous posts in this series here:

Choices - https://www.patreon.com/posts/astra-game-41388296

Music - https://www.patreon.com/posts/astra-game-music-41835631

Without further ado, let’s get into it! Todays topic will be pretty much one of the most important elements to any visual novel; the story. We’ll break this up into two segments and call one the plot and the other character arcs.

Plot is basically the underline story or mission of the game, whether it’s to find a treasure, go back home, stop some evil organization…etc. The character arcs is the character interactions, developments, and watching them grow and change as people.

The first thing to fixing a problem is to acknowledge that it exists. While our character arcs have been decent for the most part, our plots have left a bit to be desired. Today’s segment will look at our previous games, what the issues we had, and how we plan to fix it for Astra. Please note that there is spoilers for our games ahead so proceed with caution if you haven’t played the title!

THE ISSUES

ACE Academy

Our first project! ACE had a ‘sports’ storyline that is widely recognized and tends to work well. There is a natural course of the teams ranking improving and the level of competition rising up as well! With this, we also had an interwoven plot about MC’s core, and then started to introduce the element that there may have been some foul play involved. So, what went wrong? Feature creep and budgeting. Being our first game and having absolutely no idea our video game development and resourcing, we shot our scope way too high and it was quite literally impossible to fulfill. This was considering most of us on the project were here on a hobby basis and we were reinvesting everything back into the development of the game. At one point, we had no option but to stop (or the company break), which is where ACE has an unsatisfying and abrupt ending.

Crystalline

The second game! With Crystalline, we wanted to avoid one of our major pitfalls which was feature creeping and resource constraints which is where we decided to make a single romance game. That way, we could have a longer game and a more detailed route with the same amount of money that it would take to make multiple romanceable waifus. The project was also kickstarted and we had some development experience under our belt so we could better figure out what we can and can’t do. The story issue with Crystalline is that we went too linear with the main path and almost no deviation from the core story which caused it to feel like decisions where inconsequential. The other issue was that we didn’t have proper planning because we were working episodically. There were story elements that were introduced and then IMMEDIATELY resolved. You have to traverse through a haunted forest, boom you traversed through it. You showed up to Leanna’s home, had some drama, and boom it’s fixed. You learned about Zacks past then immediately stopped the brotherhood… boom it’s fixed. Since the game was episodic in nature, it was following a formula of here’s a problem and here’s a solution with no deviation. This caused pacing issues and the feeling that choices didn’t impact the plot.

Ethereal Enigma

Our latest game! With Ethereal Enigma, we made the decision to lean into what we were good at which was character arcs. This is where EE followed quite the generic slice-of-life story of high school where it was all about the characters. If you think about the plot, the investigation really doesn’t lead anywhere and it’s Daisuke who basically spills the bean 3 episodes later without much involvement from the player. While we fixed the issue of choices not feeling important (mainly from having multi-romance), we regressed even further from having a good plot. The problem with this is that there was nothing really leading you through the game. It was just a bunch of fun scenes stringed together but without a draw to finish the game.

THE SOLUTIONS

ACE Academy - Budgeting Issues

The way we are fixing budgeting and resource issues with Astra is twofold. Number one, we are significantly more experienced with game development, costs, resource requirements and the like which will let us have realistic goals without going limited or setting unrealistic propositions/feature creeping.

Number two is where our funding is coming from for budgeting. Whereas before we were completely in the dark and had to rely on volatile game which was too unpredictable, Astra is being made with Patreon funds (thanks for that by the way!) which is consistent month to month. Additional to this, we have several projects and have historical data to project game sales so that can also be, for the most part, accurately budgeted in for development.

Crystalline - Planning Issues

For planning issues, we have had to make a hard but necessary decision. Instead of making the game episodically, we are going to create the entire storyboard, plots, and character arcs right from the get go. What this means is that Astra’s initial development time will be longer before we have anything playable on the table. We usually need sales from early access to sustain game development (hence selling episodically on Early Access), however for Astra given our new calculations for budgeting, we are taking the approach that will ensure a cohesive, well put together story. As a Patreon, you won’t really feel a content drought because we’ll be sharing things with you guys every step of the way! As for non-Patreons, they’ll have fairly limited information on Astra for at least a couple months.

Ethereal Enigma - Direction Issues

For direction issues, this will be fixed with a combination of notes from above. Since we know our budgeting/resources, and we are making the full storyboard, the game will have an intriguing plot along with strong character arcs. On another note, missions can play out differently and having 3 romanceable waifus will significantly improve the game feeling more ‘open’ and that choices actually matter.

Whew, this ended up being quite the wall of text! I want to be as transparent as possible with our development process with you guys and also explain our rationale. This will help with not only recognizing what to improve, but how to improve it.

That’s all for now! Thank you for your continued support and as always, please feel free to share your thoughts below. :^)

- Dishu