Ethereal Enigma - Changes Incoming!

Hello Patrons,

Hope everyone is having an amazing week!! We got some big news today, we'll be talking about the major revisions that are coming to Ethereal Enigma.

Major revisions? The game isn't even out yet! THE SKY IS FALLING.
Hold on MC-kun! Changes is a normal part of development and it is to ensure that our games are the best and most fun that they can be. You can actually take a look at what Crystalline was initially (https://www.patreon.com/posts/5388013) and what it is now to see how drastic changes can be! 

Oh okay, so what are the changes?
Good question! Before we look at what are the changes, let's look at what made them necessary to get a better contextual understanding. There was a few major points that we encountered while creating the original version. Let's dive right into it!

1) Erilynn didn't make sense.
The biggest hurdle was that Erilynn's character didn't was problematic. By nature of needing you as a host, she had a bit of a parasitic relationship (since you as MC didn't need her but she needed you). The other thing was that she was a warrior of her world which would make her behave less immaturely. The combination of the two made her behaving like a himedere VERY unlikeable because she is basically using you and then berating you. Needless to say that was not a good player experience.

2) Erilynn and Kira were too similar.
So to correct point one, we made Erilynn more mature and business-like but then she started to read like a kuudere. Since Kira was already that personality type, the two characters did not feel distinct. His issue compiled since both these characters are your romance options and they behaved too similarly.

3) MC was not cool.
The issue was MC is that by nature of Erilynn seeing how weak you are as a host, MC's options started to feel restrictive and he couldn't be cool/strong at points. It started to restrict how the choices would flow because if he was actually good at something, it didn't gel well with the story, but if he wasn't cool often enough, it was not a fun MC to be.

4) Spirits/Velden rules got way too confusing.
The rules regarding spirits and Velden's started to become convoluted and really complicated but in a bad way. Who can see who, when, how, what... it didn't feel organic and scenes were especially difficult to follow not only because of the sheer amount of characters on screen (4 main characters, 4 spirits), but the fact that they weren't on screen.

With seeing what the issues were, we decided to overhaul a few pieces to be more true to the original games concept. The first thing we did was scrap the spirits/Velden's altogether. Along with the reasons above, it also made it hard to have some of the fun staple scenes like beach/hotsprings and then travel (school trips) also became difficult.

The other big revision fixes the three other issues in one change! What we changed now is that Erilynn, who is an actual princess/lady, is accidentally summoned by MC to our world. The first thing about this is that Erilynn is not using MC as a victim and MC is also not 100% at fault because he doesn't know what/how it happened. This makes for a much better relationship and dynamic. The other is since Erilynn is an actual princess, her acting like a himedere feels SO MUCH better and more believable.

Since Erilynn can actually be a himedere again, her character feels vastly different than Kira so as far as two options go, both now feel distinct and organic as persons. With that being said, we still wanted to have the element of supernatural/mystery solving so the underlying plot of the game will be how she was summoned here and a way back. It's a little bit like reverse Crystalline where instead you are the fish out of water, the waifu is the water out of fish (wait...).

Based on our updated storyboard, the game is much more funny in a slapstick way so it feels like ACE-style humor. This is something we are quite happy with. :)

We always try to be as transparent as possible with out development process and hope that this provides an insight to the changes we are making. Ultimately since nothing has been released it probably won't feel any different however we wanted to keep you guys in the loop. :)

As for timings, this change does push out the release date a bit. If I had to make some rough estimates, I would say that the Patreon-Only text version will be available sometime by mid-April and the actual episode 1 by mid-late May.

If you guys have any questions, feel free to share them below! As always, thank you guys for your continued support. <3

- Dishu + PixelFade Team