Heya!
That's a really nice analysis right there ahah, it almost feels like you know the game better than I do. x')
I'll probably won't detail as much as you did how Soy Toad is working, since you're basically right to a lot of stuff, or at worst not that far from reality. But there's some stuff I kinda wanted to add:
- I did use a stat system (I named them Strenght IQ and Kindness, which basically do the same as the one you've thought) but I also used a "Sociability" stats that was used sometimes, even if it might not seem like it, if I remember correctly this stat explains why Joe would be more often choose to be the challenger. You might also notice that Megumi was a lot by herself when people tried to find the pieces of Miley, that's because of that too.
- Your theory of there being a priority system in terms of "who betrays whom" is somewhat right, but it wasn't really chose by me, the game just take the two characters and compare their stats (the stats are numbers going from 0 to 100 btw) and would kill the one with the worst score (I'm not sure but I think in case of an equal score it would randomly choose the character).
- In fact, the game was thought to be able to let the player customize their game by putting their own character, like the hunger games simulator website. The only big exception was Kai's situation of having to hide his computer and act as he act in the game about it. The relationships between characters where also supposed to be customizable too, and for the fun fact, each character has a "level of trust" for each other character. I'm using that "level of trust" to set the relationships, lower it when a character loose their companion by someone else, and increase it when the character was saved by someone else (which include the First Trial and the traps in the Blue Room or the Cage trap, but also when they paired up in duo). This means that when you said Reko saved Kugie when she was sacrifice, it might be because they've spent time together.
- Since the game only works on the stats I give the character at the beginning, you might have understood by now that a lot of stuff about how the characters act wasn't that much decided by me, which would be right and wrong at the same time. I did set their stats to make sure that a vast majority of situations we know that happen in the "real" game would work the same in the simulations, and just basically make sure all the characters don't act too... out of character. However, as you already have showed in your post, I didn't quite thought of everything (Keiji can hold a gun OMG, Kai slapping Sara (this one would be so easy to change when I think about it))
I also choose their stats to make sure that when I play a lot of simulations, the leaderboard of characters' survival rates should be (approximatively) the same as the one we know in YTTD, which doesn't include Joe, Kugie, Kai and Nao, but since their own stats all affect at least one other character's survival rates I still needed them to get very precise stats.
And finally, people can't die in the Blue Room since there was already too much dead to just add even more of them lmao, I tried to make an average of number of survivors at 10 since that how many they lived in YTTD at the end of chapter 1. (And I remember myself having to nerf a lot of stuff in order to make less death lmao) I also no idea how to simulate someone going on a rampage killing as most people they can in the Blue Room.
-Hinako was made by the only stuff I know about her (And I mean, the real one): She's at elementary school and have suicidal thoughts. (we know those by the four paper saying she's in elementary school, and the suicidal thoughts are from the video tape you can obtain during chapter 2, where you can see her thank Rio Ranger for killing her.)
And with that I think I talked about everything that seems to be nice to share, thank you so much for plaing this game and put so much effort in it and its analysis! That was super fun to read!
And also I've already said that in response in another post, but I might put it here too (and probably in a devlog later ahah):
I've been working on a website version of Soy Toad! It will take a lot of time since I'm kinda discovering web programmation while doing it, but it's getting there and will have a customization feature to put everything you want (with some preset I would make too obviously). This will let me have a cleaner code than the one I have right now (bc yes I'll completely recode that in python this time) which will really nice to work with for future chapters too. The website will still work at least really close with how the itchio game works.
There will be a devlog for when the website is out, and an update to the itchio game that'll advertise the website too so you'll won't miss it :3
Until then, hope to see you around and hope you'll still enjoy playing Soy Toad!
(And again, thank you very much for that post, it always hype me up when I receive even little posts that shows how people still like playing this game, so this one means a lot to me!)