sorry for coming back to you so late was occupied with Christmas,
Im obviously biased because i hate sandbox, but like i say it just prolongs the game unnecessarily, its a shit ton of work to program and to make fool proof so it doesn't break the game or the story continuity. The vast amount of harem players hate missable stuff and decisions between girls in the same time slot that's why we play harem games, because we want them all we dont want to decide between them.
If the branching happens in the story segments anyway cut the sandbox out. all it does is that it fragments the story in pieces so it loses overall cohesion and flow. Players don't know if the saw everything and will click around for minutes searching for stuff that isnt there wich only leads to frustration. Or you have a questlog/guide menu, then the game loop is like this
->play story event -> click open questlock -> look up next place to be -> click around till you get there -> play story event ->... repeat
at the same time you could have
-> play story
No worries! I hope you had a good christmas!
Thats honestly completely fair. I dont plan to have any collectibles in the game. I had fathomed the idea of missable events, however as you say that can get annoying in the sandbox environment. I am currently implementing the quest log, as it would give a much more linear experience to the story.
It is a bit difficult to do, but i want to make the sandbox experience as simple as possible(no missable events, no hidden collectibles, no missable events in the sandbox environment). The story will stay as linear as possible to allow a more immersive experience.
If thats not possible ill just drop the idea for the sandbox mode entirely, however that remains to be seen until i complete the writing and mapping of the next arc of the story(which is one of the parts I've been excited about writing for this story)
Christmas was nice hope the same for you.
If thats not possible ill just drop the idea for the sandbox mode entirely, however that remains to be seen until i complete the writing and mapping of the next arc of the story(which is one of the parts I've been excited about writing for this story)
That's fair its your game after all but to be honest other than a coding exercise most Sandboxes don't offer much that couldn't be done with a simple menu to the players, The story and pictures are far more important. The longer you keep the sandbox going the more technological debt you are accumulating, tho. Meaning the longer you wait the worse gets the work you need to do for a switch to VN.