There are a few reasons for the choice of phone buttons in the beginning even though only one continues the story, so I guess I'll try to separate them :3
- The order you press phone button options in initially doesn't matter, so players are essentially guided into clicking a specific option to continue. This lets the player know that you can interact with different options, and that's important for later segments of the game where the phone options you choose impact the story branch you end up on.
Having it be interactive from the start acts as a sort of tutorial without having to completely spell it out for players that they're learning they can press different phone buttons for different options x3 Cos I personally hate it in games when they say a tutorial is a tutorial. For me, it breaks immersion.
But yeah, the phone options might not have any impact in the beginning, but they do in later in the game (in part of the story that isn't available in the demo - cos like most of my games, this game was made for a game jam, so we just got as far as we could within the jam timeframe and stopped at a point in the script that felt okay to pause at :3)
- Another reason is just that it's nicer to have different kinds of UI for choices in general rather than the plain old choice boxes x3 Having the parts that take place on the phone looks prettier with phone UI
- The phone in general is also a bit of a nod to anyone who has played Limbo Line. In Limbo Line, you have an interactive phone that you can actually enter numbers into by pushing the number buttons. If you enter random numbers in it, chances are, you will just get a random response, but there are numbers hidden throughout the game to find and call, and those have more to them, some even start side quests :3
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As a side note, Deadly Desires is a company that's encountered by Limbo Line's MC too, but they're not particularly involved with them. In Limbo Line, MC can wind up calling Deadly Desires though, and even help out one of their employees.
Limbo Line is more about that sorta thing. You have a PC to use as well as the phone, and you can find the passwords for protected folders throughout the game. There's also an alternate reality game-style side quest, but I have no idea if it still works or not cos part of the puzzle-solving involved finding some specific social media accounts and other things outside of the game xD I think maybe it does cos someone asked for help with solving the last step of the ARG back in November last year, and I don't think they would have been able to get to the last step if the social media accounts were deactivated.
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As for there only being one person/scenario though, unfortunately, that's how it's gonna stay x3 This game is supposed to be about Loni and Erys’ twisted romance. So aside from the side characters, it's just them.
The script is fully-written so the remaining work I've got to do on the game is finish coding it. But yeah, there are no plans to add any other love interests to the story.
Once the otome version is complete, my focus will be adding the masculine version of Loni and feminine version of Erys so that players have the choice of playing GxB, BxG, BxB, or GxG :3
Even though Limbo Line doesn't have romance, it does allow you to do friendship building with each of the characters to unlock extra scenes with them.
Because Limbo Line focuses less on personal relationships and more on helping as many people as possible though, with Lovestarved, I really wanted to do a big zoom-in and focus purely on two lovers instead :3
Lovestarved is Loni and Erys’ story, but the way it winds up is still fairly open. It can get super dark and twisted if the player makes Loni choose certain things, or it can almost be cute if other paths are chosen… almost x3
But yeah, the full game has 31 endings. The demo only has 7, so I've got a loooot of stuff still to add, haha.
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As for Steam, I would honestly love to have all of my games on there, including this one once it's finished, but the $100 fee they charge per game kinda shuts me out at the moment >.< I'm trying to raise funds to cover Steam fees, but since I've made a fair number of games now, it would cost me over $1000 to get them all on Steam T_T
I'm unemployed thanks to my crap mental health and autism, so I can't afford to throw money at that sorta thing. And most donations I get towards my projects go towards paying voice actors and other aspects of development.
I think Steam refund you the fee if your game reaches a certain threshold in $$$ of sales, but since my games are free, I would never physically be able to reach that threshold :(
Hoping I can have my stuff on Steam one day though :3
Cheers for checking this one out too!