itch.io

Hi. 

No access problems so far in my new playthrough, other than my character being basically unstoppable :D. 

For  the new game plus, you might consider instead of scaling the difficulty or allowing the player to keep upgrades, giving the player some sort of smaller scale prestige mechanics as rewards instead,  since I actually miss unlocking the different abilities and upgrades and levelling through the game this time around. 

You could even tie these to specific endings, EG if a player ends the game with one faction victorious, give them a smaller scale say %10 bonus to fighting or talking to people of that faction. 

While if a player (as I did), ends the game neutrally, give them a more passive bonus, like a %5 to all microchips found.

It would also be nice to see post game which endings you've unlocked and which you still have to go, since collecting them all could be fun, especially if; ---- as I sincerely hope, more enemies and zones are on thee way. 

Lastly, I'm afraid one textual error kept bothering me. 

Whenever I used water the game said: "you parch your thirst", 

This seemed very weird to me, given that to "parch", something as a verb is to dry it, indeed, I don't know if this was a typo and the original sentence was supposed to be: "you feel parched, so quench your thirst."

Sorry, this was one specific point that did sort of niggle a bit.

Lastly, as I mentioned on the audiogames.net thread, you might consider tweaking some of the character interactions, and maybe even prownowns to reflect the player's gender. 

When I play games, I tend to like to play as different people who aren't! me, because, well they usually aren't! and because I find it interesting to learn about their experiences as opposed to my own. 

If an interaction with an npc a little too obviously feels generically written so as to make that npc male, female (or none binary), then I tend to find less connection with that npc myself. 

For example, in my first game when playing as a straight guy, Ash felt  far more male, while Esra far more female, indeed in that game, I felt much more romantic connection with Esra than with Ash or river, indeed River I didn't really interact with enough to see much of , while in this second game, the connection with River is so instant it feels nearly pointless, indeed I felt far more attached to Shay as a female friend, and echo as a male friend; (the text seemed to sometimes refer to echo as he, sometimes as they), though I admit the chief reason echo felt male was that in my head he sounded like commander Data from startrek next generation, though on an interaction level, Echo could equally have been female  :D.

In my second game when playing as a straight lady, the opposite is holding true, with Ash feeling like a guy.

Again, it's a personal preference thing, and certainly not a deal breaker for me on any score, really enjoyed the game generally, but I do find if I can obviously see the author's hand creating a blank slate character to fit either gender, I feel I get rather taken out of the story, and far more concentrated on wondering which bits of the writing got changed.

If you did consider doing anything about this, I would personally  prefer if romantic, or at least semi romantic npcs (such as Esra), got a little tweak in writing to reflect interactions and appearence, and perhaps a name change, EG male Ash, or female Este,  (not sure how none binary fits into this).

Again, if this stays as is, fair enough, it's certainly not a big deal.

Either way, Looking forward to seeing what new things get added in the future.