I've played through every single route in the Thorns demo by now (Sofia's and Leo's scenes were my favorites if I had to choose though), and I am super excited to see how the whole civil war plot shapes up especially since that tension is hinted at throughout Rose! I am for sure going to buy it as soon as my salary comes in, ahahaha! Normally I'd hold out and wait for the full game to be out, but Rose is so good that I know I'm going to cave as soon as my budget allows.
Did you write Rose already knowing that you were going to make a sequel (or at least had the idea for how a sequel would go, even if you weren't sure of it yet)? The endings for Rose set up Thorns so perfectly that I went "...now that I know there's a sequel in development, I wonder if those cliffhangers were intentional."
I know I should probably be asking these questions on the Thorns page and devlog, and they might already be addressed in the comments on there or in the game guides, but I'm trying not to look at those so I don't get spoiled, so I'll ask here:
- Is there content going into detail about the world Segunda is set in (like, a map of the kingdom so we know where let's say Florentia and Dacre and Tremaine and Suirs etc. are and how big they are relative to each other/a timeline of historical events like the Cousins' War or the only queen being deposed/background on the monarchy of Segunda like how Guillaume's house took power in the first place)? There are lots of little lore tidbits scattered throughout the game and I'd be interested to see more of it :0
- What is the loveless marriage route going to be like? At first I thought it would be the same as Guillaume's route, but after I played through the demo and saw that it starts completely differently, I'm curious about how different/similar it'll be to the route where MC loves him (or is pretending to). Like, is it possible to eventually fall in love with Guillaume? Do we get the chance to like, separate from him or romance some of the other LIs behind his back if the relationship becomes untenable? I'm also really intrigued by how the fact that the marriage is so obviously loveless is going to affect the rest of the story, even if there will def be similarities like the civil war plotline
- No need to answer this last one if it's impossible to respond without completely spoiling Thorns, but just how evil (maybe evil isn't the right word, but like, ruthless and manipulative) can we get in the sequel? I know that there are probably boundaries that the characters won't cross (and that you wouldn't be comfortable writing either), but given how the tone of Thorns seems so much darker and how some of the characters (like Leopold, or for that matter Guillaume given how he can't seem to accept when his father's in the wrong, or even the Duchess Parisi tbh) are pretty morally grey, I'm just wondering like...will we get to do things like blackmail and threaten and betray people? Are we going to get the opportunity to straight up kill someone (or have them killed)? Can I Lady Macbeth Guill or Leo into doing horrible things if I'm on their routes and encouraging them to go for the crown? I know that things like gratuitous violence or outright gore probably wouldn't fit the tone of the game, but given how civil war is looming I'm very very very curious to see how far MC can go for the sake of power (or even just plain self-preservation)
aaaaa I rambled long enough, hope i'm not bothering!!! tl;dr i love the rose of segunda and am very excited to finally get my hands on Thorns sometime soon