#I could theoretically exactly reproduce the path I took in the part of this chapter that I lost

[usodeshou]

It happened again 👀

This time, I was prepared, though, so I only lost half a chapter's worth of progress. The back-up of the most recent save also produced an empty game file, so it must have been messed up before I even copied it over, which I did literally right after I closed the game last night.

The previous save thankfully turned out to be okay so that put me back at the beginning of this current chapter (and I didn't get very far in this before, so that's good at least).

But this is supremely weird. I've made my way through the dev's/publisher's various social media accounts and homepages and eventually found out where to send an ask to about this, so I did. Not holding out much hope that anything is gonna come of it, but I'm just curious as hell what's causing this. It might be a problem specific to this version which is a PS4 port from the original PC version and so far I haven't seen anyone who's had this problem there.

I wish I could at least pinpoint if it's anything specific I'm doing that results in this, so I could avoid it and play in peace. I still want to play it, because there's still so many story paths to unlock and I'm actually having a lot of fun with it. I haven't even seen the true ending yet lol.

The question is, am I going to continue traversing a minefield or am I going to hope for a discount during a steam sale and get it there again, in the hopes that the issue just doesn't exist there? ...Strangely? Right now? It would annoy me more to have to buy it again instead of continuing with what I have and trying to find patterns in the minefield that can help me mostly avoid the mines, if that makes any sense? 🙈😅

I'm also just itching to know why this is happening?? I hate not knowing. I like knowing how shit works and why it doesn't work. Like. This is not a small bug. Game data getting completely wiped, on not one singular but now already two separate occasions, leaving you with a game that looks like you never even played it, all progress gone? This is one of those things that should never, ever, ever be possible to happen in your game. Ever. Unless there's a big red button that says 'Click me to reset your progress to zero, do at your own risk'. In that case, it's exactly what's supposed to happen. But this game doesn't have a button like that. It still seems to randomly press it, though, which is a problem lol

I- 😶 I'm currently playing a horror visual novel and I just started the game to continue my 2nd playthrough and all of my save data is just. Gone. 👀

Checked my System Storage/Application Save Data Management thingy and, sure enough, there's nothing there. It's as if I never played the game. Not exactly what I had in mind for the horror element of the game lol

It's extra dumb because I do regularly back up my save files but for some reason, I never once backed them up after I started this game 🤦‍♀️

The only saving grace in this scenario is that it's a niche game so there's not a lot of info about it out there, so after my first PT I randomly decided to make it my nerd project to map out the entire tree branch of the story and all the different choices and how to unlock side branches and gallery entries and such (and make it look pretty for me ☺️).

I mapped out the skeleton of the trees of each chapter in Excel, with icons and everything, it was super fun 😄, and then made a copy of each and filled in the path I took during the 1st PT.

Starting with the 2nd PT, I filled in story info, path trigger conditions, etc. and, thankfully (oh my god, thankfully) made a second copy and filled in my path for the 2nd PT whenever I finished a chapter. So I actually have my entire first and the first 4 chapters of the 2nd PT mapped out (and ch.5 is fresh enough that I remember most of what I chose and how far I got yesterday). I know exactly what I did, and for everything from the 2nd PT plus the parts from the first that overlap I also have all the trigger conditions, so I know how to fill in all the nodes there.

Ironically, I was paranoid enough about potentially losing the excel file that I did in fact back it up every day before I turned of the computer 😅

This is gonna make getting the save file back to exactly where I was very easy, it's just gonna take time. Time that I'd wanted to spend on the 2nd half of chapter 5 today, but yeah, well 🙈

I'm so glad I did this, otherwise my frustration would be a million times higher now. Like this I'm more focused on my utter confusion as to why this happened in the first place. Saving works really fast, so it's almost impossible to turn off the game while it saves, plus I always wait a moment before I quit the game. And I was looking through the gallery before I turned it off completely last night. As far as I'm aware there is zero reason for this. I sure as hell am going to back the fuck out of my saves from now on, though, that much is certain. I'm off to retrace my steps now, I guess 🙈