#it would be nice if it does turn a profit but that isn't a guarantee - which the team has accepted as a normal risk in game development | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moiraimyths · 4 months ago

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Before we call anon rude because let’s see it from their perspective, imagine getting an entire feast to eat. That can be pretty hard to start with so much that’s going on, but if they start with one thing they know they’ll like (aka one character they like) that can be the start for them leaping to other characters to finish the story and the bigger story. I struggle the same way to start book series if I don’t have at least one character that drives me to read it, it’s all about what can be the hook to push them through. Sounds like the anon is neurodivergent (just a guess) so they might genuinely not see it as rude and see it as a solution to even play the game to start with.

Btw absolutely adore the game, the complex and rich characters making them all so unique is amazing. The art is so pleasing to the eyes I love it!! I’m waiting for it all to get out at once so I don’t get too impatient. Shae however interests me the most, which routes will have the most lore for them? Will there be routes that give more lore in general based on decisions you make or do they all share the same amount? (I mean general lore not just Shae lore)

Apologies; we are not trying to accuse any asker of being rude! We are simply explaining our perspective as the developers / are trying to broadly encourage folks to dip their toes into other areas of the story outside of the main route(s) they're interested in, especially considering some routes will be made available sooner than others, and these other routes will likely contain additional scenes/lore of everyone's fave(s) regardless! We want to give each main cast member an equal amount of love (and lore) regardless of their overall popularity, so our goal is not to tut-tut anyone for having strong preferences for one character over the others, but rather to explain that you may be surprised by how much *more* you learn about your preferred characters in the other routes. That's all!

For Shae... Well, they were a foot soldier for one of the worst periods of the War. Lore wise, any other story that touches on the War will likely have content relevant to them and their experiences. ^^

#ask #clotho answers #edit/final note: we got a *few* asks on this subject and will not likely answer all of them for the sake of our followers' dashboards #but we also want to note that part of our encouragements here come from the fact that Flan/Keagan are our most popular characters by a lot #and we want to do what we can to gently nudge folks who may not want to romance the fem / nb characters into checking out their stories #despite not being into them romantically. this is half of why we have platonic routes to begin with #we recognize veterans to the dating sim world may feel less inclined to romance characters that don't align with their irl orientations #this isn't a bad thing. some people steer clear of dating sims altogether because they're aro or just not interested in romance stories etc #but the unintentional side effect of this is it has a chilling effect on developers even in the indie sphere to make less diverse stories #if Flan and Keagan are our most popular characters then they will be our most *profitable* characters in the long run #and as much as we would love to not care about money and just produce the story we want to tell #we live in a society (tm) and need to eat #if at the end of ndm's development we see that 90% of our engagement went toward the boys it is hard to ignore the financial incentive #to redirect our energy toward leaning into the 'tried and true' formula that assures we can buy groceries and make rent #basically what i am candidly saying here is capitalism is pretty bad for creative liberty unless you're already rich / able to self finance #which we are not. and currently none of the core devs make *anything* from ndm #it would be nice if it does turn a profit but that isn't a guarantee - which the team has accepted as a normal risk in game development #anyway this is getting rambly but the Point is that this goes beyond us wanting to make sure all sides of our story are equally appreciated #it is *partly* that - we do want players to experience the entirety of our artwork #but it's not just for our egos - it's so we can keep making art like this #i considered including this in the body of the post but money talk suuucks man #and i don't want anyone to think we're glaring at them in a holier than thou 'ah-ha! you don't want to play maeve's route because she's a #woman!' sort of way because i think that's a reductive way to look at things #people like what they like and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that #but if you like that we're making a diverse story #with masc routes fem routes and nb routes #even if you don't personally want to romance x or y #it would help us if y'all play the platonic routes #we are trying our very very best to make the fem/nb routes interesting for Everyone so those stories don't get sidelined #and if you don't like them for their own sake - fair enough! can't win em all and we'll deeply appreciate that you tried anyway!

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