Devlog 31

I started working on content for the endings. I wrote the texts and made rough sketches for the art, looked at how it's all set up in terms of code (I've already forgotten what I code there), and everything seems to be in order.

In general, the idea is this: 2 characters, 4 endings – a bad and a good ending for each character. The good ending – you reach +5 Supply, watch the story part, and then start the next chapter. The bad ending – you reach -5 Supply and fail to meet the week's requirements on Sunday, watch the story part, and then the game ends with a defeat.

With the good endings, everything seems clear – no problems at all. But with the bad endings, there are many. I need some way to inform the player that if they don't at least partially meet the requirements – the game will end. On top of that, the autosave saves at the start of a new day, so you essentially can't go back. Unless you saved manually at some point earlier. I need some kind of reminder system, and with different contexts, depending on the game state. In short, a lot of problems.

This is clearly an unsuccessful decision – making the negative Supply track for characters hurts badly again. There's a huge amount of work to do, and the payoff will be very small.

I probably only have two options in this situation:

First option – not make the negative endings at all. This would save a ton of time on content production and not confuse the player with strange design choices. Besides, based on the current gameplay, you can only get a negative ending on purpose – you'd have to ignore a character for 6 whole weeks. On average, by that point, you'll have already achieved the good ending with the other character.

Second option – just make it exist, without caring about the player or their experience. At most, remind them that the game will end if they don't help the character. That way, there will at least be an extra item to unlock in the gallery – but otherwise, it would be a pointless and even harmful element.

It looks like there's no real choice here.