Shame Free Gaming #30: The Ongoing Evolution of the Visual Novel

Does a piercing matter? Customizing your character helps you build a connection with them, which in turn changes how you experience the game. And how you experience the game is arguably what matters most. Dialogue choices that have no impact on the overall story (which are most of the dialogue choices in Dispatch) are also a form of character customization, but unlike a piercing, their effects are fleeting and quickly forgotten. So it can be argued that character customization is more important than dialogue choices. But another question is whether it's worth the developer's time. For e.g. a RenPy game it's rarely a good choice to allow character customization, as you have to create many, many additional versions of your character assets: raised-eyebrow, raised-eyebrow-with-piercing, frown, frown-with-piercing, etc. But in a more dynamic engine where you can just say "attach piercing to eyebrow bone" and the skeletal animation system takes care of the rest, it's probably worth it. You'll still have hair styles that clip through tall armor, but that's a small price to pay.

The podcast co-host formerly known as 'dad' is finally introducing himself? This podcast is getting all professional and stuff, I like it. An interesting example of branching storylines is Life is Strage 1/Double Exposure/Reunion. The storyline splits in two in a big way in the first one, the second one juggles both, and the third one merges them back together.