Fiction Factory Games

Shadow of a Doubt

Added 2024-05-20 13:21:56 +0000 UTC

Been quiet lately. You folks are ponying up cash for my words, so I should not be quiet.

Honestly I've been doubting my skills as a writer, and dealing with a hard moment of writer's block on top of it. I came to the point where I had to do Hector's big crisis moment, and my original design -- sort of a parable to the fall of Vince McMahon -- felt a bit too much and had no way to soften the blow for folks playing with triggering content disabled. And between that and general doubts about Aza-chan's arc and resolution, plus my physical health continually failing me, I let the game slide for a bit.

Last night I got past the block in regards to Hector's crisis moment, thanks to someone on Discord making a suggestion and my brain finally overcoming the bump. Now, instead of "someone in my employ hired a woman just to assault her on the company dime" it has more of a sci-fi twist... "someone in my employ forced a woman to become an Artificial Mind to coerce her into being his personal servant." And the softer-content version of that is very similar, but removes any implied sexual power dynamic in favor focusing on forcing her to do all his work for him.

I'm still not entirely sure what to do with Aza-chan's crisis point. My current thinking is Aza will wreak havoc across computer systems to anonymize the world, erasing identities and personal information, but if you aren't chaos-corrupt the player can encourage Aza to limit that to the queer community to empower them (which may cause a backlash). I feel this is sufficiently dystopian in both harder and softer variants, but I'm iffy.

Things to ponder. Feedback welcome.