What to do with point and click / navigation system...

Heyo folks! This is the first patron-only post I've made in a while, and I wouldn't have posted this if it wasn't important.

As the title suggests, I wanted to discuss about the point and click a.k.a navigation part of the game, you know, the clickable rooms and all that, where you can interact with stuffs, etc.

If you have noticed, only the second half of Chapter 1 had it, that's because I was testing the waters, I wasn't sure...

So... How's the navigation/point and click gameplay working out for you? Is it tedious? Boring? Didn't like it? Or you think it's a nice touch and adds more detail to the game?

I'm going to share my view or opinion as the developer. Now that I've seen it, replayed it, tested it for hours and hours... I've come to the conclusion of:

It adds a little more detail, which is nice, but the padding is obvious.

To make the navigation system to look nice, I have to draw the connecting sections of the building to make it more "seamless".

Spoiler alert: I'm drawing Rachel's office right now, and if I don't have to do a navigation system I would have stopped at that. Meanwhile if there's a navigation system, I will have to make more backgrounds: corridor (outside patient room), elevator, corridor (outside Rachel's office) just to make a "path" to Rachel's office.

This consumes much more time for such a short content (it's just navigation) and sometimes I question myself if it's worth it or not.

Other than that I have a bad habit of making sure I squeezed every last drop of "worth" in anything. Usually in games, this means 100% completion.

In this case, the backgrounds, because I spent some time drawing it, I wanted it to have you know... more screen time. I felt like it's a waste if it only appeared for like a minute or less. This made me unconsciously "padding" the game, just for the sake of getting more screentime for the more insignificant backgrounds.

So the 3 routes that we could take:

A. Have the navigation system, but padding it for extending game length to make up for the time spent drawing the backgrounds. Think of it as a big pizza, but with bland topping on some sides.

B. Have the navigation system, no padding, but this may result in long development time with shorter gameplay. Think of it as a small sized pizza. Long to bake, small portion.

C. Drop the navigation system, no padding, faster pace and more focus on the story. The time I would've spent on drawing the connecting sections ( corridor outside patient room, elevator, corridor outside Rachel's office ) could be redirected to work on other backgrounds, possibly making the story pace faster because we don't have to be trapped in the same location for the sake of seamless navigation.

TL:DR for option C: we're going back to the roots, a regular visual novel.

Personally, I'm leaning more on option C since most of the feedback notes that the story is too slow, and part of me says that it's my fault for being too ambitious. Because, to be honest, we barely have enough manpower to make a sandbox game which is really resource heavy. And since we're still in Chapter 1, it's not too late to go back to the roots.

Now of course, this is a discussion, I'll be posting this on choco chat as well. (or private talk, if you prefer it that way. You can freely message me on Patreon, Discord, or Twitter, just fire chat me up! Remember that I'm not some unapproachble elite or something, I'm just a regular guy like you in a regular server, I'm nothing special, so don't be afraid to message me if you want 😄)

Thank you for tuning in and I'd love to hear from you soon!

And oh, I do have another announcement to make, but let's sort this out first!