Game duration and character development

Hello everyone,

This month I have been able to fix up some inconsistencies between characters' relationships, which also allowed me to take the story in the right direction, and cut away the boring moments. I've made some final decisions on which characters will and will not be present on-screen, as well as scaling down the game's environment and amount of levels (scenes).

I decided it will be better for both the player and myself, if the story focused mostly on a single aspect of the protagonist's life, rather than multiple at once. This will make more sense once the game is completed and I post my thoughts on all the different changes I've made to the story as a whole (without any vagueness). But essentially, I've decided on making the game much shorter (though still quite lengthy for its simplicity), and much more focused on certain events, rather than everything leading up to each of those events.

Hopefully the finished game will feel satisfying and not daunting with the amount of information being presented. But I still plan on filling the game world with a fair bit of information, for the players who pay attention to details and do well to connect the dots. And hopefully for the casual gamer, it will still be a worthwhile journey and experience.

In terms of gameplay, I've been steadily coming up with scene ideas and character introductions. I've decided that it will be more beneficial to make each scene (and the events therein) meaningful for at least one character, rather than making lots of filler scenes for the sake of adding content.