https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1134539562

First of all. Thank you so much to EAR for playing McCarthy Academy! This was a lovely interview with the VA for Nanase (floralninjachan) and valuable feedback on the current build of the game.

Creator's Commentary

So sorry about the menu bug. We thought we had fully disabled the WIP button (which is where the save/load button used to be). Do not press this button at any time during game play, it will crash the game TTvTT  Fungus has put in quite a few updates since this beta was first created. We're currently working with a new programmer on ways to improve the menu functionality and implement the save/load feature in a future build.

As for why the "Interrogation" button disappeared. During the character building section of the game and meeting the students, the players increased stats that gave them specific bonuses (like being able to interrogate students). They also picked options that gave them extras turns per day and during the investigation. By starting from the school, all those stats were reset.

What this tells me, is that it would benefit the player, in the future, to receive a notification of some kind when they unlock new bonuses. This might be easiest to implement in the STAT part of the pause menu.

It looks like a few audio glitches with the dialogue. This came from numbering the lines in the script for the voice actors BEFORE putting them into the game. As such, some lines ended up being too long to fit into the text boxes and had to be cut up. Unfortunately, that meant some audio files didn't get split the same way and had to be found again retroactively. In the future, we will be editing the script while programming to reflect where lines of dialogue got cut.

As for the music. The volume slider for music controls the in-game music, not the menu unfortunately. One of the many hiccups that came from trying to build a menu around Fungus parts of the build. 

After watching a few players play the game blind, I definitely want to include in the introduction that all four characters have multiple interactions. That's right, if you were to "Hang Out" with a student four turns in a row, it would be a different interaction each time. There's also special CGs that can be unlocked for each character (including Nagen). 

I think the most interesting note received, is the tone/genre shift the players felt in this play through experienced. I will definitely bring it up with my new editor when they review the draft for the first chapter. The goal is to combine slice of life with the grimdark super hero genre (ala Kick Ass or The Watchmen) but with teens. 

I'm glad the players seemed to enjoy the investigation part of the game play, as this was one of the parts of the game I stress about the most (both writing wise and game play wise). Hearing them enjoy getting to build their back story so to speak makes me really happy.

What's Next?

This weekend I have a convention coming up where I will be hosting a few panels on VN development and Free/Donateware VNs. Afterward I will be hitting the grindstone trying to get the rough draft for the full game finished. As of right now, the Prologue and Ch1 of 6 is fully drafted and needs to be sent off for proof reading. My goal is the finish the draft first so I can work on build adjustments while it's getting edited.

As of right now we have a new programmer on board that will be helping with some of the main menu bugs we ran into trying to make this build. We'll be testing these with a few small scenes to start and then work on rebuilding the demo.

We're also looking for level designers to make the RPG puzzle part of the game more fun and easier to understand.

Will the beta get an update?

In it's current state, not exactly. 

I will try to go back later in the month and do some minor fixes (Nanase's dialogue, additional tutorials, etc). But the bigger issues with the menu and audio are going to have to be fixed with a fresh build. Any attempts to further fix the menu issues have resulted in a cascade of game breaking glitches. Which means only one thing. 

It has be rebuilt from scratch.

This was quite literally, a test. A shot in the dark to see if it was even possible to make the kinda of VN I was hoping to make. 

The current build was about two years worth of work. I'm hoping the newer one will take less time since a majority of the assets are already made.