Valentine’s Greek Mythology #pphsjam Game Guide/Map/Thing
First WAHHHHHH thank you everyone who has looked and downloaded and played and said nice things I cannot even say how much I appreciate it. Considering this was my silly little game that I made in a weekend and I’ve never made a game before, and it needs improvement in literally every way, I’m really surprised that, well, anyone liked it and…
yeah, warm fuzzy feelings all over, pretty much.
Honestly, I don’t know if there is even a need for a guide or a want for a guide but a few people have asked about potential endings (…well, mostly if you can get with Hermes, haha) and there are some weird probably unexpected ways that the game works (I don’t know that RANDOMLY DECIDED BRANCHES is really a common or desired thing in VN type games) and, well, okay I am proud of how much I got done in a weekend so there’ s that too.
SPOILERS behind the jump, obviously.
So here I will give you the diagram I made of the INTENDED shape of the game before the weekend. As we will find, it didn’t quite go as planned.
It is hard to truly appreciate the spaghetti shape of this at this scale but if you click it you can get a better look. Also my not!hilarious captions.
So the far right side were the potential endings (red for bad, green for kinda good I guess, pink for endings where you’ve romanced a lady, blue for endings where you’ve romanced a dude, and the purple endings imply some sort of multigender multiparty thing. Also there is that grey bit in the bottom right that I had already given up on figuring out but that might one day creep back in.
(Then I discovered that lucidchart isn’t as nice when you don’t have a subscription, and while I might end up actually getting one later if I decide to use it more, for now you’ll have to deal with WALL OF TEXT.
So, I’m not sure how this sort of thing is normally written so I’m just gonna step through the game and… yeah.
The first branch is at the crossroads. It’s a semi-random choice, between three options.
Most likely: You run into Hermes. You have a choice as to how to react to him, but ultimately you end up travelling with him whether you want to or not.
Middling likelihood: You run into Hermes and Zeus. You can basically choose to go with either of them.
Least likely: Zeus shows up and snatches you up.
If you end up going with Zeus, you get one of two Zeus endings, the only real difference being in the details of your fate, which branches depending on what your reaction to him in Olympus is. (In retrospect, that feels sketchy and a bit judgy. Ugh.) Originally there was a sketch out in the plot chart for a chance to have made friends with other deities and have one of them intervene with Hera on your behalf but I definitely didn’t have time to write/plot that all out. So that’s those grey bubbles in the bottom right.
If you end up going with Hermes you end up with a bit where you are given a choice as to which way to go to Athens. The ‘fun’ way is aka the indirect route. Otherwise you take the direct route. Other-otherwise you can ask Hermes for his advice — yes he is the god of travellers, yes I’m sure he knows the best way to go, but I also think of him as a bit of a trickster, and not necessarily one to keep you out of trouble — which is equivalent to coin flipping: random choice decides if you go direct to Athens or go through the woods.
SURPRISE! The woods is also a den of RANDOMNESS.
Either way you will hear a sound in the woods, but randomness decides as to what you find if you investigate. (All the randomness is part of why I tried to build in a fair amount of ways to escape whatever path you’re put on. » Not sure if bad design or not.) There’s a 50/50 chance of either stumbling across Dionysus throwing a rad party, or stumbling across Artemis’ camp.
Originally, Artemis’ camp was an automatic bad ending but then it occurred to me that I
a) had allowed you to pick a gender at the start of the game, and was doing next to nothing with that except for a few variables for replacing pronouns as appropriate
b) didn’t think through the idea, considering I figure Artemis would be testy with a dude but cool with a lady showing up
Suddenly, a wild BRANCH appears!
So, if you get Artemis’ path and you’re a male, you get the bad end. Surprising no one.
If you are female, you get a good end. You can either end up joining her camp, or joining her archers, which is essentially the same ending otherwise, but I wanted to put a choice there. Because. Reasons.
If you chose neither male or female, you get a random dice roll to decide which path you get on here. It is not at all the ideal, and I’d be happy to hear suggestions of other ways to handle it.
Meanwhile, if you get on Dionysus’ party times path you… party. I was running out of time to write here, gimme a break. You can choose to stay, and get the Dionysus Party End (I can’t remember what I actually called it) or you can take off to Athens.
Which makes it seem like a pointless sidebar, but! BUT! Going to his party is the only way to get the flag for the OT3 end. (I couldn’t help it, I had to put an OT3 end of some kind in here.)
So, I think that covers everything that happens outside Athens.
Unfortunately, that was where most of my preplanning thought work went, so when I got to Athens I was running low on steam. Originally there were going to be endings for Athena, Ares, and Apollo. Athena and Ares I had at least jam-sized thoughts about trials involving BRAINS and KICKING ASSES but I didn’t have time to figure those out after I finished Aphrodite’s path. Apollo I had no real ideas for, which is why he doesn’t remotely show up, even as a “Sorry I didn’t have time for this” bit.
So in Athens you can take a trip to Zeus’ temple to get on that path if you want to for some reason. (Originally I was thinking of having Zeus path just be this random event that could happen where he just shows up out of nowhere at random points and kidnaps you because, hey, let’s be honest, that’s Zeus’ style, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that well and frankly that would be annoying. When I expand the game and stuff I might throw that in as a very very very low possibility thing if I can figure a way to do it half-gracefully.) Trying to go to Athena’s or Ares’ temples is a wash.
But! BUT!
You can visit Aphrodite’s temple! :3
(I felt like if there was one deity I had to get finished it was her.)
So you get there, and she is there, because hey, when everyone loves you, why wouldn’t you hang around?
You’re given three choices when she asks what you want. One of them puts you on track to become one of her attendants in the temple, one of them puts you on the track of HOT MAKEOUTS, and one of them pisses her off and she tells you to screw off, basically.
Bonus here: if you got the Dionysus flag earlier and take the option that leads to HOT GODDESS MAKEOUTS, he’ll show up and basically offer to be third for a threesome. Yep. He will also gracefully bow out if you tell him no thanks. He’s a cool guy like that.
FINALLY almost done.
If you piss her off and she sends you away, you get choices as to how to feel about it.
You can be sad and… well, get a sadface sort of ending.
You can be angry and get a “FUCK THESE GODS AND THEIR BULLSHIT ANGRY”
OR, you can go to the pub to drown your sorrows, and Hermes offers to be your wingman, which is the closest there is to a Hermes ‘get’ ending.
So. I.
I think that’s it.
This was probably boring for everyone other than me.
But thanks for reading if you actually were interested.
Yes.
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