Hello again!

I've got a very small update here. The past months since I've finished focusing on this game, I've played it a couple of times. There was one little thing that started bugging me that would seem a little... not necessarily unbalanced game-wise, but more unbalanced fun-wise. I'm talking about Jebbrey's Assist Action. In the 1.1 version of the game, when you get Jebbrey's help and use Capture, Jebbrey adds his entire dice pool to yours. This is great for the player who is getting his help because Jebbrey should have a ton of dice. However, for the Jebbrey player, it feels bad; well, more bad than I want it to be, mostly because it's a huge punishment for Jebbrey (usually 15-20 RP loss) just because he's trying to go for his little 5 RP goal. 

So I've updated it to where players have to pay 1 RP per die, and players can decide how much dice Jebbrey has to roll. This way, Jebbrey gets a little something for his trouble, and it forces the other players to decide how much they want to risk capturing targets on their own.

That's really the only thing that's been updated, aside from like one little bit where I realized I used the word "card" when I should have used the word "sheet."

That said, I never did do a full post-mortem, and I don't think I fully explained the lore I was going for here. It's been a while so before I completely forget it and it gets lost forever, I'll jot it down here!

STARDUST BUTTERFLY LORE DROPS
So I was clearly going for a Cowboy Bebop vibe for this game. I imagined this game as a representation of an entire season of a Steel Love sequel show. We would see these characters already as a crew (at least Sumiv and Gloz, a Jebbrey intro episode early on would work too). Then, like Cowboy Bebop, we learn about these character's backstories and motivations during some of the encounters that they have. The flashback endings (the endings you get when you lose) in the digital version of this game are those backstories. The true endings are meant to take place in the penultimate episode of this theoretical series, meaning each ending is canon (well, canon to this non-canon game). If you haven't put together the chronological order of the endings, it would be: Gloz flashback -> Sumiv flashback -> Jebbrey flashback -> Gloz true -> Sumiv true -> Jebbrey true.

Most of the events and targets are meant to be references to things and characters that would have actually appeared in the series as well. Although, I will admit that some cards are just purely there for the reference and wouldn't actually occur in the show. Namely, See You Space Cowboy is purely an obvious reference to Cowboy Bebop; nobody dies at the end of Stardust Butterfly. Additionally, Averagmus isn't meant to show up as a bounty until the penultimate episode (during Sumiv's true ending here), as his capture is what the season would end on. To be honest, Jack Landsurfer and Polly Sting are meant to be recurring rival bounty hunters throughout the show, so they don't really belong in the target deck either.

While I'm talking about the targets though, I'll just mention all the references I've got in there. Some are more obvious than others. Atreyu Detrayu is a cross reference with Atreyu from the Neverending Story and R2-D2 from Star Wars. Medabug is a Medabot. The Snitch is a based off the Stitch from Lilo & Stitch. Ralph is basically the robot of the same name from Spy Kids. Jack Landsurfer's name comes from adjusting the various nouns in Luke Skywalker's name (land -> sky, walk -> surf). BTB's design is actually based on the Slendelien scrappet from my previous game, Scrappet Kaiser Princess. The name Dealbreaker Jones comes from an old 5-Second Film skit of the same name. Bubba Robo's design was heavily inspired by the robots(?) in Pop'n Twinbee. K-10 (the K is actually the Greek letter kappa) is a reference to the Blazblue series (the robots there are "Greek letter-Number" like "Lambda-11" or "Nu-13"). And finally, Gib Marvelous is a reference to the Gokaigers, a Super Sentai team. 

Speaking of references, I snuck in references to all the other created characters for the jam. I felt it would feel cheap to bring them all back to life and have them physically appear, but they all deserved some mentions. Mrs. Frieda's spools of thread are dangling on the Nylon Spoolas weapon. The Buof on Charlene's shirt appears as a Buof Bot in the weapons deck. There is a Mecha Chromebeak target card. Damian's Supportive robot also appears as a target. And finally, one of Albius's "lovebots" is a target (Maid-0 Milkin). For Maid-0, obviously the shape is very suggestive, but I didn't want the coloring to be fleshy, to allow some room for me to be like "oh no it's not meant to be a lovebot." So I colored it like a Caterpie so I can say that those bulbs are arms and that Caterpie is my favorite Pokémon for when someone points it out.

So how would the story have continued? At the end of the series, the crew would capture Averagmus. The plan would be that Averagmus would convince the crew to help him find Singuliera. I'm not sure whether anyone would recognize Averagmus as the core form of Gigantimus, but Averagmus would recognize Sumiv as his old friend for sure. Due to how things went with Singuliera, he would not reveal this immediately. Also, Averagmus would not recognize Jebb through that silly disguise. Season 2 would follow the crew in a less episodic adventure to find the Gigantimus husk. The main villain would be Trix, whose body is being inhabited by the empire/the emperor to gather all the Grazaloids and build his own giant robot and live forever and powerful. Gloz would eventually find a small group of surviving Grazaloids, Jebb would reveal that he wants to put both Singuliera's and Gigantimus's souls into a cyborg arm (that's why he only has one arm. His assisstant robot was put in his one arm, and he decided to save on building the other for when he found the two loves of his life) and betray the crew. ...Something like that. I know I chose Sumiv to be the main character when I started this, but Gloz ended up kind of taking over the entire story because she's great.

Anyway, that's pretty much it, I think. I still really like how this game came out, and I'm super stoked for this year's jam later this year! I just hope I'll have the time to participate since I'll be dealing with a baby very very soon. Hope to see you all then!