Hi guys!

As I mentioned in the previous devlog, I wanted to tell you a little more about the various relationship checks and how the poly routes will work!

Saint Ceri has a long common route (during which you’ll get lots of scene variants depending on who you’ve kissed/chosen to pursue), and you’ll lock yourself into a specific ending near the end of it. Throughout the common route there’s various steps to figuring out your romance!

Each LI has a scene where you let them know what you’d like to do; here’s a glimpse at the choices during Kyros’s scene. 

Things play out a bit differently for everyone; Kyros has some poly choices before and after this scene (he needs more explanations and time to think about it than Bryn or Eira!), and Eira has more options for platonic discussion of your interest in the other LIs, and will take great joy in teasing you about them.

What you tell each LI affect the others’ own scenes! Here’s an example with Kyros again; suggesting a poly relationship with him, Eira and Bryn plays out a bit differently depending on what you’ve told Eira and Bryn. Dialogue will hint at whether you’ve set things up for disaster…

Disaster like shown below! Having told the LIs different things about a potential poly relationship will cause a lot of confusion, and will lock you out of that poly route (in Eira’s case, she’ll break up with you if there’s any poly confusion! She has no time for jealousy and unclear situations).

Here’s my flowchart for this jealousy/confrontation scene, just for fun :’) There’s so many little variants! I think this is the most complex scene I've ever written, in terms of how many checks and variants I need to account for. I'll need to do tons of testing!

You’re still able to romance all three LIs separately until the final route choice, though, as long as you don’t make false promises regarding poly routes. You’ll get some jealousy variants if you romance more than one LI!

In the Steam version, there will be various achievements for confusing everyone or breaking up with LIs!

This takes a lot of time to write but I hope it makes the characters and story feel realistic! You get to see different sides of the characters when they’re confused, jealous or heartbroken, and it’s been super fun for me to write all those variants (though it is very slow! I really need to use my brain to make sure I'm writing the right checks). Though I might cry when I get to the final ending choice and have to write a break up scene for each LI :’) 

When the full game is released I’ll write a guide about how to get each ending (I’m not sure if I’ll make a booklet for Saint Ceri yet; if I do, I’ll have a less detailed guide available for free and a step-by-step guide in the booklet). There will be 11 endings (one with no romance, 2 solo endings per LI depending on some choices, and one per poly route). I hope all these options and variants will make Saint Ceri fun to replay, even if you’re only interested in one LI, or only in the single LI routes, or only in the poly…  There's still work to be done on the common route, but I really look forward to starting work on the endings and making them as satisfying as I can!

That's it from me! I'll make my usual monthly devlog at the end of the month, so see you all then!