Something's In the Air Redux project 0.6

New Material

Last version updated all the pictures except the mini epilogues which have now been removed. 

In it's place is the first of two new endings, three if you count Rachel Meets Ariane as sort of an ending.

The original "first" ending of Something's In The Air was the Paula path that (spoiler of 10 year old content) showed why some paths ended with rain storms and others did not, explaining the actual cause of the rain.

What the Paula path does now is open a new chapter of the game involving an alternate universe character that was introduced in release 0.2.  This release has a new "second" ending that resolves the 0.2 new story, and moves another mystery forward in its place that will get resolved by a "third" ending that shows up after you finish all 25, soon 26, paths.

This release also contains the first three chapters of Rachel Meets Ariane which will normally not be available until the completion of the "second" ending, but is enabled in the gallery from the beginning in this release only for testing purposes.

Updated Gallery (formerly Achievements)

I renamed the Achievements page to Gallery as that was the original name in the original SITA release in 2013.  You will see that there are now two Wendy pictures, and unless you have already unlocked Paula, there is no Paula.

Paula has been moved to a 6th column, along with new icons for the second and third endings that will not appear until they are reached.

If you "Show Completed Endings", it will reveal that there is a new Wendy ending "A Night At Lizards" which currently only exists in my head. The second Wendy icon is just there as a placeholder, and will not count against any achievements.

Gallery is where you can launch Rachel Meets Ariane which has a pretty linear story but with variants depending on the last ending that you completed.  If you want to see other variants, do another path first then launch Rachel Meets Ariane to see how that path changes the story.

For the purposes of Rachel Meets Ariane it assumes the best ending of the path, like if the last path is "Tequila Shots" it assumes player had a threesome with Ariane and Lydia, "Gamer Girl" and "LARPing with Arch Angel" assume player slept with Rachel even if your actual last play through did not hit those goals.

The "Players Notebook" will now keep you up to date of the various going on in the overall plot of the game.  As you play the game, you will see notes pop up in the lower left corner indicating entries into the notebook you reached.  All the other games in the series usually put current scores or game progress in this corner.  I decided there are no places where that is needed, so I added notebook notes instead.  This can be disabled in Preferences if you don't like them.

These notes now include entries from Rachel Meets Ariane. as well as two new characters once they have been unlocked.  Some of the harder to reach notebook notes will have red writing indicating how to unlock them.

Upon completion of the second ending, there will be additional menu items: "Repeat the final ending" will allow you to see the second and third endings again, if enabled. "Restart investigations" and "Shutdown investigations" will allow you to revisit the alternate universe character, and "Prompt to completely reset the game" will allow you to start again from the beginning and experience all the various progressions again.

Updated Help: Path walks!

Like the other games in this series, Something in the Air Redux now includes built in walkthrough paths in the Help page.  27 in all: one for each of the 25 currently available endings, and one Ariane intro that gets you started on all Ariane paths (ending at the theater where the paths diverge), and one Rachel intro that gets you started on all the Rachel paths (ending at the main course at dinner where the paths diverge).  These paths only work when the paths are actually clear.  At various stages in the wider game Veronica, Paula and some Rachel paths will be disabled, though their paths will not show that.

Game Play Changes

I want to make the game as free form as possible, allowing you to play whichever paths you want to in whatever order you wish.  But I discovered in testing that it is really easy to miss all the really interesting material if I make it too free.  So I had to put it on rails a bit.  Some paths will not be immediately available, while others will cease to become available until other paths are done first.  I tried to keep these "rails" as minimally game impacting as possible, and there are several fun easter eggs you are likely to miss if you rely on the rails, but I didn't want to make it into a hand hold narrative game.  Just be aware that if you load up a save and the game doesn't behave as it should it is probably these restrictions causing it.

Future Goals 

The basic structure of the final completed game is all here in 0.6.  There are three places where you will basically run into "under construction" signs: The third ending, the second Wendy path, and the final two chapters of Rachel Meets Ariane.  I also have graphics clean up I want to do and sound and music additions and changes to make, but completion is within reach.

I still have doubts that the odd structure of the game will be satisfying to players, I would love feedback either as a comment here of on Patreon or Discord.