ACT Patreon Active [HentaiWriter] Future Fragments

[hhh7773]

Hey, just recommending us online helps; the reason I knew it was you was because out of the 6,000+ people I emailed, you were the only one who wanted an Amazon card instead of a Steam card or PayPal or Patreon refund

Honestly, I can say with full certainty that you guys are great on the customer service end of things. Can say I still remember when I had to pull out of the patreon due to personal/family matters that required me to start saving up my $$$, and out of the blue you came in and offered to give me back my previous pledge(and followed through at that). Its stuff like that which has me guaranteed to buy the game on release really, and that's not even considering how much of a quality game it is really.

Regardless, definitely looking forward to how things turn out in the full release whenever it does come through, and well wishes on the rest of the project, as well as the launch!

 

[HentaiWriter]

Best of luck.
I'm sure we'll end up enjoying a quality product. Thank you very much for your dedication.

And thank you for sticking with us for so long!

People have been waiting years. What's a few more months?

True, true. Sad, but true. I wish it would have been done years earlier but it is what it is, unfortunately.

Honestly, I can say with full certainty that you guys are great on the customer service end of things. Can say I still remember when I had to pull out of the patreon due to personal/family matters that required me to start saving up my $$$, and out of the blue you came in and offered to give me back my previous pledge(and followed through at that). Its stuff like that which has me guaranteed to buy the game on release really, and that's not even considering how much of a quality game it is really.

Regardless, definitely looking forward to how things turn out in the full release whenever it does come through, and well wishes on the rest of the project, as well as the launch!

We just really want to make sure people feel they got their money's worth, so I'm glad that's coming across; for anyone else reading this, if you've got money issues, especially with COVID, and you need a refund, let me know and we'll refund you through Patreon (or if it's been longer than 3 months, through Paypal, Amazon / Prepaid Visa / Steam Cards).

Doesn't matter what reason you have; the last thing we want is people feeling they invested more in the game than they're comfortable with, especially if that investment comes at a cost of your own wellbeing or living expenses which is the last thing we want (and if I find out you've hurt your own finances in that way by pledging to us, I'm going to refund you period, whether you ask or not).

Glad we could help back then though, man hope things are better now!

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

Just curious, why the emphasis and huge money sink on voice work? This is a 2D sidescroller. The only side-scrollers (I remember anyway) I've seen have serious voice work throughout the game is Crisis Point: Extinction and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which was never their strong point, which is their level design and gameplay. You're spending 3x more money on something that most people playing this game won't truly focus on than sound design and music combined, which is arguably more important throughout the game? How is that worth the cost?

I can understand a pursuit of quality, but that much money? I just can't help but see that as a huge waste.

 

[derakino999]

Symphony of te night's voicework was not its best?!
Ha! What is a man?!

Not to mention its gameplay, it actually was so so so easy. (Granted it is the meaning of the word "Solid" and then beyond solid.)
No, the joy came from veteran old time fans who found interesting and appealing the character Alucard from Cv3, and then at the time of the revolutionary Belmont with super overdrives and rock&roll Richter being mixed in a super awesome more fleshed out setting. To which the voice added.

That's the main gripe of followup titles like Deedlit in wonderland who look beautiful but looks ain't everything, and seriously its just that easy, and needs more challenge and speed. The story...well.. i don't know in that particular case how it was handled but from what i heard yeah that's that

The charm is already there.
Imho. But then again.... My words may be as empty as my soul...

(I agree though when it got remade on the psp and the voice changed it was utterly destroyed and completely butchered and thrown out the window. There definitely it was not its strong point lol)

Now, talking about h games, voiced game overs are a joy and a gem that sadly we don't have nearly enough of. (And in english its pretty much next to zero)

 

[HentaiWriter]

Just curious, why the emphasis and huge money sink on voice work? This is a 2D sidescroller. The only side-scrollers (I remember anyway) I've seen have serious voice work throughout the game is Crisis Point: Extinction and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which was never their strong point, which is their level design and gameplay. You're spending 3x more money on something that most people playing this game won't truly focus on than sound design and music combined, which is arguably more important throughout the game? How is that worth the cost?

Well, a long time ago, people asked the same thing about games like Final Fantasy, wondering why you would ever want to have story in a game; they were "just video games", after all.
Voice acting in any medium generally improves the experience, but here, we had a few logical reasons for it also.

1) There is a lot of text in this game. It's been designed to be optional for 90% of it, so if you really do want to skip almost all of the storyline, you can, but for the people who do want to check it out, it's far more engaging and less boring to have audio narrate the story to you, versus reading walls of text.

2) Voicework in general gives a lot of life to a character; writing allows for different personalities to a degree, but voicework gives it much, much more depth. Going back to Symphony of the Night, think about Alucard, or Richter, or Dracula. Does their voice immediately pop into your head? If it does, then that shows the power of voicework (even if in that case, it was meme'd to high hell).

3) Voicework also allows for an auto-play mode for story events; the dialogue advances at the speed of the text, which wouldn't be possible without voicework. This again can make things a lot more comfortable for the player, so that they can say, listen to a large chunk of story while doing something else as the game runs in the background, as we have a "collections" menu where you can store Databanks and other similar things, and then listen to them all in one big go, as quite a few players have requested.

4) We have no portraits for most of our characters, and CGs aren't animated (only the sprites are); additionally, the sprites, while a good size for gameplay, again aren't full-screen sprites with hundreds of facial emotions like you might see in your typical visual novel. As a result, voicework can "bridge the gap" there, giving more emotion and clarity to scenes that might not get it if it were just text and sprite expressions.

5) There are a LOT of characters in the game (250+ across NPCs, Databanks, and main story characters); as a result, having different voices for each character can help to differentiate who is who, especially since a large number of them have no visuals (databanks) or share enemy sprites (NPCs, although there are special NPCs as well to flesh things out some).

I can understand a pursuit of quality, but that much money? I just can't help but see that as a huge waste.

Finally, we come to the main reason; people just really like quality voicework.
If you check over at F95 in the reviews, https://f95zone.to/threads/future-fragments-v0-48-1-hentaiwriter.1550/br-reviews , out of 20 reviews on one page, 14 of them mention the voicework as a selling point to them, in some cases being the reason they're interested in the game.

If you've got an aspect of your game that has 70 percent of the reviews for it recently mentioning it as a positive aspect, that means it's a pretty integral part of the game. (Total on the site, out of 46 reviews, btw, 31 mention voicework positively, which is still right at 67%..)

So because of all the above, we do believe it was worth the cost to put voicework in the game; the game and especially its characters wouldn't feel as alive without it.
I think going forward too, you'll start to see this happen more and more as industry standard with adult games (having voicework, that is).

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

I think going forward too, you'll start to see this happen more and more as industry standard with adult games (having voicework, that is).

If it costs $30,000 to have it, I sure as hell hope not. It gives less incentive for passionate developers to make good games and more incentive for them to fall into the trap of milking their patrons forever and not producing anything. Something I'm sure you yourself have been accused of many times trying to get this game out.

 

[HentaiWriter]

If it costs $30,000 to have it, I sure as hell hope not. It gives less incentive for passionate developers to make good games and more incentive for them to fall into the trap of milking their patrons forever and not producing anything. Something I'm sure you yourself have been accused of many times trying to get this game out.

We definitely have a much higher degree of voicework than most games, even most SFW games, so I don't think that'd be the norm.

However, to be clear, $30,000 is what we're paying for the remaining voicework; we've already paid upwards of $30,000 for the existing voicework we had up until this point, so it'd be $60,000 total.

That said, that's not that much at all in regards to most large video games, honestly. Your average AA video game takes millions of dollars to make, and nowadays I find a lot of people have a very skewed view on how much it takes to make a video game.

The real reason you see so many creators "milking their patrons forever" is because many people heavily underestimate the costs that come with making a game in general, regardless of voicework, and not only financial costs, but time costs, too. The voicework itself we barely worked on outside of the Electric Public Demo, with most of the work up until this point being for the engine, art, design, gameplay, writing, music, sound effects, etc.

Also, speaking of time, a lot of people have a fairly skewed view on how long it takes to make a game, too; true, you can pump out a game in a year or two, but that's either A) with a very large team, or B) with very little content (usually recycled in innovative ways).

There's also a lot of games that take a very long time, but people just don't realize it because they either A) don't post often about their game, so people forget about it and lose track of just how much time it's taken, or B) they're running into it for the first time late in development. Take for example, Sinisistar, a game I'm sure many people following our game know about; from the first screenshots of it early in development (meaning it had already been worked on for some time), to finish, was roughly 5 years.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/515490186935820289

Does this make them a bad dev or a bad person? No, because with small indie teams, taking that long is fairly reasonable IMO if you want a quality game. People often complain about the quality of porn games that come out, but then they demand that they come out in less than a year on a shoestring budget, and yet they're still surprised when the game is buggy, with little content, and not fun to play.

Went off on a tangent there, but to get back on topic; with everything in regards to "milking patrons", everyone has free will. Many devs also have patreons like ours, where you pledge once and get your reward forever. We also give refunds for any time, any reason, as noted above, so there isn't really a possible way to "get milked" by us since you can get all your money back at any time and only need to pledge once to get stuff for life. If anyone's continuing to pledge past the first pledge, then that's entirely them just wanting to support development, which we appreciate, but you don't need to do that.

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

Well, a long time ago, people asked the same thing about games like Final Fantasy, wondering why you would ever want to have story in a game; they were "just video games", after all.

Just clearing the air here: This was never my argument. It's not even a proper comparison you're making here. We're talking about apples and you basically brought up a celery. The Final Fantasy series is a JRPG series, which tend to be a lot more story heavy compared to most other genres due to their turn based nature at first. You're making a Platformer, which typically don't prioritize their stories through cutscenes and long conversations, but whatever story is being conveyed is primarily done through a quick intro in the beginning of the game and then subtext like in the Metroid series.

Platformers are best known for their level design, gameplay, and replay-ability. I cannot tell you how many times I've run through games like Kyrieru's Eroico and Kurovadis not even for the porn, but its smooth as butter gameplay, beautifully detailed levels, and smart game design. Hell I still do sometimes.

I just found it strange that a gigantic sum of money was being prioritized to an aspect of a platformer that is not normally prioritized in the genre. I actually prefer having a strong story in my games, porn or not. I never mentioned having a story once.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Just clearing the air here: This was never my argument. It's not even a proper comparison you're making here. We're talking about apples and you basically brought up a celery. The Final Fantasy series is a JRPG series, which tend to be a lot more story heavy compared to most other genres due to their turn based nature at first.

I'm not saying you were against story; I was comparing the two situations.

- You're saying that platformers don't typically have text stories and voicework and all that, which a lot of them don't, which is true. (There are some that do, though.)
- I'm saying that prior to Final Fantasy in the west, the very idea of a video game having any storyline beyond just the instruction manual's story was unheard of.

That's why I made that comparison; back in the 1980's, if you told people in the west that "yeah, our video game has actual storyline, character development, twists, etc." people would give you a look like you were burning cash and having zero idea what you were doing.

However, Final Fantasy (and Dragon Quest in the east, but definitely not in the west) ended up establishing a lot of genre staples, one of which was a focus on depth of storyline.

In the east, voicework in indie games is something done much more often than it is in the west (including adult games), showing a clear desire for it; this is slowly trickling over to the west, and back when we started this one of my main pet peeves was playing so many games in general that just had little to no audio work or if they did have voicework, repeated the same 2-3 voice samples over and over. Audio is a massive part of a video game, and neglecting it just wasn't something I wanted to do, regardless of genre.

To be clear again, by the way; if Future Fragments had no voicework at all, it still would have taken as long as it has. The voicework itself hasn't delayed the game whatsoever.

Also, as a last note; we heavily prefer making games that are a mix of multiple genres, instead of sticking solely to the established features of one given genre.

Platformers are best known for their level design, gameplay, and replay-ability.

So with that said, why not have that and voicework so the characters are fleshed out and more easily remembered?
(Plus a robust storyline, 40 endings, all that, but you already said you preferred that of course; just pointing out that a game doesn't have to generally stick so hard to its roots.)

 

[alias34]

Getting the impression most of the budget went into the damage control department

 

[HentaiWriter]

Getting the impression most of the budget went into the damage control department

I don't think replying to questions and critiques about the development process and clarifying our choices is damage control.

That, and for it to be where most of the budget went, it would have to have cost over $120,000, as that's how much we've spent on external content like music, sound effects, voicework, and translation so far, which I don't think is the cost of replying to a few forum posts.

 

[ChupacabraGonzales]

The voice work was what got me interested in this game to begin with and how I discovered SilkyMilk's work. (I can't remember for sure but it was this game and Nonoplayer's that I was following at the time)
I first ran into the 0.27 demo on F95 zone and pledged on Patreon several time to check on new updates. Without the voicework element it wouldn't've had anything to differentiate it from all the other titles when browsing through f95.

 

[AnotherLurker]

I don't think replying to questions and critiques about the development process and clarifying our choices is damage control.

That, and for it to be where most of the budget went, it would have to have cost over $120,000, as that's how much we've spent on external content like music, sound effects, voicework, and translation so far, which I don't think is the cost of replying to a few forum posts.

When I think of all the hentai game developers who single-handedly put their heart and soul into a great game, who then charged maybe 5 to 10 bucks for it, then quietly watched it become
pirated after a month or so when mega links stopped getting taken down, I wonder how they must feel, knowing people can, and have, been making 6 figures developing hentai games far lower
in actual hentai-gaming quality, taking months if not years to develop them, some even never finishing and just quietly racking up the green.

You can spend a whole million on voice acting and music if you like, but if your game has less variety in hentai animations than a koonsoft game, you're probably missing the point, and, more to the point, disappointing a lot of people.. Trying to convince us you're "totally not" pocketing some fraction of that patreon money only makes you look worse, and emphasizes the point that whatever delegation skills you or whoever you're paying to develop the game has, clearly isn't worth the amount of money being hoarded or spent on the effort.

People dislike large-scale/successful patreon devs, because they basically use the same bullshit strategy that companies like EA do.. Hype up enough dimwitted people, throw out a large enough number of teasers or trailers, and cover your ass long enough that the pile of cash you sit on physically blocks them from attacking you in disgust after realizing what they or others paid for, and you no longer have to worry about dealing with them in the first place..

"Damage control"?.. That would have to imply there was damage at some point, but it seems pretty clear to me your ivory tower is looking pretty pristine.

But I digress. We're far past the point of complaining or debating "what makes a good hentai game", you've already won. You, or whoever is in charge, could make a public statement about eating live babies, and completely halt the progress of the game's development out of pure spite, and you'd still have enough money left over to live comfortably for quite a long time.

 

[HentaiWriter]

When I think of all the hentai game developers who single-handedly put their heart and soul into a great game, who then charged maybe 5 to 10 bucks for it, then quietly watched it become
pirated after a month or so when mega links stopped getting taken down, I wonder how they must feel, knowing people can, and have, been making 6 figures developing hentai games far lower
in actual hentai-gaming quality, taking months if not years to develop them, some even never finishing and just quietly racking up the green.

Just to be clear, you know we encourage piracy of our game, right?
https://f95zone.to/threads/future-fragments-v0-48-1-hentaiwriter.1550/post-717788
It's also possible to make a game where you make 6 figures and put your heart and soul into it, unless you think that making money somehow makes that impossible.

You can spend a whole million on voice acting and music if you like, but if your game has less variety in hentai animations than a koonsoft game, you're probably missing the point, and, more to the point, disappointing a lot of people.. Trying to convince us you're "totally not" pocketing some fraction of that patreon money only makes you look worse, and emphasizes the point that whatever delegation skills you or whoever you're paying to develop the game has, clearly isn't worth the amount of money being hoarded or spent on the effort.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here or if you've actually looked into our game, as there's a number of things this particular part of the post is implying that just aren't accurate.

- Koonsoft games generally get about 40-50 or so animations; ours is at around 120 or so, with no animations recycled, no palette swaps, etc (and over 30 CGs too).
- When have I ever said we're "not pocketing" some of that money? This game is our full time job; of course a good portion of it goes to paying our rent, food, bills, etc. We're paying for those things first, and then with whatever we have left, that goes directly into music, sound effects, translation, voicework, etc.
- I'm not sure if you know this, but the last sentences implies I'm not working on the game myself; I do all of the writing and level design, as well as all the cutscenes by hand, and share design roles with Triangulate and Frouge (artist and programmer on the game).

As far as "hoarding money", again, yes, we're using money to pay rent and bills and such. That said, we're still in debt by tens of thousands of dollars because it costs money to pay for audio work, and we're breaking even as far as the rest of the income goes. If you'd like me to give a full money breakdown on where the money is going each month, I'd be happy to do that (it's been done multiple times over at F95 and I believe in this thread too, but a 2021 version would be fine too).

People dislike large-scale/successful patreon devs, because they basically use the same bullshit strategy that companies like EA do.. Hype up enough dimwitted people, throw out a large enough number of teasers or trailers, and cover your ass long enough that the pile of cash you sit on physically blocks them from attacking you in disgust after realizing what they paid for, and you no longer have to worry about dealing with them in the first place..

Yeah, refunding anyone who asks, for any amount, at any time, falls in line with that behavior.
Pledging once, ever, to get a particular tier bonus for life does too.
The 60+ demos we put out that collectively have every level of the game and every sex animation which we encouraged to be pirated also fall in line with that, true.

You're right, you pretty much got us on all points, our bad. Same for the pile of cash, the best way to have one is to take out a loan and go into debt, so that's true too.

Sarcasm aside, I have a feeling at this point that you're pretty stuck on your viewpoint of us and our game, so all I can really say is that like everyone else, you're not only free to not back the game, you're free to pirate it at launch and see if it lives up to the statistics we've posted about it. If it doesn't, feel free to give us a bad review and encourage others not to download, play, or buy it.

"Damage control"?.. That would have to imply there was damage at some point, but it seems pretty clear to me your ivory tower is looking pretty pristine.

If people aren't enjoying the game, or where their money is going, that's on us, and it's not something we want to let stand.

So to you and to anyone else, if you ever have critique about the game that we can fix, or questions I can answer, or just again want a refund, let me know here or on twitter or anywhere else we've got social media setup.

I would far rather make no money off of this game and stay in debt, than make lots of money by having people be unsatisfied with the game.

But I digress. We're far past the point of complaining or debating "what makes a good hentai game", you've already won. You, or whoever is in charge, could make a public statement about eating live babies, and completely halt the progress of the game's development out of pure spite, and you'd still have enough money left over to live comfortably for quite a long time.

I'm not going to give exact numbers out of bank safety stuff, but;
- I have roughly $6,500 in my checking account.
- I have no savings. At all.
- I have $17,000 in debt across my 4 credit cards. This isn't counting the loan debt.
- Patreon is my only income.

If you can live comfortably off of around $500 a month income (what I have left over after splitting the Patreon money 3 ways, as well as paying for music, SFX, and voicework, plus rent, bills, and so on), with a debt nearly 3 times as large as your current checking account assets, then sure, you'd definitely be able to live comfortably off that.

As far as me "already winning", this is with the mindset that I "want to win" by "making money" as the end goal, when yes, making money is a goal, but that's because I need money to make the best game I can make. Same goes for everyone else on the team. High quality voice actors, musicians, sound effects creators, and so on aren't going to work for free.

Why would we want to halt the game's progress when we've 1) got so many other game ideas we want to put out, and 2) we can't wait to put the game out so that people can enjoy it?
I listen to the music for the game in my car, I'm constantly thinking of things to write for the game, I'm testing it alongside the tester group; I genuinely enjoy both playing and making our game, and if it's not bringing other people happiness to play it, then we're doing it wrong.

 

[super_slicer]

Patreon success whine is my favorite kind. The tears of failed amateur developers, aged underneath a bed in their parent's basement for more than a decade is a full bodied blend with an overwhelming taste of envy containing notes of despair, poverty and crushed dreams.

 

[hhh7773]

Patreon success whine is my favorite kind. The tears of failed amateur developers, aged underneath a bed in their parent's basement for more than a decade is a full bodied blend with an overwhelming taste of envy containing notes of despair, poverty and crushed dreams.

I'm not really 100% sure if this is meant to be targeted towards said developer, or those complaining about Patreon in itself, either way, both arguments are pretty tired at this point, even if they really will never cease to end just due to the nature of Patreon. and crowdfunding in general.

That said, its honestly pretty nutty getting to see just how much some of this can actually cost, as I never really did put much thought into just how much money really went into doing things like voice acting for a game of this scale, let alone something that'd be even larger. Not really surprised honestly, but some quality and full voice acting really does make this game stand out compared to most. Do I think something like it is necessary for a solid game? Not really, no, but it can't hurt. I just hope it ultimately pays off financially in the end, though either way it lends itself to a better product as a whole as long as the game itself comes together well, which from what I've played in the past definitely seems to be the case so far at least.

Either way, haven't kept up enough to understand where a lot of the recent posts in this thread are coming from, but seems like a good bit of side tracking to me if nothing else. If its just people getting hung up over how much the Patreon itself is bringing in, then "¯\_(ツ)_/¯ " is really about the best way I can express how I feel about this topic, and the number of times its popped up over the years.

 

[AnotherLurker]

Patreon success whine is my favorite kind. The tears of failed amateur developers, aged underneath a bed in their parent's basement for more than a decade is a full bodied blend with an overwhelming taste of envy containing notes of despair, poverty and crushed dreams.

I can agree, when that's the case.. This is more-so the familiar but unique flavor of "Watching devs who make niche-kink oriented hentai games and praying for their success, then watching them fade in obscurity while watching devs making games you have nearly no interest in roll in the dough".

It's envy, sure, but it's envy in the sense of knowing a guy who lives in a trailor park who can make a calzone that would melt the tastebuds right off your tongue with how good it is, but watching him give up on his enthusiasm for cooking and stop all-together, while another day, you keep walking past the same fancy resturaunt that makes calzones that taste like cardboard and stale cheese, but you know if you dare make a complaint, one of the managers will saunter up to you and tell you to take your smug calzone-loving ass somewhere else.

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

I can agree, when that's the case.. This is more-so the familiar but unique flavor of "Watching devs who make niche-kink oriented hentai games and praying for their success, then watching them fade in obscurity while watching devs making games you have nearly no interest in roll in the dough".

It's envy, sure, but it's envy in the sense of knowing a guy who lives in a trailor park who can make a calzone that would melt the tastebuds right off your tongue with how good it is, but watching him give up on his enthusiasm for cooking and stop all-together, while another day, you keep walking past the same fancy resturaunt that makes calzones that taste like cardboard and stale cheese, but you know if you dare make a complaint, one of the managers will saunter up to you and tell you to take your smug calzone-loving ass somewhere else.

While I agree with the sentiment, this game is at least really good quality. I don't personally agree with the item system that was implemented after the ice level, but it's not my game and it's handled well.

 

[HentaiWriter]

You keep walking past the same fancy resturaunt that makes calzones that taste like cardboard and stale cheese, but you know if you dare make a complaint, one of the managers will saunter up to you and tell you to take your smug calzone-loving ass somewhere else.

I mean, have I ever told you to get out of the thread (or has anyone else)? Fairly sure I've constantly tried to address your unhappiness with both the game and how we manage it. We have multiple channels on our public discord for people to voice complaints or critique on, and there's never been a single time I've just told people to fuck off or get out or anything of the sort. Same goes for posts over at F95, too. We do polls every other month or so asking people what they like/dislike about many, many aspects of the game as well, and I reply to all emails regarding critique or questions for the game, no exceptions.

The last thing we'd ever do would be to tell you to "take your ass somewhere else".

Honestly, I am curious though; what was the last demo you played of the game? The initial post you made makes me think you played a very early version of the game, especially regarding sex animation diversity.

While I agree with the sentiment, this game is at least really good quality. I don't personally agree with the item system that was implemented after the ice level, but it's not my game and it's handled well.

What about the item system didn't you like? Just curious, as in very recent demos we've changed a good deal of things with it since the original implementation, including;
- Keep powerups whether you die or not
- Powerups can be swapped anywhere, not just on the Save Pad
- In general, the powerups got a massive revamp to their abilities and stats over the last month or two, and all 50 of them are in as well now

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

What about the item system didn't you like? Just curious, as in very recent demos we've changed a good deal of things with it since the original implementation, including;
- Keep powerups whether you die or not
- Powerups can be swapped anywhere, not just on the Save Pad
- In general, the powerups got a massive revamp to their abilities and stats over the last month or two, and all 50 of them are in as well now

It's more of a personal preference on how items and powerups are handled than a critique. I prefer the Metroid path where you have a set number of upgrades that stack upon each other instead of having to mix and match three powerups out of like 50 for an 'optimal build for my playstyle'. I don't prefer it, especially in the earlier demos of the game where you couldn't actually store and re-equip powerups you've already collected.

It makes me feel as if the character I'm playing is truly getting stronger as I progress through harsher and harsher environments. It's a sense of immersion.