diasporatheblog

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(Spoilers) Does Iomhar always betray you if you side with the Empire? I always thought I did pretty well with him (got him to call off the raid and got him to help me talk down the Iskendi etc) but I still got the dialogue that he’d arranged the Chief’s kidnapping, though I don’t remember if he ever actually showed up again in the final battle or anything to prove either way? Just wondering if there’s a variable or if he just depends on who you ally with

Iomhar always does that, as I recall. The one that has a variable for whether he sticks with you or betrays you and allies with the Iskendi is Daghan.

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[diasporatheblog]

Any idea yet when y'all will have it published? No rush intended, I'm just excited to see the finished product for the one that got me into interactive fiction <3

No estimate yet. We're a bit on hold at the moment as other life events resolve, but we'll be back into editing as soon as we can. We know it needs a lot of work, but in the interest of actually finishing, we're going to try for a few major things and a few minor things and then call it good, I think. :)

Ideally we'll have it submitted sometime in the middle of this year, and after that, it's in the publisher's hands.

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[diasporatheblog]

(possible spoilers) - in chapter 8, in the island part, is it possible to have any other company besides cormac? every playthrough of mine i get stuck with him lol (good thing I love him but anyways-)

It's whomever you have the lowest personal affinity with. Honestly it's a bit surprising that you're always getting Cormac; most people end up with one of the Castulians because they've had less time to build affinity with them!

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I was wondering what age rating is diaspora. I haven't finished it quite yet or gotten to any real romancy vibes so I was wondering if I shld anticipate any steaminess or no?

There's definitely no R-18 stuff or anything haha. I'd put it at maybe PG-13, maybe higher if you're particularly averse to depictions of violence. (There are definitely no explicit sex scenes. Everything in that department is quite tame.)

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hi! i uh... may or may not have been entirely consumed by Diaspora for the past few weeks of my life. thank you for making this. truly. thank you for providing a joy in my life that i'd feel emptier without. i never thought i would like politically inclined games but this completely changed any and all my perceptions on such.

thank you again and congrats on all you've accomplished! :)) (i did not expect to love cormac that much, please give that man a bear hug from me)

Thank you so much! It's always amazing to hear someone liked it this much. We're thrilled it managed to get you to like a game with political elements. (Also, Cormac would give fantastic bear hugs; your taste is impeccable.)

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What happened to your patreon? If it's gone forever, is there a way we could read the side stories you posted?

We were finding that keeping up with the patreon content was hurting our ability to work on the game. We may find somewhere else to put all the old bonus contents, but right now we're just focused on trying to get things ready for submission. :)

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Congrats

Have been following for over a year now so excited for the game to be published so everyone can see what a brilliant IF you guys have crafted. Cheers.

Thank you anon! Hopefully that day isn't too far in the future anymore. :)

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Loved the story, quick question though. I romanced my bharda and izzy and I couldn't pick between them but they ended up together. Is there like a poly route? Because i feel like there's something there

The game doesn't have any poly routes. Aisling and Izzy can get together if a PC who isn't romancing either of them encourages it, but we decided pretty early on that the coding for polys wasn't something we wanted to try handling in our very first game.

Sorry if that's a bit disappointing. :/

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First of all - love this game ! It's such an amazing, in depth story, with so many intricate parts and features. You;re both such talented writers, it really shows. Just finished playing through the last chapter and the epilogue, and was just wondering - I know you won't ever create a guide, and I get that, it's a lot of work. But can you provide an indicator on just how many different endings there are ? I'd love to know where I landed in all that.

Honestly, I'm not even sure, in part because I don't know what constitutes a distinct 'ending.' There's obviously whether the PC is alive, whether their companions are alive, generally how well they did in the battle, who they sided with, whether Aisling is shaman, a bit of variation for whether the clan approves of their leadership or not, a scene variant depending on who the RO is, and different pieces of text depending on what direction the PC decides to go with the clan in the Epilogue, whether that matches what they decided at the conference (depending on who they are talking to the other characters may care more or less about this), and in some cases how that choice of future direction interacts with the RO's own plans. (Sangarinus, for example, will not always be willing to go north).

Thank so much for playing; we're thrilled you enjoyed it. :)

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omg!! congratulations!!! this is such a milestone im so proud of you, after following the development of this game for years it's so gratifying to see it complete

Thank you, anon! We're taking a bit of a break, then getting stuck into the editing. We're really almost there, and it's a little weird to think about considering just how long ago it all started. :)

We appreciate you sticking with us all this time.

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[diasporatheblog]

The Epilogue is Playable Now

So, we finally made it.

The Epilogue is playable now!

It certainly felt like the closer to the end we got, the slower our progress became, but the important part is that we did it and we made it and now you can play it. Which means that the entire game is now playable! That feels good to say.

Our next steps are: getting some things edited to get the game polished up, and then get it published and out there for the world to play in its final form. Thank you to everyone that has followed this project over the years, it has meant the world to us.

We hope you enjoy this final update!

[x] The Game

[x] The Ko-fi

[x] The CoG Forum Thread

#fromtheauthors #announcement #update

[diasporatheblog]

is there a link where we can see all possible decisions in the game + result of that decision + stats with that. i guess like a game guide?

Hey anon,

No such thing exits, and honestly we probably won't make one. Sometimes someone in the community will do something like that, but I don't think it's happened for Diaspora, so I think it's unlikely there will ever be one. We're sorry if that's disappointing, but such a thing would be a huge undertaking, particularly while we're just trying to finish the game itself.

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Neutrality anon again! I figured as much re: having to choose, since that is what the game was telling me, but I just wanted to be sure. I'm just a sap who wants everybody to be happy 😅 This isn't that kind of story, evidently.

Honestly, though, it does all make sense, I'm not complaining about it, and I'm not unhappy with it - I'll enjoy the game all the same. Basically a village's worth of people (I'm assuming), up against an empire and the displaced descendants of the former inhabitants? The clan's foothold is far too fragile for that.

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly it, heh. Enough people to make a difference in the answer, but not enough to fundamentally change the question, so to speak. :)

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Hi! I'm new to the game and really enjoying it at the moment, though admittedly I don't know how far into the current version I am and wanted to ask a couple of things;

First; the harbour skirmish was a pretty fun one, and figuring out which ally would be best for each challenge was a nice little puzzle (even more surprising was that my first pick each time did pretty well). Is this something to expect from all the future battles, or will each have their own unique quirk to look forward to? The first battle set up the stats, after all.

Second; regarding the routes available in the game. So far it seems to be angling towards Castulian, Iskendi, and Neutral, but also every time I take a neutral option someone tries to tell me that I can't be neutral forever. And being as I am playing for peace at the moment, part of me is wondering if there won't be some way to make peace between the Castulians and Iskendi. So if it's not a spoiler, can you cast any light on that? Will you be forced to choose one or the other eventually? Can you make both sides let old grudges go (even if, say, certain major characters *cough*Adriana*cough*Baltasar* had to be bumped off to achieve it)?

Most of the battles have their own sort of quirks to them; none is exactly like the harbour battle or anything. Also, people are telling you that you can't be neutral forever because, well, you can't. The Cine don't really have the power to do that, and these two other factions just kind of are going to come to loggerheads, so you end up needing to throw in with one of them for the sake of the clan's future in the region.

You don't have to be totally pleased about that by any means, of course, but these two factions have been on this collision course for a while, and while the arrival of the Cine changes a lot, it doesn't change that.

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I found this awhile back, and first of all; I adore the writing. The world and the characters are just wonderful. And second of all; I adore the island. That is such a wonderful premise, I'm not even done with it but I'm already itching to play the game all over again just to see how Cormac is on the island (probably all of them, truth be told, it's such an interesting new side of them and such a different environment and just—I love it so dearly)

The island was honestly probably my favorite chapter to write. It was a pain in many ways (so much variation, etc), but it felt the most 'adventure-y' to me, and I ended up liking the sort of 'dungeon design' we came up with. Very heavily inspired by tabletop RPGs on that one.

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sorry if this've been asked before (tumblr search function sucks) but do you have an idea of traditional cine clothes/outfits? + sorry for any mistakes or if the ask is confusing, english is not my first language :")

Admittedly, we're not really clothing people. I'm sure there are all sorts of proper words for these things, but I don't have them. Still, think tunics, trousers, thick boots, leather, fur, bone. Nothing too heavy, because of all the time people spend on boats, but definitely designed to withstand the cold. Cloaks over coats, as they're easier shed when overboard. Given that they're partially inspired by Vikings, you probably wouldn't go wrong imagining anything in that vein, but there are also more robelike garments for the mages like Aisling.

I hope that helps; I'm honestly terrible at describing clothes, and the Cine don't exactly wear a uniform so trying to cover the range is tough!

And don't worry, your phrasing was totally understandable. :)

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Once the epilogue's done and the game is complete would you guys be willing to list it on IGDB so it can be rated/reviewed on Backloggd? 👀 I'd do it myself but it needs a cover image and everything

I think that's something we can probably do! We might wait until after publication? I'm just not sure if listing it beforehand would be a good idea, since it's likely to be pretty significantly changed in its final form, so to speak.

But if we do get the thing out there and then forget, please feel free to poke at us to remind us to do that! :)

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