#slarpg asks

This has already happened! Melody is a secret NPC in @punkitt-is-here's Susan Taxpayer game, partially because Bee's the composer for that game.

Presented above is a totally real question that isn’t facetious at all

is this normal?

Obligatory disclaimer that this is all subjective and different things will appeal to different people and there are other ways to do it and I didn't do a perfect job etc. etc. But anyway aside from stuff like making the animations quick to keep the pace up, the main things I did to make the combat in SLARPG more fun are the Star Power and Spellbook systems.

The need to build and spend Star Power to use your stronger abilities means that you can't just spam the same abilities on every turn, and you'll have to think ahead and do things one turn to set yourself up for future turns where you get those big hits in. Experienced turn-based RPG players can get this sort of setup and execution satisfaction out of using buffs and debuffs, which SLARPG has a lot of, but famously more casual players will often just refuse to use buffs and debuffs (see: the ten billion posts about people who just attack every turn in Pokemon and never use status moves), so the Star Power system forces them to think more strategically rather than sticking with the most straightforward, repetitive strategy and getting bored more easily.

And then there's also the Spellbook system, which gives you a bunch of different abilities to mess around with and facilitates experimenting with different builds. Often the thing that makes random encounters in JRPGs interesting is less the moment to moment combat and more the high level strategizing about your builds. In hindsight I realize that the Spellbooks immediately giving you all of their abilities the second they're equipped rather than needing to level them up takes away some of that meta progression satisfaction, but my thinking was always that not needing to invest time and energy into the Spellbooks would make players less hesitant to swap to new ones and experiment with different builds. There's always a tradeoff.

(In general I was sure to include a good variety of gear, and no one has a definitive best-in-slot item for every slot so that you still have to make choices about your build into the endgame.)

I'm flattered people still think fondly of my silly old ask blog haha

A lot of people have said they'd love to see more SLARPG comics and I'm definitely open to the idea, I just don't know if or when it'll actually happen. The main thing is that most of the ideas I have for further stories with the Novas are ones that would be better saved for an actual sequel. And also my brain's mostly focused on fleshing out the story of my next game right now, rather than thinking of new stories to tell on Reverie. But new stories with the Novas will happen someday, in some form, beyond me randomly drawing them for fun sometimes.