DEVLOG #5: Medical examinations, Console Setting, Difficulty Level

Greetings fellow space officers!

I have been very busy over the last few weeks to develop the brand new medical simulation for the game. Some of you had a glimpse of it while examining Serena during the first lesson which also introduced Dr. Li, and now you'll get the chance to play a couple more scenarios.

At first I wanted to develop a simple situation: a patient, you, the teacher. While I moved deeper into it though I realized that things could've been more fun if I added some kind of unpredictability.



Medical Classes

Dr. Li will introduce a few classes where you will be randomly brought to scan 8 different patients:
- Aberoin, your teammate who kindly volounteered for the simulation
- Hergarr, a 21 years old Awar Female
- Syun-Ho, a 20 years old Karis Female
- Kormash, a 29 years old Kressari Male
- R18-20, a 27 years old Fuminoid Male
- Jowarr, a 39 years old Zalkan Male
- Meshal, a 25 years old Zurian Female
- Say-Gan, a 22 years old Karis Female

There are 20 different, randomly chosen, ailments your simulated patients might face. From Acceplexia Fever to Carmus Flu and Hydroga Aspisis. Of course those are ailments that are unknown to modern human medicine, so you'll have to learn how to recognize them and how to deal with them.



Codex Informations are available. They indicate the symptoms of each ailment and its cure, if any. You might need to administer medicines or antidotes, or even wake up a patient from a (simulated) coma.

This will teach medical-career players on how to deal with the medical scanner, which is also animated like many other consoles throughout the game.



Wait, I don't want to use the animated console! It's too difficult and annoying!

Worry not! A new setting, called "Console Interaction", is available in the Preferences screen. You can set it on "Simulation" to deal with the animated console or to "Visual Novel" to have a list of choices brought to you in a clickable menu, with the animated console on the back.

You can set the difficulty of the game at any time, except during the simulation, when the choice you made will be brought until its end.



It's too difficult!
Again, worry not! The difficulty settings have been renamed to "Ensign" being the easiest one, "Lieutenant" being a middle-level and "Captain" being the harder.

If you play on "Captain", for example, Dr. Li will grant you bonus or malus points based on the choices you made during the medical examination. The more useless choices you make the worst his judgement will be. However, some of you might not want to deal with this and prefer a smoother gameplay. By choosing "Ensign" or "Lieutenant" difficulty level you will just end the simulation like a normal in-game event without bad consequences.
You can set the difficulty of the game at any time.



Difficulty will also influence the chance your energy level will affect your learning ability. If you're too tired there will be a chance you fail to learn anything. The chance will be way lower on "Ensign" difficulty than it will be on "Captain".

I recommend to play the game on "Captain" difficulty if you want a real challenge, but feel free to play it on either setting if you want a moderate challenge or a plain Visual Novel experience.

It was difficult to develop this, but I can't wait for you to play it and give me many feedback about it as well! You will need different playthroughs if you want to explore every possible scenario, as some illnesses will only affect Fuminoids, Kressari, Humans and it will be challenging enough to figure out what a patient's issue is!

Stay with me for more informations about the game's development and new exciting announcements of voice-actors as well!

Stay safe and healthy!