In this poll there were three options for different sentient artefacts to follow in the Visual Novel:

• The Heirloom Artifact, passed down within the family since ancient times. This story would focus on family, honor and the pressure of following in the footsteps of those before you.
• The Lost Artifact, an amnesiac recently found in some forgotten temple. This story would focus on figuring out who it is and where it came from.
• The New Artifact. A freshly made artifact, recently sentient. In this story your choices would shape its personality – will it become a good or evil artifact in the end?

The clear winner here was the New Artefact, which got 50% of the votes compared to The Lost Artefact which got 31% and The Heirloom Artefact that got 19% of the votes. Since you guys are in agreement, I’ll start off by making the New Artefact’s story and move on from there!

Next up, the style mockup poll! Here you could pick between four variations of graphic styles I was considering for the visual novel’s look:

A) Straight up Secrets of Grindea graphics.
B) Tweaked Secrets of Grindea graphics; blurred backgrounds or some colour changes for easier readability.
C) A more typical higher-resolution Visual Novel look, which is closer to what most games in this genre look like.
D) A mix of the old and the new: higher resolution backgrounds with the original Secrets of Grindea portraits.

Here, the vote was a lot more even:

The original graphics got the highest percentage, but Option B and D were very close seconds! This means the majority is in favour of the original graphics, whether they’re exactly as they are now or slightly tweaked.

I’ll start off with using the SoG graphics as they are, and if needed, blurring or similar tweaks will be added to increase readability – after all, there will be a lot of reading involved in getting through this game, so it has to be comfortable.