The thing is that, in creating the new cast and completely rewriting the story, Claire already ended up being more like Starlight or Trixie than Twilight lol. I swear that wasn't even intentional, despite my love of those two. Starlight and Trixie only became regular cast members on the show after I had already begun work on SLARPG

Claire's basically nothing like late season Twilight, who becomes an authority figure, so it's impossible to give Claire characters that replicate the dynamics Twilight has with Starlight and Trixie. Hell, if anything, the dynamics Twilight has with Starlight and Trixie are closer to the dynamic between FAITH and Claire, regardless of which characters' roles they inherited from Horse RPG. I very quickly stopped giving a shit about replicating the character dynamics from Horse RPG 1:1, and even Horse RPG had already diverged heavily from how some characters were written in the show, so it can be difficult to try and look at it through that MLP lens again because a lot of it just doesn't fit

Let's go back further, then. It's likely that, had I made Horse RPG in a post-StarTrix world, they would've had a large role in the game. Maybe I would've had them off on their own B-plot adventure as a duo, with their paths routinely crossing with the main party, since I like them so much. Or maybe they'd be in the main party themselves instead of Twilight and Applejack! But Fluttershy and Rainbow don't really have much of a connection to Starlight and Trixie, so I'm not sure how well that'd work. Maybe I would've leaned into the comedy of that awkwardness? I don't know. I just feel like having Starlight and Trixie around would make me write Twilight VERY differently, maybe even giving her a whole different role, and that changes the whole game. In turn, I have no idea what the version of SLARPG that used this whole different game as a starting point would look like

Or I could just ignore this butterfly effect stuff and give Claire a pair of rival witches who are dating each other, one a hyper-competent control freak and the other an overconfident charlatan, and call it a day lol. Maybe they're hoofed mammals to go with Claire being a cow, and Starlight becomes a deer or a gazelle or something and Trixie becomes a donkey

[SLARPG Act V spoilers] Yeah, that's pretty much why I did it that way lol. I love the comedy of the silly quiz show segments in those games, particularly the Paper Mario ones, but when it's an actual test of your memory with obscure questions and a fail state it can get real frustrating real fast. It's a sudden test of a skill the player didn't know they were expected to have. It frequently just makes players look up the answers online, which isn't exactly optimal for keeping them engaged, or at worst players can get frustrated and drop the game altogether. Which isn't something I want at the climax of a story-driven game!

In the age of Twitch, especially, I can't imagine it's easy to commit every little detail of a game to memory when you're playing a few hours once a week and trying to entertain an audience while doing so

Undecided currently. I lean towards it being her actual family name just because that's simpler, but it would be understandable for her to change it given the trajectory of her life. This is one of those things I've left up in the air based on what I want to do in future stories

I will say, though, that just because her last name was arbitrarily taken from a fictional character IRL doesn't mean the same is true within the story. Mega Man Battle Network doesn't exist on Reverie for obvious reasons, and I don't think Claire would intentionally name herself after the nerdy guy who runs the battle chip shop in those games (and is also a reformed cyberterrorist/occasional ally of the player/etc.). That isn't something she would resonate with her. It's just the result of me needing last names for the Novas and going "hey, this might be kinda funny" and liking the way it sounded

(rot13 for endgame slarpg spoilers) v'ir frra gurfr sbezf fvzcyl ersreerq gb nf "fhcre yrfovna" zbqr ol snaf, cnegvphyneyl nf n cynl ba "fhcre fnvlna." vg vf qrsvavgryl abg pnyyrq gung yby. vg'f abg yvxr gurl'er gur bayl barf jub pbhyq gurbergvpnyyl nggnva sbezf yvxr gung, naq nyfb zrybql vf ov

v qba'g unir vg 100% anvyrq qbja zlfrys, gubhtu. va zl urnq v znvayl ersreerq gb vg nf "frys-npghnyvmngvba." v qba'g xabj vs gung'f gbb ba gur abfr, ohg ba n gurzngvp yriry gung'f jung vg vf. jvguva gur tnzr'f qngnonfr gurve arj pynffrf ner fvzcyl ersreerq gb nf "hygvzngr cnynqva" naq "hygvzngr chax," gubhtu v cebonoyl jbhyqa'g npghnyyl hfr gubfr grezf va gur aneengvir. v nyfb pbafvqrerq gur anzrf "cresrpg cnynqva" naq "cresrpg chax," juvpu v guvax jbex jryy, ohg gur nooerivngvba bs "cc" qbrf tvir zr cnhfr yznb

this might be a boring answer, but the main difference for me has just been financial stability. slarpg hasn't made me a millionaire, but it's nice that if we need to buy something for the house or my mom needs help with bills i can just pay for those things without a second thought. it's nice knowing that if my computer randomly broke i could just afford a new one without needing to run up my credit card. it's nice to no longer be in a perpetual state of having $150 to my name after paying rent every month. i've been extremely burnt out this year, but i'm grateful that the game has done well enough to let me take this time off to recharge before deciding on what to make next, instead of having to immediately jump into full-time commission work to keep the lights on

i can't say the kind of audience i've cultivated has really been at the front of my mind, whatever your definition of "the wrong audiences" may be. maybe things would be different if the game sold a million copies and inspired fandom bickering, but folks have generally been chill about it

my main fear was really just the thought of people playing it, talking about it for a couple weeks after launch, and then forgetting about it, and that hasn't happened. i still see people talking about it. i still get asks about the characters. i still see fanart regularly. these are not life-changing developments, but it's certainly more than what most zero budget indie devs get for their first commercial releases

okay, looking into this, i think i found the cause. some enemy events in the game have some overly cautious event scripting that saves your spot in the background music before a fight and then replays it afterwards, to make sure the music doesn't restart after every fight. (i can't remember how necessary this actually ended up being - it may have only be an error with mp3 files and not ogg files, like what the final soundtrack uses)

at that point in the story the beach doesn't have any music, just ambient ocean sounds, which are on a different sound channel from the music. so i guess the "save BGM" commands before these fights are doing nothing, and when it hits the "replay BGM" command it simply replays the music from the last time the "save BGM" command actually worked... which must have been in the basement dungeon