Dev's Notes: The Snake Agenda 1

Hey, today I'd like to share a little mechanical info on the upcoming content patch to Unborn Daughter, which I have tentatively titled The Snake Agenda. Why? Mostly because it's nice to have people to share it with, even if I'm mostly just pushing words out into the void. If you don't care about purely mechanical details though, feel free to skip over this one. I'll have Dev's Notes about the Snake Agenda's story content out later. Maybe. The release of these suckers really depends purely on whim.

Specifically this little note is about Fatal, a fun status that's already present in the common demo. If you've already encountered it, you'll know that Fatal doesn't work quite like any other status in the demo either!
Specifically, while most status effects in the game are purely binary 'you have it or ya don't' affairs, Fatal works on a stack system. It doesn't do anything until it hits 5 stacks, at which point the afflicted character instantly dies.

If you've finished the demo you're guaranteed to have run into Fatal at least once, since one of the required plot bosses, the Stillborn God, inflicts it with her basic attack. You might have also run into a few optional hidden bosses like the Living Curse, who also incorporate it into their mechanics (Incidentally for that fight, I recommend strategically getting your party members killed in a staggered order to avoid the Living Curse's Fatal-inflicting AOE from automatically wiping the party every five uses). There are even (quite rare, quite hidden) ways for Dorothy herself to gain Fatal-inflicting skills, allowing you some hideous stall strategies against particular fights!

But enough about what's already in the demo. I'm here to talk about the Snake Agenda, which is what I've named the upcoming content patch which adds three new zones, two new dungeons, a shopping hub, more fishing, more NPC's, a means to further explore already-existing maps and a buttload more bosses, enemies, skills and incidental dialogue. It also adds snakes.
There are a lot of upcoming snake enemies in a certain area and they're bringing with them, as their reptilian gimmick, a whole bunch more status effects that work along Fatal's stack rules! Their venoms are myriad, slow-acting and potentially devastating in the wrong hands. And by wrong hands I mean Dorothy's hands. Snakes don't usually have hands.

But they're also bringing with them the concept of stack synergy. Stuff like skills that deal more damage based on the stacks of cumulative status the target might have (including Fatal) and skills that are 'sympathetic' to your status effects, acting like an additive to any cumulative status already on you (including Fatal!). And, of course, every single one of these effects is learnable.

If you don't feel like engaging with this system, the game will hardly be unbeatable without them. But for those whose Dorothy's want to get a little more ssss-snakelike in their tactics, the tools will be there.