I have wanted to write a devlog for a long while about the sensitivity considerations for CBF. The trouble was, every single part of the game informs those considerations. It was way too much for a single devlog, so I wound up writing a series! That series is now written!!! The joke is on me!

I have a sick collection of narrative devlogs, and only a little left to say about how sensitivity informs those things.🤡

let's laugh together. it's actually still enough for a whole ass big devlog

It's incredibly funny. This game (Catalyst: Blind Faith [CBF]) and its sensitive elements, shocker!!!!! are totally intrinsic to one another.

This will be a summary of how it all works together, with some spicy and specific examples!🌶️

For anyone who may be reading this devlog as an introduction to my big, branching, dark fantasy and horror VN, welcome! I'll be linking those prior posts I made on all of the things I'll mention here today, which may be fun deeper reading about anything you're specifically interested in hearing more about! 🧠Those links will have a big brain emoji for how much my brain has wrinkled writing about this stuff at length.

Congratulations, graduates of branching narrative design 101 and every survivor of the Torment Nexus Convention of '25. For those of you who followed along with the 9-part series of posts leading up to this, it's almost* nothing you don't already know!

SPOILER WARNING FOR CATALYST: BLIND FAITH

If you wish to play the game totally unspoiled, you can ctrl+f "no spoilers, please!" to jump past this narrative devlog content.

*Gamers, there's a good bit of fun stuff in here just for youuuu and it's all newwwww.

A summary of game dev progress from March is at the bottom of this post, and a little bit about plans for next month too! Thank you so much for reading either way!

CONTENT WARNING

This devlog contains the following mature themes that may be disturbing to some readers:

• 🙏Religion in an original fantasy setting with a polytheistic pantheon; abusive relationships and body horror (the MC voluntarily pursues a relationship with these deities via channeling Them through his body at extreme cost).
• 🫂 Themes of mental illness, PTSD, and suicidal ideation.
• 🌾Substance use and abuse (alcohol and food), disordered eating and drinking in second-person, present-tense perspective; famine discussed in past-tense.
• 🩸Blood, extreme violence, and bullying. A choice example alludes to this content but it is not described explicitly.

This devlog is not intended for individuals sensitive to these mature themes.

Reader discretion is advised.

🧠For more reading on my approach to content warnings (which I will edit at a later date for ease of readability), you can check out this very robust devlog here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/devlog-content-1-151822568

SENSITIVITY CONSIDERATIONS IN CBF

In short: it's the entire game.

let's get into the devlog I wanted to write since November 2024🔥

Five parts! Lots of pics! Shorter than usual!!! Let's goooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

1. ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

(You) play as Father Richard Anscham, that troubled young priest at the top-center of the cute working logo above.

Richard lives in a world where Gods and demons are real, and he's obsessed with finding a cure for the phenomenon turning mankind into demons: the Catalyst. Your journey(s) in this perilous, dark fantasy and horror game come about from the choices you make.

Very often, those choices are which Gods and Goddesses you choose to further your relationship with. This is not a linear story where I tell you what to do or what to care about, though. You choose at a pivotal part in a deeply troubled character's life how he finds the will to live.

This is a choice-based game, because this is ultimately the player's story! Your story.

Because the fun and point of making this a video game is its interactivity and multimedia, my first narrative devlog was a crash course on the basic considerations for branching game design. 🔥making choices matter is work, gamers🔥

Even if the player only ever picked whether Richard eats vanilla or chocolate ice cream, it's more work than one linear story. And we all know creating a single, good, linear story is hard fucking work too.

You are picking more than whether Richard likes one flavor of ice cream or not, to put it mildly.

It's more like an eldritch horror beyond human comprehension thanks to the narrative complexity, but we're here to comprehend it. Let's not worry about the eldritch branching narrative design rn tho

Vanilla and chocolate ice cream choices have no goddamn place here, brave reader. The very first thing the player sees upon starting a game is this screen. You are encouraged to choose wisely.

You know from choice #1 that your choices matter, gamers.

Those words have meaning!

It means the choices you make—the actions you take—have 🔥consequences🔥.

Never let anyone try to gaslight you into thinking otherwise.

It would be incredibly difficult to take anything in the game seriously if your choices didn't have the same weight and consequences as the narrative. Let's put our devlog mouth where our money is and get into more detail, eh?

🧠More on branching game design 101 in this devlog:

Patreon (free, high res images):  https://www.patreon.com/posts/116945211

Itch.io Crosspost: /itch/just-write-studios/catalyst-blind-faith/devlog/846233/devlog-nar...

2. YOU CHOOSE WHAT THEMES TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT

You saw the eldritch horrors above. Please note:

• I let you choose where you go.
• I let you choose who you hang out with.
• I let you choose whether to run from a fight or interrogate a warchief. You can kill him in literally 6+ ways too!
• You can time travel, if you fuck up badly enough.
• You are SPOILED for choice, one choice menu at a time.

This is all to rapidly teach the player that you get to choose what the narrative focuses on. This shapes our brave antihero. You shape his fate. <- These words have meaning too!

By deciding the themes that resonate with Richard, you tell the game what themes resonate with you.

These are sensitive themes in a big, mature, dark game. And because the player's choices inform me what themes they give a shit about, I can then give you more of the good stuff.

I like to do so with heart. 💖✍️ I talked in our second devlog about the narrative design considerations for the "common route" in CBF, which spans at least a dozen chapters. The player gets to see this juicy game design at great length. It's a big part of the game for good reason!

It could be less or more chapters for any player, because your choices really change who you encounter and where you go. Spoiler-free examples were used in my prior devlog on the common route, like this one here!

We're getting lots of spoilers in this devlog, and I'm keeping it focused on some very pervasive and interconnected sensitive themes throughout CBF: Richard has a seriously disordered relationship with food, drink, substances, and addiction in general.

This is a big contributing factor to his depictions of social anxiety and plays a role in his suicidal ideation.

It's a lot to hear at once and bluntly like that. These are separate things that each require extreme love and care to portray compassionately, so you don't get this in any one given chapter.

God do you not get 100% of this game in any one given chapter. This is a slightly out-of-date flowchart for the demo of CBF! You can easily see we have multiple versions of most chapters.

That's right!

• You can choose to focus on themes of mental health and more open communication when you meet allies.
• You can choose to NEVER look deeper into the concerning way Richard behaves when his reluctance to eat or drink is mentioned.
• You may be very busy with trying to explain Time travel to the demon you met in Chapter 1, after all.

Who gives a shit about rations or the Goddess of Agriculture? So what if Agriculture is also the Goddess of death and poison?

Well, some players might be really interested in death Goddess worship, why Richard is okay with binge drinking, or where his familiarity with poison stems from.

If the player wants to—if they go out of their way to choose options that involve these themes—then players will get that relevant info.

This is a gigantic sensitivity consideration. Arguably, it's the blood and guts of this branching game's design. Here's a choice menu example, from the script of the full game, deep in the common route. The one I warned you about near the top of this devlog, with bullying:

Sometimes this means a player might want to play through an explicit flashback of childhood bullying during a famine. What matters in this game is that it is their choice to engage with either flavor of sensitive content.

It's not vanilla or chocolate ice cream, gamers. We take 10+ chapters to get here. You know I'm not going to railroad you into seeing something you don't choose, when you've played through 10+ chapters of Big Richard's Wild Demon-Filled Ride. We're here for dark and heavy stuff, and the fun is choosing how this very dark and very ambitious story unfolds.

Players understand their decisions are respected, and only someone who wants insight into that underlying characterization can literally pick their poison, if they so choose.

This is not a game for everyone, and none of this changes the history of our antihero. It doesn't change the world he inhabits. It shapes what matters to him, though. What matters to you shapes his story, his characterization, and lets me focus the game on such heavy themes when the player chooses to engage with it.

We all are coming from a gloriously informed place in the process!

🧠More on the common route's design considerations in this spoiler-free devlog:

Patreon (free, high res images): https://www.patreon.com/posts/devlog-common-123294776

Itch.io Crosspost: /itch/just-write-studios/catalyst-blind-faith/devlog/902613/devlog-com...

3. THERE ARE NO "WRONG" CHOICES

The game is all about the consequences of your actions playing out, for better or for worse.

There are always consequences. 🔥I fucking love consequences in narrative games.🔥

I can give you some heavy, sensitive stuff in this big branching game, and we all know the assignment when the common route reaches its end.

By the end of the common route, the player not only has seen and played through 14+ chapters of the story they want to see: they then, from an informed place, choose from the 10 most pressing relationships in Richard's life. That choice puts you on their respective "hard branch," which informs the themes of the rest of the game.

We could arguably end the devlog right here, because it's that shrimple when you boil it down.

As you might understand, it's not simple at all to actually write this well, and with sensitive themes, at great length.

I wanted to use that beefy example about Richard's complicated and sensitive relationship with substances/food/drink/famine/addiction to elaborate on this, to show in this devlog how it all works together!

The "trunk" of this massively branching game follows the relationship with the Goddess of Mercy most closely. Hear me out.

Richard is not normal about the Gods. The Goddess of Sunlight, Love, Healing, Compassion, Defense, and all Emotion is the "Mother" of his Church, and as the Father of the Church of Mercy, he 100000000% plays favorites.

Mercy is the Goddess of Compassion, and appropriately, you can make almost any choice within Her "hard branch" of the story and still get a good or neutral ending.

Mercy's hard branch is the longest, has the most branching, and that's possible thanks to Her forgiving narrative design.

Now, Richard is not normal about any deity. The choices you make don't change that fundamental constant of the universe. It's not wrong or right to pursue a relationship with Mercy above all other options.

This means that even if you are on Mercy's hard branch, the other deities do not suddenly stop mattering to Richard! ON THE CONTRARY.

Sensitivity considerations are present anywhere in the game. It behooves us to focus for a second on how Richard can be not-normal about the Goddess of Agriculture, even in the Mercy hard branch.

More on that in a second. Almost done tying all this together! Pinky promise.

🧠More on the design considerations for the Mercy hard branch here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/125424803?collection=917854

4. IN ALL UNIVERSES, RICHARD IS NOT NORMAL

You control an established character. There is no character generation. Father Richard Anscham is who you get to play, in a world where Gods and demons are real. This is his story, but how you shape it matters. The circumstances he starts in, and who he really is at the start of the game came about from things outside of the player's control—much like those circumstances were greatly outside of his control.

You see what I'm doing here, don't you?😉

Whether or not you choose to see a traumatic flashback in chapter 10, Richard still loves the Gods and Goddesses in this world. You can ABSOLUTELY change the nature of those relationships, and we go to great lengths to portray what relationships matter to you most.

great, great lengths. Working flowcharts above and below for the content we're all plowing through rn with editing+sensitivity reading. 

In all universes, Vengeance is an asshole. 🖤🩸 there are so many ways to express your feelings about Him, though🩸🖤

There MUST be internal consistency for choices to have consequences:

🌾Even if you time travel, Richard cannot just suddenly stop giving a shit about the things he loves.

🌾Whether or not you chose to see a specific traumatic flashback, Richard still grew up during a famine.

🌾You can choose to not focus on it, but no matter how much you focus on other things, it will not change the history of the game. His history.

🌾You're not rewriting the past. Your choices shape the present and future: how he behaves and where he goes, as a not-normal guy trying to make the most of the horrors. It becomes meaningful characterization for Richard to focus on other things in his life.

Permanence is so excruciatingly important in any narrative, but especially one with sensitive themes.

The timelines that emerge from the player's decisions shape Richard's fate within the context of this game.

So you may have decided to zoom past talking about Richard's disordered eating with your unlikely friends, Celegwen and Ofelia, at each and every campsite. It is meaningful to prioritize Richard's mental well-being, respect his social anxiety, and focus on the people in front of you! Those choices have extreme meaning.

These lovely ladies on either side of the protagonist are main characters, and it's super valid to want to have as normal of a relationship with them (as much as Richard is capable of). It's not easy, but it's valid!

Celegwen and Ofelia are also different characters, who have different priorities, and things you do that may make one of them happy might not please the other.

Same with all the Gods and Goddesses. It's complicated.

How you choose to speak with an irritable demon Lord, who conjures a banquet on your behalf when you visit him, would be very different from how you talk to Ofelia and Celegwen. The ways that your choices affect the story, the characters you meet, AND Richard's characterization really matter. So much so that it can create big effects in the narrative.

Cumulatively, this can create different timelines of events. In all of them, Richard is not normal, and that's okay. We're here for the weirdo shit—the weirdo shit that you resonate with.

There are no wrong choices! You have to decide what matters to you, even when it gets complicated:

Because actions have consequences, how the player responds to this will matter. It is not wrong or right to do one thing or the other. The player understands in the context of the narrative that what makes them happy, personally, might not make everyone happy.

This is a mature game for mature players, not a happiness simulator, and so for our dark fantasy and horror fans I make sure to treat each of these resulting scenes with the SAME respect and care.

Games with this much branching deserve some serious respect, when handling sensitive themes. I wanted to share these considerations with you! The final bit is beloooooow.

🧠 If you would like to read deeply about the considerations for multiple timelines of events in CBF, much more is here:

Patreon (free, high res images): https://www.patreon.com/posts/devlog-timey-yes-137372892

Itch.io Crosspost: /itch/just-write-studios/catalyst-blind-faith/devlog/1025476/devlog-ti...

5. THE ACTUAL WRITING (AND CONTEXT) IS WHAT MATTERS

It's fine and good to say all these things in a vacuum, but the words we choose have meaning, so let's look at some of them with a magnifying glass!

I'll be unpacking several things at once here to close out this devlog.

Let's compare and contrast if the player does or does not have Richard elaborate about his disordered eating to Lord Yech the Disgusted.

This is a demon Richard is inclined to speak bluntly with, while terribly intoxicated and striving to be merciful...

The text below does not immediately follow this choice, but has been selectively carved out for the sake of this comparison:

Compared to whether you want to zoom away from the subjects of religion, disordered eating, drinking, and metaphysical horror as fast as possible; to focus on the greater narrative at hand (or any other reason for choosing to do so)...

Once again, this text below does not immediately follow the choice, but has been selectively carved out for comparison's sake:

We can observe that the execution matters a lot.

This is a lot of reading, so no worries if you don't want to skim the walls of text above!

I want to emphasize that with this setup:

• Nothing changes Richard's underlying characterization and history: his love of animals, that he is a hoot at parties, and most of his life being lived during a famine.
• His underlying struggles are the same: such as his difficulty expressing his needs, disordered eating, and social anxiety.
• You don't suddenly stop having prior choices and narrative matter. I'm NOT writing these scenes in a vacuum: we're accounting for how you got here, up to and including Richard being piss-drunk. As far back as the fact that Richard is literally cursed!
• That's why there's a strong desire to make things work with Yech. This encounter only comes about from trying to help this demon. Your choices here are towards that same end, even if the way you approach the situation greatly varies.

Above all other things, Richard's attitude towards this hardship may completely change based on your choice.

It's a tour-de-force of worldbuilding, character writing, his viewpoint as our unreliable narrator, branching game design, and the player's decisions that have shaped the context of that game!

I could not meaningfully write about his relationship with these sensitive themes in a vacuum. It would not service this devlog well to say "well, yeah, choose your words carefully if the player is going to binge drink and then struggle to talk about binge eating too."

We get a scene packed with characterization, themes that the player resonates with, and the choice to get there has a mechanical and game design consideration too. These things must all work TOGETHER in order to have weight, meaning, and elevate the sensitive subjects involved.

what about sensitivity readers and playtesters, alaric

You will not like this, brave reader, but there's no devlog that can cover that in broad strokes.

I painstakingly have individuals help me with the sensitive themes in this game, and the work that they do not ONLY looks at the narrative exactly as the player would: they're doing incredibly involved and difficult work; by applying their own knowledge, lived experiences, or other priceless insights to the way that these themes uplift the narrative and game as a whole.

There is a very good reason why many people choose to not create stories that take that kind of effort, research, time, and care. It's many steps more than telling any other kind of story, but is an absolute joy beyond measure to do so and to do so with heart.

In this devlog today, we looked over very broadly the kinds of considerations I take for this game as a whole. After I do these things and have written/drawn/programmed everything, after I have shown this work to others and implemented any changes to improve it for you all do we then get the finished script.

I can't wait to share it with you guys in the game itself!

It would be comparatively easy to just write a game for shock value or to disgust, and there's still tons of merit to games that want to shock and disgust.

It is a lot of hard work, but meaningful and wonderful work, to write sensitive themes in a game for a cool and fun purpose.

There's a whole lot more in this game than what was just covered here, but I'm thrilled to share a little insight into how I look at EVERY aspect of the game as a whole when I write sensitive themes. Particularly when they inform so much of the narrative of CBF!

🧠For more reading on quality writing techniques:

Patreon (free, high res images): https://www.patreon.com/posts/devlog-quality-139820139
Itch.io Crosspost: /itch/just-write-studios/catalyst-blind-faith/devlog/1080865/devlog-qu...

🧠A spoiler-packed dissection of character writing in a branching game:

Patreon (free, high res images):  https://www.patreon.com/posts/devlog-dark-of-142279760
Itch.io Crosspost: /itch/just-write-studios/catalyst-blind-faith/devlog/1106673/devlog-th...

🧠My deep-dive into unreliable narration and second-person perspective (very involved subject and giant post, free on Patreon with all images and video!): https://www.patreon.com/posts/devlog-narration-149480515

For those of you joining us from the top:

"no spoilers, please!"

WAIT A MINUTE, WHAT ABOUT 🩸VENGEANCE🩸?

Some of you may be wondering "isn't there a whole ass narrative devlog you did, Alaric, about the God of Vengeance? What about that shit? What about the on-screen torture and bloodshed, Alaric? WHAT ARE YOU HIDING, ALARIC?

There is one devlog left in this series! From the beginning, I wanted to separate this into two parts. We talked a lot today about the sensitivity considerations for CBF as a whole, because this game has sensitivity considerations throughout.

Next month, I'll be writing about the 🔥EXTREME CONTENT FILTER🔥 in CBF, and exactly how it gates exceptionally extreme content in the game. This goes far beyond what most players would want to see, is entirely optional material, so will be contained to its own final narrative devlog as well!

I'm very excited to share that all with you next month. Here's a summary of everything else that's been worked on in March for CBF too! 

MARCH GAME DEV PROGRESS

yippeeeeee!!!!!!!! so much done!!!!

ART

• Drew almost every day this month!!! Got in a good 30+ solid hours of meaningful art practice and studies and could not be more excited.
• Many facial expression, body language, gesture, and character consistency studies!

Can't wait to finish this one. Tag yourself if you dare

Got a little silly with some of them.

• Picking up 3D modeling in Blender, to help with perspective reference, especially for objects I'll be drawing often! Modeling Richard's flanged mace will be next! Just a placeholder for his weapon on the mini below heheh. The lovingly gifted mini of him from Heroforge is height ref, and his shield is totally modeled now!!! 🎉🎉

YIPPEEEE TO NEVER DRAWING THOSE UNCANNY METAL HANDS IN PERSPECTIVE FROM SCRATCH EVER AGAAAAAIN🎉🎉🎉

WRITING

• Created a 5k word crash course doc with our magnificent lead editor's talents and MANY pictures!!
• It's to assist sensitivity readers and others who dive mid-way into the game's script. This is for quality control, guest editors, or in the case of this month, sweet, sweet context to review my most recently written chapters...
• Without them needing to read ~170k words of fully edited script beforehand.

They don't need all this.

They still got a firehose like this.

also plenty of pics like this. whatever helps! [clown noises]

• Small (but very important) edits were made in a few chapters, thank to running those chapters by 5+ additional sensitivity readers, guest editors, etc!!!!
• Also ended my drafting hiatus! Wrote a very nice ~6,900 words for the next continuity in the Vengeance hard branch and super happy I took my time with getting back to it!!

PLANS FOR APRIL

Ray Quest 3: Become God Dog will be in our community Discord on April 1st. be there and attain divinity

https://discord.gg/24cmNWp

Crosspost update: Ray Quest 3 was a delight and the archive/pins for its posts can be found in the link above as well!

also no doubt much more writing and art 🫡 thank you so damn much for reading, your support, and for keeping hype high with this big game's development!!!!!