Overview

Game Progression refers to the structure, flow, and branching of all narrative content in both Story Mode and Lifesim. Story arcs advance when the player completes required chapters, meets relationship prerequisites, or reaches score thresholds. Each arc has its own rules for branching, requirements, and progression pacing.

TCoM uses three narrative categories:

• Main Story Arc
  • The primary storyline with multiple possible endings
• Character Arcs
  • Individual stories tied to key characters with one ending
• Side Events
  • Optional scenes triggered during Lifesim

Main Story Arc

The Main Story Arc is the primary long form narrative of TCoM that follows the story of Noah and Juno.

Main Story Branching

The main story contains four different endings, determined by the player's cumulative score values across the story:

Branching Inputs

After act 1, some chapters are branching chapters that utilize input scores to determine which version of the chapter to put the player onto. Chapters can have a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 4 branches.

Branching input is taken from the following:

• Global Score
  • Represents the world’s perception of the player
• Character Score
  • Represents the sum of all protagonist NPC relationship scores
• Personal Score
  • Represents Noah’s internal behavior, emotional responses, and personal integrity

Route Hardlock

When Act 4 begins, the narrative enters Route Hardlock where there is no way for a player to change their route mathematically with the remaining score to gain or lose. As a result, the last 6 chapters will have minor dialogue or choice options that only affect small interactions within their chapters and lifesim modes.

Once Route Hardlock begins:

• Only one of the four branches becomes possible
• Unmet branches will not be displayed

Character Arc Progression

Character arcs are standalone storylines centered around a specific protagonist NPC.

Each character arc:

• Has one canonical ending
• Progresses in fixed chapter order
• Cannot branch
• Requires meeting a Relationship Score threshold to unlock new chapters

The main arc will require character progression in order for certain routes to be possible, however due to the number of possible character arcs it would be tedious to do checks for specific character relationships to determine a branch. As such all relationship scores tally to a Character score where any number of relationship scores from any character arc will progress the main arc.

Relationship Requirements

Every chapter in a character arc has a minimum Relationship Score required before it can trigger.

These requirements:

• Are reached naturally by completing prior chapters or interacting with a character in lifesim
• Can be negatively impacted by poor story choices or poor lifesim interactions

Low Relationships

If the Relationship Score drops below the chapter’s requirement, the character arc will be paused indefinitely until raised again.

Players lower relationship score by:

• Making poor dialogue choices during a character arc
• Making poor lifesim choices (giving hated items, acting rude) during lifesim

Players can raise relationship score again by:

• Gift giving (if the item is liked)
• Conversations and unfocused dialogue interactions
• Hanging out and doing liked activities together