I'd like to throw in a cent or two. My feelings were exactly those of the OP's, but the reason was false expectations from the demo and website.
I interpreted the "four more planetary systems" as four more episodes. :oops: My bad, I know, but the demo episode has an ending that corresponds with the title of the episode, so it felt like just an introduction to the game - and the rest of the story. The episode selection button confused me further, since I expected to use it after purchasing the game.
So I was disappointed when I only got the demo episode with a few more endings. Partly because it was over sooner than I thought it would be, but mostly because the story was still unfinished. It's a nice idea to let the community continue the story (if that is what will indeed happen) but the best ending almost feels like a cliffhanger. >(
(The above paragraph contains somewhat spoiler-ish information on the game's ending, which I found unsatisfactory.)
In the end, I don't know what this discussion/rant will achieve. I just felt a sudden need to vent. :) I enjoyed the game a lot, and it felt good to finally be able to support the developer economically. 10 euros is not an unfair price, but the demo made me expect more.
Perhaps you could make it so the episode selector is only shown if additional episodes are available?
It's better if I find a way to explain it on the website than in the game. I just need to come up with a text that can't be misunderstood. Feel free to make suggestions!
It's a nice idea to let the community continue the story (if that is what will indeed happen) but the best ending almost feels like a cliffhanger. >(
Actually, I have this big idea about multiple timelines and dimensions that affect the world all my games take place in. Each game tells a small portion of this, and the idea is that when I've created enough games you can sort of piece the stories together to see everything in a bigger perspective. By this reason, I might not conclude a story in a way that solves all the presented problems, and I might not even create a successor that continues where the previous story left off. The type of thing I'd more likely do would be to use a character from one game as a NPC in another game, and make some dialogue about that hint about what happened after or before. Right now I'm actually more interested in creating a game about Saira's sister who crashed that car, than creating a story about if Saira and Bobo got home. Unfortunately for those who don't like not knowing what happened after, this is just how I want to develop my games.
In other words, I won't really "fix" the cliffhanger type of things going on, but I realize I'll have to be better at explaing what people get when they purchase something.
although it seems that the actual discussion/controversy or whatever is not really actual anymore, I'd like to link up an article that concerns this topic at least peripherically: More in the Bottle - The dubious value of game length (on ArsTechnica)
yaaay
That's some interesting reading! Thanks for the link!