How did you come up with the Dialogue system in Ladykiller in a Bind? It's my favourite in any VN, due to how much, just listening played a role. Making not saying something an interesting choice was awesome!
I would love to hear if there's any specific inspirations, as I'm still dying for something that hit's that spot again.
The original idea was actually by Raide (rest in peace, friend)—while I was struggling to sketch some very standard ways of presenting choices, out of nowhere he gave me a mockup that was like 70% of the way there, with a bunch of really shocking gameplay implications that I didn't quite know how to respond to because they sounded insanely hard to write for. We did some tests and iteration, and added some things like letting trailing off be an option, for which The Walking Dead was a big inspiration; I think also he was thinking about Hotel Dusk (an absolute personal favourite of mine, can't recommend it enough), which has a system where during your investigation, sometimes a "press" button will appear when someone says something in a conversation and you can either grill them for more details on what they just said or let it go if you need a gentler touch.
I know that there was a VN from 2019 called Knife Sisters that was inspired directly by Ladykiller's dialogue system, although unfortunately I still haven't had a chance to play it myself!
