With Sable's Grimoire getting closer to release, most of the finer points (features, character routes, etc.) have now been finalized.
In this announcement I'm going to briefly cover two features of Sable's Grimoire which aren't especially common in visual novels.
Route Map
Sick of winding up on the wrong route, wondering where you went wrong?
Wishing you'd saved at the last choice instead of plowing straight ahead?
Navigating your way through a branching visual novel can be tricky, and skipping through text you've already read before is hardly what I'd call fun. That's why Sable's Grimoire features an interactive "route map", which you can use to not only visualize the path you're currently taking, but also to go back to checkpoints you've already passed, even if you forgot to save.
As the black squares on the route map are filled in, you will be able to click on those images in order to return to a scene from that place in the story.
Resume and Auto-Resume
When you open a visual novel more than once, you generally want to pick up where you left off last time, right?
Some visual novels will remember which page your last save was on. Others will go an extra step and highlight your last save. And then there are a few which go even further still and let you load your last save straight from the main menu.
In case you haven't guessed from my rambling, Sable's Grimoire implemented the third option.
"Resume" will load your last save - even if it's a quick save, or an automatic save.
But why stop there?
If all you want to do when you open the game is jump straight back into the action, enable the "Auto-Resume Last Save" option. This will bypass the main menu entirely and load your most recent save.