Visuals Novels to come:

Otome VN:

I'm in full force brainstorming for an otome VN since the start of this January.  For the latter half of 2023 it felt uncertain for me whether I'll still want to stick with VN development. Sometimes I feel like I lag behind with my full-time job, that I don't take sufficient trainings in my free time (not that the employer asks me to, but that you prepare yourself to a better position in your career no matter what happens in the future). Putting the priority on relaxation and sleep might not be the worst, or stress levels would skyrocket high. Fast-forward to 2024 and I suddenly got a craving to make VNs again, after being in the sidelines for quite a while brainstorming for jams I hadn't participated in.

I've always enjoyed playing dating sims, especially otomes. The fascination for them stems from their heavier focus on gender roles and growing up I have always had many thoughts about the portrayal of female-male couples in media. However I always saw the creation of romance VNs as a too big undertaking because my preference lies in slowburners - and sometimes not even the romantic interactions itself but more for characters sharing a close bond like trust - and I can't even estimate how many chapters I would write before I'm convinced that they're actually in love. 

I've got to admit that I have never actually written novella-sized stories before in my life. I want to write a VN script with at least 25-30K words for once, which also means that I need to take more time for it and it's not something I just can fit in a jam which typically runs for a month or two. So far I've mostly participated in "O2A2 VN Jam" which is a challenge to create a minimalistic VN with restricted amount of assets, however whenever I'm working on these I daydream about a scope that allows you to draw alternative sprite poses and CGs for characters. At first I wanted to participate as a solo dev in this year's "Otome VN Jam"/"Josei VN Jam", which allows continued development of existing projects. In that case I should finish the full story script in about 2 months time and then spend the jam period (May-July) putting up a VN together. I can already tell that this isn't very realistic for my schedule. Heck, I don't even know if I have the motivation to actually write the story script, which tends to be the biggest challenge. So I'll aim for these in 2025 and just spend this year tackling it bit by bit: I target some soft deadlines as a motivation for myself to actually work on it (otherwise it will be procrastination galore). The release should be a full game where the player doesn't need to wait for updates (the latter would only be for bug fixes).

There is quite a lot I want to share about this project because I technically already have a title for it, but then I fall into the pitfall of  (1) I end up talking more than actually working and (2) I changed the story and characters drastically since such post. Character sketches are a bit too rough to show, it's still in the stage that their looks can change or characters get dropped out entirely. Be warned, I'm still shocked how this post grew in size so I accidentally did share too much after all, while I wanted to reserve it for a DevLog when an actual VN is released.

- How it came to be: It was totally random that I woke up one day with the thought 'Hold my beer, I'm going to refurbish an OC from my teenage years who I hadn't even bothered to give a personality and fleshed motivations + his background is ridiculously Gary-Stu that it would be a huge challenge to redeem him' and then things happened. 💀 The OC was from a not so original 'original fiction' that went nowhere and the world and premise was very heavily borrowed from "Shin Megami Tensei". The character's role can be roughly described as Lucifer reincarnating on the new earth with significantly weakened powers as a 'human' (or at least other characters treat him as one) and due to amnesia, perhaps this time he will do good instead. His character design visuals were a blatant rip-off of Vincent Valentine from "Final Fantasy 7". While I'm typing this, the cringemeter just rose up, because old ideas are supposed to be best left off not seeing the light of day. I sincerely had no love for old OCs and hadn't thought about it for years, and it was only for sheer morbid curiosity to see what could come out by using it as a prompt. The actual VN is not exactly a reproduction of the same story I had, although it's interesting how some things remain unchanged despite the many brainstorming sessions I had. 🫠 So the male OC first became a heroine with a complete new design and background lore to nerf her as less important in that universe, and when I thought I'm finally rid of him in any recognisable trace... he's back in almost the same incarnation... and in some ways he probably became even worse now I'm just embracing certain tropes!  😭

- Genre/Setting: The setting is post-apocalyptic. It's probably not grimdark, although I'm not the best judge of that because what are you going to call the stories where characters live unhappy unfulfilling lives? 😆 I'd feel that because it takes place in near future and some events on earth occurred without clear rhyme - where the world is mostly similar but also a different - the lore would fit something along the 'Weird Fiction' genre. Other than that, it's mostly mundane slice-of-life, low fantasy in a town community, with some degree of threat but I'm not sure yet if characters travel outside often to label it as adventure. 🤔 I can't rule out there won't be horror elements, as that's what I kind of had in mind for the the lore-heavy route, but it's not the main focus. I've brainstormed a bit for "Find My Mind"'s universe (my other VN) during "Mushroom Jam" that if that were to be turned into a full-fledged game, I thought of a world that is run rampant by fungi due to global warming (don't ask the science how it works!), but for now I think this will be a separate universe despite they both are set near future on earth.

- Format: It will be quite a traditional Ren'Py VN with choices and character routes. There won't be any mini-games. It's kind of weird to say it when it concerns an otome, but whether the story will be romantic literally depends on my mood during the actual writing process. When I look at the initial ideas, the VN leans so much closer to amare than otome, and perhaps I will add more intimate moments in it, or maybe not.  Main characters are in their mid 20s.

- MC: The MC is AFAB with 'she' pronouns. Sometimes I kind of overthink this thing what to even put on the bio: I mean a person could have certain set of pronouns they present to the outside world, but they feel different inside (real pronouns), but they haven't come out or realised their actual gender yet. And if you as a dev allow the player to pick the pronouns (and the player picked a set that doesn't contain 'she'), shouldn't a character react to being misgendered when other characters perceive them to be female? So to account for this problem, either the story script needs to avoid such references, or there is an alternative script for each combination. I think to keep it simple, for the frame of the story shown, the character in this story is a woman. It's a VN where the MC is shown with a face with no customisation apart from perhaps the name. But even then, that's kind of restricted because for the most part the story assigns a different name to MC than the one you picked. 😅 I'd imagine her to stand out as being weird in the story's universe for having unusual hair and eye colours, but she has plain facial features otherwise to be not considered pretty.

- Love interests: I'm aiming for 3 LIs that are all guys, but one has he/they pronouns and I don't know yet what it means for the character. I say 'love interests', but I'm not sure if it's the right word, because the term implies romance while I mean the character routes where you hang out most with a character and you'd get to know MC and LI better. 

For example one character is who MC has a slight crush on (he/they LI), but if said character doesn't see MC as anything beside a friend, it feels wrong to call it romance, so I guess then I'm obliged to make him eventually fall in love with her, but what if I don't want to? 🤡  For the sake of this mission, I'll try to be less stubborn. 🤥

Besides the marketing for romance games should make the LIs look all attractive or have appealing personalities at the very least, but I can already tell that one LI has too much NPC energy that nobody would bother the route. 😩 I feel like this character would be the first to be cut out if I have a max quota, because he definitely doesn't fit in an otome, but I've still got plenty of time to redesign him to be cuter, haha. 🥹 That still won't fix him that he's some depressed guy who got a record for manslaughter, why would anyone want to date him!? Okay, I'm shitposting with hyperbolic here, it ought to be more nuanced in the actual story. I personally don't actually see him as a LI at all even though he may have unconfessed feelings for the MC after you bond with him, so maybe I should keep it at that. I can treat it as a no-romance neutral route.

And the OC that kicked off the project? He's intentioned to be the not-so-secret villain, although I'm not certain yet how far I'll go. I thought there's no reason to hide that it's not a romance route at all, but I could get cold feet and treat him more as an actual LI. 🙈 I know that villainous characters are popular in VNs, but then it's an inner fight with myself, because I'm boring and prefer the goody-shoes, so there's a balancing act either way. 

That begs the question, what's the point of LIs, when only one character can be considered as really one? 🤨

- Right now I'm a bit of the research phase. I feel like I should read some books with post-apocalyptical settings to motivate me. My attention span for novels (without visuals, lol) kind of disappeared... but I may own some paperbacks that fit the criteria - bought during a bygone era when I still was an avid reader - so this could be good excuse to finally read them. Since there are some Switch eshop discounts running right now, I've also bought some popular commercial Japanese otomes: "Code: Realize", "Collar x Malice" and "Café Enchanté", because I've been curious how they're structured despite the my scope won't be anything too huge. 

O2A2 VN Jam (2024):

If this jam is back, then I already have an idea I want to tackle. This will not be my main priority 'ambitious' project, just a small short creepypasta horror story as a change of pace.

Old WIPS that are put in the freezer:

Initially I wanted to finish current projects first, because that's how my mind works, as otherwise they remain unfinished business that haunt me. So I say that I put them in the freezer because there's a small but feasible chance I may pick them up again when I look at them with fresh perspective and finally realise what was bothering me in the first place and made me lose motivation.

Even The Silver Knight Panics:

Is already published, but currently hidden from view. It's in awkward position that I've had worked on it after its release but the polished build is not finished. Due the fact it's a fangame that's made for myself rather than "Fire Emblem" fans explains why I'm less interested in working on it, because it's an experimental practice project for me try out Ren'Py code and pipelines I usually don't do for my usual VN projects.

The Snowperson:

I've cleaned up old DevLogs for The Snowperson because it was cluttered by release notes for very minor changes. I also hid the one that talked about future plans for it because (1) the information written there is outdated and (2) if I were to work on it, it won't be anytime soon. What's true though is that I envision the full game to be a complete redo that isn't a visual novel.

In one of the deleted DevLogs I recommended a guide that is written by Ebbasuke about building Ren'Py web builds. Personally I always enable pre-loading so you will not see pixelated sprites during the game.

https://ebbasuke.itch.io/vampirehunter/devlog/404568/note-to-self-remember-this-...