Posted October 09, 2023 by croco_nsfw
Hello bois! I've been drawing a bunch and working on events, I'll probably have the EA release later this week!
Won't share any WIP, instead I'll share some concepts of the game since it's been a bit over a year (September 2022) since its first concept.
I worked on other game projects, learning art, 3D, coding, but always kept thinking about making an eroge, similar to old illusion games (@HomeMate, Sexy Beach 3 and Artificial Girl 3 were the main inspiration).
I obviously wouldn't be able to do high res models in a sandbox setting, so I tried making it low poly. My last project was low poly, so I felt more confident in the style.
You can see the main 3 girls here:
I did all the systems, and the game featured fixed position cameras. You could travel around a ryokan, and interact in a basic way with the characters. This is how it looked around the beginning of 2023.
While it was ok, it never sparked in me a strong emotion. Was really boring, bland. I tried making some small sprites for when the character was working around the ryokan, and that's the changing point.
These little animations were already more interesting than the whole project, so I flirted with the idea of a similar game, in a different style. It was kind of hard to let go after hundreds and hundreds of hours, but I REALLY wanted to try to do something else. This time was about trying multiple styles and seeing how I felt.
I tried like old VNs, but didn't love the idea of making a point and click.
I tried also the top down 2D, but felt too much like RPGmaker games, I'm not skilled enough in that style. Then I tried isometric (with free movement), but felt too much like Summer Memories, so I skipped that really quick.
After exhausting all other ideas, then it clicked about the whole low poly + 2D. Funnily enough, this was the style of the 1st game I tried making years ago, so I already knew some strategies for this style (fixed perspective camera, tilted sprites look better, etc).
After some tweaks, I though having pixel portraits would look good with the rest of the pixelated style. But again, never clicked on me too much.
So I switched to full 2D drawings for portraits, adopting the aesthetic of a very old Dreamcast game of Love Hina (another huge inspiration for the theme).
Shit takes time, but it's getting better and better! I released the first version to play in June, after 3/4 months of development. Now it's been another 4 months since then. So much left to do still!
Thanks for reading and your continuous support, things would be so much more difficult without you guys. See you soon!