Game Update #21

Hello, everyone! A new month has arrived, which means a new game status update.

The response to the new release this past month far exceeded any expectations I may have had. Between all the enthusiastic comments and all the new faces that joined Patreon to check it out, I've never felt more certain that making this game was the right choice for me. I hope those of you who played had a good time—there's so much more to come 🙂

I spent the past few weeks slowing down a bit to give myself some chillout time after three months of non-stop development—including actually playing a game that's not the one I'm making and playtesting! (If you're a city builder/management game fan, I recommend checking out Against the Storm!)

But that doesn't mean progress hasn't been made on the club sequence coming in the next release. Let's take a look at where I stand as of today.

Script

It's the return of the flowcharts in these updates! I plan everything I write ahead of time, which is especially important for a branching narrative like this one. Right now I have the shape of the evening planned out and one character's storyline fully mapped:

By "shape" I'm referring to the anchor points where stories briefly interconnect and then the pacing of each storyline's beats between those points. As an example from the frat party, one anchor point was Victoria's entrance—all stories led to that moment before branching back to the story you were following (or letting you jump to another). 

So in this flowchart you can more or less see how the night will progress, and it's not dissimilar from the frat party. The image is intentionally very small to obscure the text, but it's not really a spoiler to say that the top section is pre-club, the second section is the different ways you can enter the club & talk to people before the first anchor point, the third section gets meaty with the storylines, there's another anchor, and then the evening proceeds from there to one the many different end points.

Right now only one character has the specifics mapped out—orange signifying Alex, naturally. I think his entire sequence will be pretty fun if a little chaotic. Plus there's a whole other section for him just off screen that I'm not sharing yet...

Now, not having a full-fledged flowchart for the other storylines yet doesn't mean the stories don't exist. I'll share again some of the notes I have in the flowchart program ready to be translated to charts:

In these charts, magenta is for general notes, Alex's story is orange, Asher is blue, Isaiah is purple, and teal is Griffin. These are the bullet points of all that'll happen. 

If you haven't seen earlier game updates and sneak peeks, it might seem strange that the second longest section of character-specific notes is for the bartender you met for five minutes in another character's hangout. I'm interested to see how his scenes play out with all of you...

I also did a little bit of writing for the script itself. After creating the design for a new character, Alex's bodyguard, I was inspired to write his introduction. Both the new characters and the ones we already know are really coming alive for me at this point. Exciting stuff!

Art

As the Juniors, Seniors, & Graduates know via sneak peeks, I've been doing a lot of character designs the past few weeks!

So far I have 18 side characters planned for this update—some are important to different storylines, some are just extras, but all need sprites. I have 11 done and have the assets for most of the rest. I think NC17's fraternal twin Trevor is in the lead for fav new guy at the moment:

Over the course of making this game, I've discovered that having a character fully designed can really influence what I write, which is why I do this step first. Once I have a base sprite for all 18 new characters—and one for Isaiah in a club-ready outfit—I'll move on to some of the early CGs. There's ultimately going to be a lot of CGs in this one, so I've got to start that early...

Coding

This section will be brief since, well, I'm not coding anything currently. But I am going to note here that in anticipation of the public release in a few weeks, I've fixed some small things and also added a tiny bit of extra content—now that our good friend Cherish has her own sprites, she's been inserted into the scene in Will's classroom.

Sound & Music (?)

So I have a little dilemma. This is a sequence taking place at a club, and it being completely quiet feels a little strange. Especially for the performance by Skinema if I can make work what I have envisioned. I'm considering maybe finally figuring out music licensing so I can get the tracks I want—but it would basically be a couple songs in an otherwise silent game.

Would that feel jarring to you as a player, to suddenly have music out of nowhere? I feel like it might be. What do you guys think?

Looking Ahead

My current ambitious plan is to have some sort of dev build for Seniors & Graduates by the end of the month. This is by no means guaranteed and can very easily get derailed. Whenever it's done, it'll be the same type of early dev build as I did for the frat party—everything in the club itself but with the CG-filled sex scenes to come in the full release. I'll have a better idea of the feasibility of this by the mid-month game status update.

I think that's all I've got this time! Thank you again to all of you that played the game and decided to support its development as a patron. It's a lot of work making something like this solo, but experiencing the excitement of a new release alongside you makes it all worth it. And Freshman-level patrons, don't forget—the public frat party release is 13 December! It's almost time for everyone to join in on the fun 🙂