The start of my most ambitious project

Bear with me, this will be a long one.

The project

One day, during a sleepless night, I had a brilliant idea for a story. What if you could go back in time to your younger body but retain all of your memories and maturity? Would you try to do the same things again, knowing the outcome, or would try to live a different life? This would make a great game, I thought. Then I realized I was thinking of the film “17 Again” with Zac Efron.

But I still thought that this Idea fits perfectly with the style of visual novel. Especially if the player gets to guide the story to different paths. So I started brainstorming. I had plenty of ideas. A few of them were even good. Before I knew it, I had already mapped the whole story. Multiple endings and all.

And, through a lot of trial and error, I've created this prototype, which I'm calling “Episode Zero” (more on that later).

The structure

The decision to make this an episodic visual novel was an easy one. I'm aware that a project like this takes time to be completed and, considering I'm working by myself, It would be unlikely that this game would see the light of day if I waited for it to be finished. But, at the same time, I've seen plenty of games that just stop the story at some random point and call it an update. This kills the pacing and gives no reason to play it until the final release. To solve that, I came up with the idea of each update being a mini-story, with a definite beginning, middle, and end. This way, each release will be, hopefully, a satisfying experience and I can gather feedback for future updates.

How I've done it

When someone thinks of making a visual novel, their mind automatically defaults to Ren'py. But not me. I like to suffer.

I chose to use Inkle's Ink, which meant I had to use Godot. I am quite familiar with it, but I severely misjudged how difficult it would be to create a visual novel system. In the end, I've managed to do it, but It just looks like an inferior version of Ren'py. Oh, well.

If you don't know, Ink is a software used to create text-based games. It can do things that Ren'py can't, but you must do a lot of thinking and preparation beforehand.

Watch this if you're interested.

Anyway, here's an example of how I used it:

I created a system of tags that, when used together with a typewriter effect, allows me to do some crazy stuff during dialogue.

In-game, it'll look like this:

If you can't tell, I took a lot of inspiration from the Ace Attorney series

Here's a snippet of the code:

The best part is, since the story is separated from the code, I can modify one without messing up the other.

The prototype and adult content

Before anything, I would like to clear some things up. When I first envisioned this game, I wasn't planning on making an adult game. But, if you played the prototype, you'll know that's not the case. 

If you read this far, I think you deserve a bit of honesty. I made the prototype lean more on the erotic side to attract more people. The main game won't be as explicit. For the weebs out there, think of ecchi vs hentai. It won't be completely family-friendly, though. If you read Prison School, Tsugumomo, and other similar manga, you'll know what to expect.

The idea of using HS2 was not really an option. It was my only choice. I can draw a bit, but I wasn't too confident in my abilities. Since, AI was out of the question, my only choices were Daz and HS. I've tried Daz. Almost lost my computer. (My GPU is a GeForce GTX 750 TI. Not to beg, but if you want to help me out…)

Now that the prototype is finished, I can tell the things I like and, mostly, the things I don't like.

The biggest problem I had was with the writing. You might have noticed that some parts feel rushed or just don't fit in properly. The reason is, that I had to change the story a lot to be able to use the assets I had. That meant, removing important parts and adding meaningless stuff.

Programming-wise, there are some minor bugs due to the way I structured the code, but's all easy to fix (Now that I've said that, it probably won't be).

I've made all the music myself, and I've tried different styles to see what fits best. In the end, I quite like “A bright future ahead” which is this one:

What to expect going forward

February is right around the corner, and that means I won't have as much time to work. However, I'll still put my heart and soul into this project. Remember when I said I wasn't really confident in my drawing abilities? I've been practising every day. So much, in fact, that I've developed an annoying pain in my right shoulder. Hopefully, it's nothing serious.

Anyway, expect longer episodes, a more defined style, musical and graphical, and an overall better experience. I'll be posting here whenever I have a big update or something important to share. For smaller updates, you can check my Buy Me a Coffee page. There's nothing there yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something to post.

Phew, told you It was going to be a long one.