Devblog #92 (Patreon)

Hey Wizards! Shady Character One here!

Writing characters of few words is hard. There are so few ways of showing their feelings and motivations. There are some workarounds for this difficulty, of course. One of which is the inner monologue - which I cannot use because we only have the inner monologue for the main character. Or by their actions and reactions - which I cannot use a lot of, because the main focus is the interaction with the girls, not just watching them do something.

I have several girls in the main lineup that don't talk all that much: Violet, Aisling, and Mitsuki. The first two didn't give me that much trouble. Violet is shy at first, but opens up and starts actively conversing with the MC. Aisling doesn't talk much at first either, but mostly because she is uncertain about the MC and has no problems with yapping once you get closer and she starts sharing her interests with him. But Mitsuki… Mitsuki is a different beast altogether. Mitsuki just doesn't talk much, and that poses a lot of trouble when writing her later events, when I need her to express her thoughts, wants, and fears. And it is very difficult to do while at the same time trying to make her sound curt. Her fifth event gave me the most trouble so far.

At first I wrote the event just as I would any other, simply trying to keep with the character. But when I read back the result, it became clear that Mitsuki was way too eloquent. Also, even though it is kind of the goal of these events to give the girls more room to speak their thoughts, having Mitsuki talk so much felt wrong. Cutting words from her dialogue was not an option - I am as concise in my writing as one can possibly get as it is. Drowning Mitsuki’s lines with more of the MC’s to make her sound less talkative by comparison was not really an option either, as I don’t want to put too many words into the player’s mouth through this avatar. So I did what I felt was the only possible solution. If I cannot reduce the amount of things Mitsuki talks about, I can at least try and change the way she talks. So I went through all of her lines, made all the sentences shorter, and broke the longer ones into smaller pieces (I do like my long sentences). This made Mitsuki sound more thoughtful, as if she is struggling with words a little. I think that works with her character too. I will probably give this event one or two more passes before it is ready though. Maybe I can get it closer to what I will be truly happy with.

Mitsuki was not the only thing I was working on last week. I was also filling a lot of gaps that needed closing. A small closing event after the Trial of Might that will give the players a bit more closure and will let them spend a bit of time with a girl of their choice is about three-quarters done. Every time I am writing events like this, I now have to remember to do it for each of the girls, and it turns even smaller events into a considerable endeavor. Also, I went and added some more journal entries for the girls which were missing, like records of you missing the date and a couple of other smaller remarks that might matter.

Speaking of the journal, it is about to get a huge update. Thanks to Proxinadu, our dedicated programmer, we are finally able to realize the true form of the journal - the way it was always meant to be, but my own programming skills were not enough to make it. You can now access the Dressing Room right from the journal by clicking on the girl’s image. But not just that - through the dressing room, you can now customize how the girl will look in her journal page.

We are still working out some bits and pieces, but when it is done, you will be able to customize the journal entries of the girls to your liking. And since the unlocks for the outfits are carried over across playthroughs, you can let your imagination fly right as you start any new game.

In other news, our current game build was finally reviewed and approved by Steam. The page itself was not approved yet, but maybe it will be by the time you are reading this. We still have a huge road ahead of us in that direction. But even this small approval took us a month and is a real weight off our shoulders.

A-and, that's it for this entry, I guess. We'll see what nest week brings.Shady Character One, out!