March progress update (Patreon)

So I've spent a good chunk of the last 3-4 weeks putting together a minigame for the next episode. I'm pretty glad I did so because if nothing else, I learned a fair bit about working with unity in the process.

One of Tainara's main hobbies is video-gaming, so I wanted the player to actually play a game against her. She and the protagonist decide to spice it up a bit with a bet: the loser of each round must remove a piece of clothing. (And you know where that leads next, right?) I could have easily just made this segment use visual novel choices to determine if you win a round or not, but no, I needed to quintuple my workload and actually make the video game you play against her.

Tainara's specialty is fighting games, but those are extremely complicated (and expensive) to make. So I'd figured I'd try to abstract the 'feel' of fighting games down to a much simpler type of gameplay. So I'd started with a clone of one of the simplest, and most famous, video games as the starting point: 

Okay, okay, I know, just hear me out. This has actually been planned for a really long time, and if you look really carefully in Isabel's episode you can find proof in the comics shop.

So the core of the minigame is obviously based on Pong, but my main inspirations on top of that are Divekick and Lethal League. Maybe a bit of Windjammers too. The basic gameplay captures a bit of the reflex-based skills that would be involved with timing and spacing in a 'real' fighting game, but I also wanted to capture the aspects of mindgames, mix-ups and such, so, I've added some additional fighting game inspired mechanics to it. Which is why it took a bit of time. (The actual 'pong' part was done in like a day) The new gameplay additions are based on blocking, parrying and dashing, giving multiple ways to hit and deflect the ball, but the BIG thing is that there are multiple playable characters, each with their own unique 'paddle' (Might call it something else later), mechanics and special moves inspired by different fighting game characters. the two in the screenshot are the basic protagonist/rival characters based on Ken/Ryu/Akuma/Morrigan/Sol Badguy/Ragna The Bloodege, etc. (Hence the karate gis for maximum shoto-clone references)

So, I'm making this a fairly fleshed out game, and if people find it fun and worthwhile I may add more content to it and release that as a separate standalone game as a side-project later. But for now, as it is a minigame within a VN there is an additional layer on top of it, because it's supposed to be a simulation of that head-to-head couch VS experience. (Something I personally kind of miss in this age of online gaming) So I'm adding a bit of meta gameplay where you can interfere with Tainara's game-play via trash talk and distractions or even attempt to outright cheat.

Some of those features took a little extra time to figure out, but I've got all the core stuff laid out. I'm working on a lot of the polish and visual flair stuff now to juice up the game and make it more enjoyable to play and give better feedback to the player.Sound fx, hitsparks, character balance, etc. So I should have a playable test build for it soon. (trust me, you don't want to try it yet in it's current state anyway) In the meantime I've pulled in a new writer to help with the dialogue and story on this chapter while I finish up the minigame since Req's still working on the script for the Fairy episode.

Sadly there still isn't much spoiler-free info or content I can share for that one as of yet aside from to confirm that it's being worked on. While my personal focus shifted to this minigame and Tainara's chapter, the art assets and writing are still being made and refined by other team members. 

One spoiler free asset I can share is this side-profile shot of Audrey. (Whom, as a reminder, is the butler, chauffeur and bodyguard of Amaryllis, the billionaire fairy you'll be dating in the third episode. They have a pretty interesting relationship)