March Devlog - Catgirl Care Roadmap

Welcome once again to another devlog!

I haven't been the most productive regarding gamedev this month. Most of what I've worked on has been improvements to my adventure game systems and finalizing initial design goals for Catgirl Care Chibi. Other than that, I've drawn a lot of art.

Since this month is a quieter month, I think now is a good time to dive into what my plans are for Catgirl Care proper and some history on the project.

A Brief History of Catgirl Care

Catgirl Care is a catgirl pet raising sim that I've been working towards since a little after the release of my first game, Date a Mink. At first, it was going to be a choice-driven visual novel, but I was unhappy with how limiting the concept was. I didn't want a linear story that would go the same way every time - I wanted a pet sim where the player could raise a pet catgirl. I did get some work done on that initial visual novel concept so if you're interest in it, you can try it here.

My initial hope was that the VN teaser would drum up some attention to help me build a team to develop a 3D version of the game. While there was some initial interest, it fizzled out quickly and I decided to develop Catgirl Care by myself. The only problem was that I didn't have any proper coding or 3D experience.

For the next ~6 years (the teaser was released on Dec 30, 2017), I built up the skills necessary to build a 3D Catgirl Care. I initially struggled to learn code and 3D modeling so I continued making ren.py visual novels before moving to more serious projects using Godot as my game engine of choice.

(An early attempt at making Catgirl Care Chibi)

While it has taken a long time to build up the skills I have now, I expect to learn even more while I develop Catgirl Care. I really believe in the game concept and I'm excited to finally be working on it.

Catgirl Care Roadmap

Catgirl Care Chibi is a small prototype that I'm building just to test the concepts I have for Catgirl Care proper. It's not going to be the most polished project I've ever made but I want to make sure that it is fun. If Catgirl Care Chibi is not fun then Catgirl Care will not be fun, so this important.

Currently, I've built out the catgirl's initial AI (navigation, state machine, etc) and some simple game mechanics. My goal for the next beta is to start work on the main gameplay loop. This likely won't be the final beta for the second stage of the roadmap as I intend to build out a few other mechanics as well. Expect lots of changes going forward.

The third stage of the roadmap is important. While feedback on the initial alpha isn't critical, I plan to push hard for feedback on the later demos so that I can find and fix any issues with the game.

I can't really say how long all of this will take. I want to say it'll all be done relatively quickly so that I can get to work on Catgirl Care proper as soon as possible, but it is important that I feel confident going into that project. It could be a few months, it could be a year. No matter what, I'll keep all my supporters updated.

Other Lemon News

While this upcoming month is going to be focused heavily on chibi catgirls, I'll also be posting my new characters, Sabrina and Lobelia, along with a debut comic short some time this week! I finalized their designs a little bit ago, but I wanted to have a short as a way to introduce them as something more than just cute designs with no context. This is also something I'd love to do for some of my existing characters (like Lorelei or Katie, Sophie, and Lisa) so maybe I'll find time for that.

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Anyway, thanks for reading! If you're interested in trying out the first build of Catgirl Care Chibi, you can check that out here. I'd love to hear your feedback on the demo! Thanks as always for your support!