Visual novel project. First sketches.

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 If you don't know anything about Visual Novels and you are interested in some background. Here are some useful links:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel 

Visual novels in the games shop Itch.io (also available in other shops like SteamPowered): 

https://itch.io/games/genre-visual-novel 

In Youtube you can find gameplays (someone playing for a while) and walkthroughs (someone playing the whole game).

Note that they are mostly in manga/anime style. Some of them are more like reading a book, asking no choices from the reader, and others ask for more decisions from the player, usually dialogue choices, but sometimes little inside games too.

 My game won't fit any category easily, and particularly the art will be more western comic style. Well, like my comics.

I know that some of my comic readers won't be interested in playing/reading a visual novel, and also vice versa, some (future) players of my game won't be interested in my comics. Hopefully everybody will enjoy everything I do, because my art and wit is always the same, it only changes the medium.

This is a experiment, even for me. Don't panic.

Just relax and enjoy.

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Let's begin...

Some time ago some people told me it would be a good idea to do a game with my drawings. I investigated and thought about it for several months and... First surprise: I discovered that doing a simple game like a visual novel is manageable even for a single person. Therefore I started taking notes and ideas and sketches...and second surprise: it was fun to do it!

It's very different of writing a comic, indeed. In a comic the creator tells HIS story, the "best" one he can imagine. On the other side, in a game the focus is in the atmosphere and characters. Not so much in the plot because the player can choose different paths, so as creator you have to care about ALL characters and sideways. That means to create a whole universe, not only "the best". More work, but also more fun!

The story in my game will be about the player who go to a fetish party for the first time. There he finds lots of different kinky people to talk, watch a fetish show, and finally convince a woman to play bdsm with him.

In the attachment jpgs you can see my first sketches of all(?) the characters of the party. Some of them will be important for the story, many others just funny additions, like some characters from my own comics. 

I also show two almost finished characters. I say "almost" because probably when I progress and put together backgrounds and characters I will need to make adjustments here and there. The devil is in the details!

I don't want to do too many spoilers so soon, but it will be three main rooms or levels, each one more bdsm explicit than the previous ones. In a night party the heat also have to increase as the night progresses, isn't it?

However the game will move clearly on the soft side. No hardcore sex, no extreme bdsm, nor anything like that.* You can expect for beautiful drawings, fetish environments and spicy humor. It will be almost a mainstream game. A nice introduction to the fetish world and practices to common people and casual gamers.

(*Note: I will try to compensate this "softness" with the monthly comic pages. A longer story also means longer sex scenes. Yeah!)

In the technical aspects I will use Ren'py, a free open source program aimed to create visual novels. It's easy to use and user friendly, just what I need for my first try. I've read the tutorial and it allows to do most of my ideas. For advance options you can add snippets of Python (a programming language), which probably I will need toward the end of the game. For example to "remember" which sentences you have said to certain characters that will lead to different endings. I will worry about how to implement those "advanced" features later on.

Also I plan to use some help or assistants or hire people in the creation of the game. For an artist is difficult to fight his perfectionism and do by himself everything, but from some time I notice it slows me down. And even the simplest game it's too big and cover too many areas for a single person to do everything good. Characters, backgrounds, dialogues, programming... Can I do everything and keep up with my comic pages and commissions? And what about if I want to add animations or music?

Assistants cost money and time (until we learn to work together), but in the long run it will result in a better product, and it will allow me to aim to bigger projects if this one success.

Schedule:

Its creation will go a bit slow during the first months for reasons I explain in my other post of "news" telling my plans for year 2020. Anyway I won't start its active promotion until there is some beta ready to play. During first months I will just show the design art.

It will be not a very long game. I think the play time can fall between 30 minutes and 1 hour. A short game doesn't mean it won't be a good amount of work! Specially because it's my first attemp to do a game and I have a lot of things to learn in the process. If everything goes well, then I will aim to a bigger one in my second try.

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Next month I hope to have ready a few more characters and one background.

Don't hesitate to give me your feedback about this project!

Regards,

Coax