Perfect Girlfriend [v.0.2]: A Kitty's Work Is Never Done (Patreon)

So back in 2022, I thought it'd be a fun, quick-and-easy April Fool's bit to make Perfect Girlfriend: an update of Perfect Home which patches out Citrine, and you just play as Felicity going around as a cute pink cat, doing cute pink cat things. It WAS fun, but, uh, not really quick, or easy, to reinvent the wheel and make a whole new game in the course of less than a month. I have vivid memories of SERIOUSLY burning myself out, so much that I wasn't able to push myself to iron out bugs a month later, and in the years that followed I had trouble drumming up the motivation, or ideas, to further flesh out the concept. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for its gameplay loop, or what would make it unique. So I left it!

I always WANTED to come back and develop it more, but I just really didn't have the spoons, especially given everything that ended up happening through 2023-- that, and I was struggling to find guest writers I really felt comfortable with. Now that I'm a little more spooned up, with a rolodex of creators to consider and so much work done ahead of schedule for Perfect Home itself, I feel more comfortable dedicating attention towards it alongside the base game.

I plan to work on it primarily as a side-project! In other words, Perfect Home's going to remain my priority, and I'll only be working on Perfect Girlfriend when I have free time on my paws, or people who I can outsource the necessary writing work to. Depending on how productive I end up being, there may even be times where I release builds of both games at the same time!

I also have a much better idea of what I want to do with this side-game, too. Where Perfect Home's gameplay centers around maintaining your mansion and turning heroes into your servants, the plan is to have Perfect Girlfriend focus more on Felicity's relationships with other pets. The heroes have already been captured and trained, after all! There's no need to go on hunts. Instead, Felicity goes on dates! They serve more or less the same function mechanically: completing a hero's date content unlocks them as a party member, changing your dynamic with them and allowing you to pursue more scenes, mechanics, areas, etcetera.

To start, I'm focusing on the bunny's date content, though I likely won't introduce it until version 0.3! You'll encounter the former leader while you're off doing chores-- Felicity notices they're kissing up to Citrine more frequently, and their route revolves around competing to become their Sir's favorite. The rest of the servants will have routes of their own over time, though whether I go beyond the original four heroes (and possibly Julian and Locke) will depend entirely on my mood!

I'd also really like to use the game to explore events from Felicity's perspective-- rewriting the intro so that you experience being stat-drained as one idea, but also exploring events prior to Perfect Home, such as The Cat Opened the Door, meeting Citrine, his backstory... stuff like that.

THIS version of the game is mostly just a lot of quality-of-life fixes-- bug patches, a few new scenes, a new room for the manor, a costume making mechanic... there's a lot of scenes to encounter, but no overarching "goal" besides help your Sir keep everything neat and tidy, strut around, and bully the occasional servant into doing what you want.

That's it for now! I hope folks end up enjoying Perfect Girlfriend as much as they enjoy Perfect Home, and as always, thank you so much for all of the support!

PATCH NOTES:

• New title screen and new art!

• Three short new scenes have been added for accompanying Citrine into town! Work at a maid cafe and bring home some gold for your beloved Meowster...

• Another pair of scenes have been added for doing chores.

• You can now request a kiss from Locke once per day. This will be dangerous in future updates.

• You can now select specific chore scenes instead of leaving everything up to chance.

• Felicity now has a bedroom to serve as a hub, similar to Citrine's room in the main game! I will likely add this as an unlockable room in Perfect Home in the future.

• You can now change Felicity's outfits! If you have the money, you can make new ones from the dressing mannequin in his room. At the moment you can only make a maid dress and a servant uniform.

• You can now choose which stat Citrine drains from you.

• Fixed a bug with the Dirty Little Secret not randomly scrolling through its scenes for use with Locke.

• The rogue, bunny and deer are all in the estate with you, though at the moment you can only recruit Locke and Julian into your party.