Friday Dev Update #1 - Initial Plans (Patreon)

Hello everyone! Since we passed the goal for starting work on a "vore dating sim/visual novel", I decided I should at least start posting updates about things here. I know I said I'd begin working on it even earlier, but life has the frustrating habit of getting in the way of best laid plans, so here we are again, haha. I will say that this is not going to have a quick turnaround, and I'm hoping I can at least make something coherent/fun to mess around with, without running myself into the ground to do so, but we'll have to see.

First off, I'll say that I actually have not played/seen very many visual novel games or dating sims for that matter. The idea of them has never appealed to me as a player, but I can definitely see how people would enjoy diving into one. Interacting with a cast of fun characters, playing a role in the story and deciding how things will go, getting to see their reactions...And if you add vore on top of that?  I can definitely see the appeal there.

Research

So! As my initial round of study into this genre I'm playing some games that seem to match the style I had in mind, or just seemed interesting enough to make me want to see how they approached this style of game.

First up is VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action, which I chose for it's presentation and unique mechanics.  I'm actually not sure how much it'll apply to what I have in mind, but some interactivity outside of "click a menu option for your response" is bound to be more engaging in the long run. I'll let you all know next time what I think of this one, depending on how far I get into it.

I also want to try out games like Dream Daddy, though this won't be a game about finding love exactly (I guess if you were like Bella you'd love to end up in someone), but just that sort of choice-based story development is real intriguing to me. Note that I am choosing these because of their popularity, I want to see what people enjoy about these games so maybe I can implement some of it in my own game, or give my own unique flair to things.

I have a few more I'd like to dig into as well, but these are all time sinks so I've got to work them into my schedule. XD I'm still working full time, as well as my drawing commitments here, so I have to plan accordingly.

General Design Plans

I'll get more into what I want to try later on but first off this is not going to be a huge, fully featured game. I'm just one guy with limited time and energy, so just consider whatever I come up with a demo or concept for what could be something larger. There's already some amazing vore games out there already, ones of quality I couldn't compete with without some help or time for sure, but that's never been the goal here. This is just something entertaining that I'm hoping people will find fun to lose themselves in for a short while.

That being said, I think I'd limit it to one or two locations at the most, maybe something about meeting up with Forest or Fomo at their place and a possible dinner date! Assuming you make it that far into the scenario, haha. And though it would be fun to have both prey and pred versions of this type of game, I'll be focusing on a prey version only, and (hopefully) implement a form of perma/reformation based on the player's preferences for the ending.  I don't want to spoil too much, but I've talked with a few people about my plans in that regard and they've been referred to as "fun", "interesting", and "potentially hot", so that's all good signs. XD My experience with vore games is that being eaten is treated as a "bad ending" or failure state, and that's definitely not something I want to be true about this one. Heck, being eaten is most likely the goal of anyone who plays this, so why make that the option you're not supposed to take? Always seemed silly to me.

Potential Workload

As far as the characters involved, Fomo and Forest are both going to be potential dates, and there will be several other characters to interact with as well such as Alice, possibly Bella, and maybe even a cameo or two if I can work that out.  Like I said earlier, this will be a demo at best, though knowing me I'll still wanna do my best on it so who knows how far it'll go exactly, lol.

What else...This is definitely going to take a bunch of work. There's all the drawings involved, I'm hoping to get them in color, and this is on top of backgrounds, dialogue, and working with the engine I choose to figure out the routing and dialogue trees. I could technically code my own if need-be, but we'll see how this works out, and what will be the easier/faster option. I'm not even ready to start coding; I want to work out some design/layouts for the game first before anything. Having a mock screenshot or two in place gives me some idea of what to work towards while coding things.

In any case, I'm excited to work on this, it'll be a fun experience! Like I said, it won't becoming out very soon at all, but you'll all get to see what I do the whole way through. Look forward to it!