Let’s Talk Design! (Patreon)

Welcome new subscribers! I’m glad to have you along for my game design journey and I hope you enjoy the ride. This week we are going to look at the foundations of One Week Heroine, what I am going to focus on, some limitations I am facing, and a little teaser on the gameplay.

Foundations

One Week Heroine is an idea that has been sloshing around in my mind for quite some time. I wrote the initial idea after a rather dull time trying to enjoy another NTR DAZ visual novel set in a family home, you might know the one. Not that there is anything wrong with those games or their designers, I was just over the samey-ness of a lot of them. I wanted something different, something more like the Akubar Trainer series (but less grindy), something like Female Agent (but more visual), also something not too long that rewarded multiple playthroughs. So, I scribbled down a lot of notes and let the idea simmer.

I properly started working on the bones of One Week Heroine last month, and in that time, a lot has been done. The whole introduction (about 15 minutes of gameplay) is fully written and coded. All art briefs have been written, almost all scenes have been outlined, music and sound effects have been selected. I am going full speed ahead. My lovely artist is also going full speed, currently working on 4 of the 7 main characters (there are also several side characters).

For One Week Heroine, I decided to use Tyranobuilder as it is the VN engine I am most familiar with. That being said, future projects will likely use either Godot or Ren’py depending on what my needs are.

Focus

My main focus for One Week Heroine is to deliver a good, contained, NTR corruption story with enough variation throughout that a second or even third playthrough would still be fun. My scenes are more than just Character A says “blah blah”, Character B says “Oh, blah blah blah”. I am doing my best to give each scene movement and not to neglect audio or music.

I like corruption, and there will be lots of that in One Week Heroine, and not just of Agent Molly (more on this in a future blog). EX, Molly’s handler, will act as the player’s stand-in. However, EX isn’t a generic blank slate, he is a fully fleshed out character with his own background and desires, the player will be able to play EX in multiple different ways, perhaps helping corrupt the naïve Agent or perhaps protecting her.

Kink-wise, One Week Heroine is going to focus on NTR, corruption, sharing, prostitution, dubious consent, and mind control. All of this with a spy-flavour.

Gameplay

After the introduction and instigating event, players will have free reign to explore the different branches of the main story and the side stories in the order they would like. Maybe you decide to send Molly unprepared into a Regime outpost, maybe you try and gather information and perform surveillance, maybe you hold off sending Molly on field missions before she has enough training under her belt, heck maybe you decide to just relax at the hideout and let time tick by.

There will be a time-limit, but I am not doing this to frustrate the player. There is no going somewhere just for nothing to happen. Each action you take will have a meaningful outcome and all side-content will have an effect on the final mission of the game.

Limitations

Currently my main limitation is money. Art is expensive and I like to pay my artist a fair price for each piece of artwork they do. However, even that isn’t too much of a limitation, I can fund the project myself, more money just means the project will be completed faster (not having to wait for each payday). Despite that, I am not going to do paid subscriptions until at least I have something that resembles a proper game, even then I will keep my blog updates free.

The only other limitation I have is audience reach, I am not a very big creator so getting people to see my work is going to be hard but not impossible. Hopefully blogs like this help grow my audience.

That is all for now, next post I will talk about Agent Molly’s stats, how you train them and what she can do with them.