Recon Operation (Patreon)

Progress Update

Hey everyone! Another week down, another week of writing, coding, and planning. Things have been getting busy around the holiday season (which seems to be starting earlier and earlier each year) but luckily I have implemented more content than I planned to this week. We are still on course for a late December or early January demo release. This week my artist has completed his work on Ginger’s sprite! So as a little treat, here are a few shots of her:

Mission Time

During One Week Heroine, players are going to be sending Molly various missions from infiltration missions, to recon missions, to sabotage missions, and more. This week we are going to look at one such mission. This particular mission is a side mission so there won't be too many spoilers.

My Process

Writing for a game can be quite a challenge, especially for a game with as many moving parts as One Week Heroine. Unlike novels or short stories, writing for a game requires you to have a good grasp of the variables at play and how each one might affect the outcome of the story. Each one of my missions goes through four stages. First, I write a quick outline of what the mission or scene is about and what is at stake in the overall story. Next, I draw up a flowchart of the mission to better visualize how it flows and how the variables interact with each other. Then I write the dialogue and some pseudo script. Finally, I implement the scene or mission into the game engine and polish until satisfied.

The Theater

The mission starts with Quincy finding data that Regime goons have been flocking to a new theater downtown. What is particularly odd, is that the attendees have almost exclusively been Regime employees. Unfortunately the theater itself seems to be air-gapped and Quincy is unable to determine exactly what is going on inside but it can’t possibly be good. Molly is sent to the theater undercover to investigate. This is the initial part of a 3-part mission which must be completed over the course of several days.

Note, lots of this artwork is placeholder (surprise surprise) the artist is hard at work making art for the goons you see in this mission and will later be making art for the backgrounds also.

Here we have the flowchart for the mission. I will go through the mission from the beginning and talk through the decision points/branches that can occur. In the interest of time, we will only go through once and I will leave it to you to discover how the other paths play out when the demo is released.

Oh My

Not long after Molly arrives in the theater (called the Hard Swallow) she takes a seat, ready to watch the show. The plan is to wait until the lights are dimmed and the show begins before sneaking off to find an access point to patch Quincy into. She just needs to wait whilst Quincy scans for an access point.

As she is sitting there, she overhears two goons talking about Regime blueprints. Blueprints that were meant to be destroyed are instead gathering dust in the construction company’s record room. She makes a note of it as the two goons take a seat either side of her.

It doesn’t take long for Molly to realize what kind of theater she is in, and it isn’t a family friendly one. The curtains draw to two people having sex on stage and Molly’s response to that depends on how much corruption she has managed to accumulate up to this point. In this case, Molly is already on a path of sexual promiscuity and has a total of 18 corruption, so she is surprised at the male performer’s length.

The First Decision

Before long, the goons on either side of Molly decide to get touchy. It is now that the player gets to tell Molly what to do.

There are three options: EX could advise Molly to endure the goons’ advances. Molly could use her training in Cunning to slip away from the goons. Finally, Molly could use one of her Smoke Bombs to make a distraction and get out of trouble.

In this case, the player has previously trained Molly’s Cunning high enough that she can slip away from the goons but not without causing suspicion to grow. Molly’s Heat increases, and the Regime is more aware of her actions. Regardless, Molly retreats to the rear of the theater and is informed that despite Quincy’s best efforts, there is in fact no access point, the place is completely analogue. They are going to need a new strategy if they are going to find out what sinister operation the Regime has going on here. EX orders Molly to abort, but because our Molly is quite confident from all the training she has been getting, she says not to pull her out just yet. The request is denied.

Too Much Heat

Unfortunately, it seems that Molly’s recent operations have generated too much Heat (pushing that one guy off a rooftop yesterday probably didn’t help), so before she is able to retreat from the Hard Swallow Theater, she is confronted by another Regime goon, this one very ready to punish Molly for snooping around where she shouldn’t.

Now Molly has four more options to choose from: She can knock the goon out using her Power. She could use the Smoke Bomb she held onto earlier. If she is corrupt enough, she can offer to give the goon a blowjob. Or, she can panic!

Sadly, our Molly is not strong enough to knock out the guard and she is not corrupt enough to straight out offer to suck the goon’s dick. We could make her panic, but I want our Molly to be somewhat competent so instead I choose for her to use the smoke bomb and run the hell out of there.

The ploy is successful and Molly returns to base. EX and Quincy will have to come up with a different angle to approach the Hard Swallow Theater, perhaps one that gets Molly backstage.

The Sex?

You will notice the above playthrough avoids the potential sex scenes you can see in the flowchart. This is mainly because the art for those sex scenes are not completed yet and it would be a bit sad to just show you placeholder CG that consists of a blank screen that says “Molly Casual Clothes Blowjob”. We will get to the sex scenes in a later dev blog.

Next Week

You will have noticed I have posted this update a day earlier than usual, that is because I am going away for the weekend and wanted to get it done early. I could have scheduled the post, but hey, why not just release it when it is done? Next week we will be looking a bit closer at the world of One Week Heroine, the Democratic Republic of Peeltopia and a little bit of Molly’s past. Until then!

Question of the Week

This week's question is about the development blogs themselves. What aspect of the game or game making process would you like me to explore in a blog post?