Update - Emi in the alley from Shizu's perspective (Patreon)

tl;dr - I've been working on the Shizu video watching scene, with programming and voice acting added.

This week's image

You might remember this scene from such games as Pervert Action: Timelapse... of course, you saw it from a different angle, in the Emi story.

The alternative angle presented above is for the Shizu video watching scene, which is planned to include options to watch various things with Shizu from her camera.

Oh, and the fourth image that doesn't fit is just a thing that I didn't actually use in the game, because I think I wasn't too happy with it at the time. Might as well at least include it for a bonus!

The previews above are in 4K, of course, so open the full version for sharp details. I think the lighting came out in quite an interesting way in the new angles - what do you think?

Programming and voice editing

This week I've implemented some of the Shizu video scenes, although some still need to be done. I've been playing with those video effects that I've created for the game as a way to convey that something's a recording and using those on these scenes.

I'm reasonably proud of those effects - that's not based on anything in-built in the engine or devised by anyone else; I used various tricks at once, such as gently shaking the picture when it's supposed to be hand-held (but not when it's on a tripod), adding moving film grain through a mostly-transparent video of static noise, to give the sense the image is "alive", adding lines, doing a sneaky sort of fake-zoom when shifting to close ups (I can do a real zoom, but this allows alternate poses and such) and overlaying elements that suggest it's playing on a device of some kind. All of this grants some extra visual vibrancy on static images.

I've also got a big new batch of Shizu voice acting from Shiyon this week, which I've already edited and added a couple of days ago! These lines will mostly be for the new video watching scene, the Hirai/Shizu/Shuji scene from last month and a few extra lines for her conversation menu responses that were already there. I suspect you won't notice those ones so much, but they increase the overall value of the game, I feel. I do like to keep going back and tweaking things in the game before the final release.

The Shizu video scenes

Narratively, I think the Shizu video watching scene is quite an interesting device. On the one hand it's a nice way to revisit and explore more deeply some of the story's more interesting moments, which I think is cool because it gives you a different perspective and gives us the chance to get into Shizu's personality a little more by hearing what she thinks of them. On the other hand, it's kind of a nice way for me to get some extra content for you out of work I've already done - using a couple of animations again or showing different angles of scenes, in some cases, without it being a simple case of lazy repetition.

I also like to include a little bit of a voyeuristic theme in some elements of my games; in the previous Pervert Action games I was able to fit in a recurring theme of hidden passages, which is something I still like as an idea, but I just couldn't quite squeeze it in here. The substitutes I've found, therefore, are twofold: phone messages from the girls or Hirai, and secondly these Shizu videos. It'll be a scene you can return to through her conversation menu if you think you've unlocked a new video, too.

What do you think of the alternative angles? And do you like the idea of the Shizu video watching scene? Let me know in the comments below!