AnimeCon Adaptation Dev Anniversary '23! (Patreon)

We're now starting our fourth year of game dev!? You can check out last year's anniversary post here. I didn't make a post for the year before that, as April '21 we got gut-punched by Zaph bailing on the project without warning. Times were tough, but I can safely say now that we've moved on and left him in the dust!

At the top of the page here you can hit play and check out one of our game theme tracks from composer TennesseeFlores. She tailors leitmotif music to our scenes and provides her own vocals! She's a jingle artist by trade and specializes in catchy music, but after the humming version plays to make an impression, the track in-game will switch to an instrumental-only as long scenes play out, so as not to become distracting.

This particular one is the Stephanie + Kelly Mixed motif, prepared for play specifically during conversation scenes between Stephanie and Kelly. Tenne has already completed a dozen tracks for us spanning several different genres of music! I tend to request orchestral or lofi style, but we have a great tense Chloe theme and a cute pop one called Cattoos Tattoos we'll be using for the Vendor's Room area.

Our character artist YeMcBear has been working nonstop for the entire past year to help us catch up after the Zaph disaster, only taking two or three 'break' weeks to run a booth selling her art prints at conventions with her friends. We have her working on a rotation cycle where her focus will generally be on one character each month.

• Emily months: February, June, October.
• Stephanie months: March, July, November.
• Kelly months: April, August, December.
• Misc months: January, May, September.

Miscellaneous months cover any designs and illustrations needed that aren't the 'main trio' of girls; such as Brian, Chloe, Rebecca, Megan, items, game icons, and et cetera. Next month, we'll see Ryan for the first time (Hipster Mister).

Typically, in a given week YeMcBear works on either simple design set (nude base + several outfits & expressions), a two-character illustration, a single character two-part illustration, an item batch, an icon batch, or an expansion to an existing design (additional outfits & expressions, minor design tweaks).

In addition, she has also still been making time every other month or so to keep up on drawing in a layer of background crowds for our painted backdrops, so as to bring all of the convention scenes to life:

Of course, our background illustrator Basem_S1 hasn't been idle, either! This past year he created scene batches for new Saturday areas Marino's Pizza and the Parking Garage, as well as entire supplemental batches to help flesh out established areas such as the Sherriott Hotel, Panel Room, Convention Plaza, Rebecca's Car, and the Vendor's Room.

Our steady accumulation of character, background, and theme track assets is paying off! I do still want to get just a little bit more ahead before we start putting out first releases. My general idea right now is to time-release content in batches along a rule of threes. Each release should be around three hours of playable content, introduce three intimate scenes, and public release will be three months behind patron's release access.

I could release a good game now, but I want to always release a great game, and probably won't have time to put a lot of focus in writing additional game content until after I've finished up the AnimeCon Harem webfic's epilogue chapters. What additional content would I be writing? Choices!

Brian failing to ever get to the convention at all because he and Emily hook up in chapter one, and immediately crash into a headlong relationship. Circumstances in chapter two turning so that it's Megan instead of Stephanie who spends time with Brian (for players who like their weeaboos loud and curvy rather than shy and petite). Chapter three content introduces Kelly—what if Brian chose to take a proactive approach with her rather than a defensive one, right from the onset of meeting her?

If you'd like to check out all of the theme tracks, character designs, and background illustrations we have accumulated thus far, please consider helping support the game at the $5 4064 Union tier! Huge thank you to all of the patrons who are already doing so, your support has made all of these miracles start to come together into an amazing visual novel!