The Nightclub (Patreon)

Greetings!

I hope everyone's managing to stay away from corona-chan! I was really tempted to try my hand at a corona-chan render - I think I could make a pretty decent one! - but I figured it might be in poor taste if this thing actually does get bad. In any case, if you're not a shut-in already, now might be a good time to start!

On to development, I've spent most of my time since last update writing, mostly dialogue connected to the nightclub. I've expanded the nightclub; it'll be a bit like the party (before the Dark Pits) except considerably larger. It now features dances and a lot of different (optional) conversations with the Bunnies and other folks that'll let you get to know your companions and the world better. I toyed with the idea of making a dancing minigame, but concluded that would probably be a bad use of development time. I think in the future I'll be moving away from minigames requiring a lot of dexterity, since RMMV is poorly optimized for that sort of thing. Instead, I'll probably be going more for puzzles, maybe like you saw with the Oracle's temple. Sure, you can do action games in RMMV, but why would you? My next project might be in Unity, and if I go that route I can take another look at action gameplay on a platform that's better suited for it.

I'm also looking at expanding the way I handle relationships with the characters; I've already clarified the way I handle the PC's relationship with Ana behind the scenes, and I'll probably start doing the same with some of the secondary characters. It won't be anything huge in the beginning, just different dialogue options (and maybe some scenes) based on how you've interacted with the character in the past. I want to provide a little more personalization of your game experience, but I'm proceeding cautiously, since I don't want the project to get branch-itis. It's almost as easy to catch as corona-chan, but far more serious!

I took a few days to do more work on the long-term plot, since I wanted to start weaving in more threads from the game's overall themes and foreshadow future events. I've fleshed out my plans for the second (and final) world, as well as the end of Alex and company's time in the first one. The finale for World 1 will give you some clues about what's really going on, and your time in World 2 will gradually make it more clear.

Over the next week, I hope to finish the revised nightclub, as well as get to 3/4 done on renders for the 2nd H-scene. Feels like I've written a novella already, but there's still more left to write! Thank you for your support, and I hope everyone stays safe out there!