Yes, it’s true! I said goodbye to my comfortable, well paid job at Chillingo to try out being an indie developer! Maybe I’m crazy, or maybe it will be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Let’s find out over the coming months in my development blog!
So I’m working on a few projects right now, but this blog will be focusing on my visual novel game, which I am doing 90% solely on my own (10% to my talented, musical buddies!). For those of you who don’t know what a visual novel is, think of it as an interactive story where you get to make decisions on where the story will end up. They are very popular in Japan and often deploy an anime art style, though as a westerner, I will be deviating from the status quo a little bit. Popular titles that could fit into the visual novel category (depending on how you look at them) are Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Katawa Shoujo, Depression Quest, Hatoful Boyfriend and even the Persona series!
I am using the Ren'py engine (http://www.renpy.org/) which is easy to use for coding beginners, and hence a great starting point for my development career! It supports Windows, Mac, Linux and Android so I will be putting the game out to all of those platforms eventually.
I’ve been practicing Ren'py over the last few months and now feel confident to start my project. I’m currently writing the story and so far I’m really happy with the beginning. The characters are fully designed and I know where I want to story to go, so now it’s just the job of getting on with it! (Go on Lucy, get on with it, stop writing your blog…)
It’s going to be a dating sim, but not with the typical Japanese school scenario. I don’t want to say too much so early in development, but I will tell you that the protagonist is a young woman and there will be 4 characters to date, all with multiple endings. So what I thought would be a few weeks of writing, will probably be multiplied by 4, and then 4 again so there are many optional routes! Argh, why didn’t I just make this linear!
Meanwhile, I’m working in my home office and there are a lot of faces in here, all looking over to the right, at something.
https://vine.co/v/OghMdWhlqKa
I think Chi…
Whatever, it’s creeping me out!
I am using the Ren'py engine (http://www.renpy.org/) which is easy to use for coding beginners, and hence a great starting point for my development career! It supports Windows, Mac, Linux and Android so I will be putting the game out to all of those platforms eventually.
I’ve been practicing Ren'py over the last few months and now feel confident to start my project. I’m currently writing the story and so far I’m really happy with the beginning. The characters are fully designed and I know where I want to story to go, so now it’s just the job of getting on with it! (Go on Lucy, get on with it, stop writing your blog…)
It’s going to be a dating sim, but not with the typical Japanese school scenario. I don’t want to say too much so early in development, but I will tell you that the protagonist is a young woman and there will be 4 characters to date, all with multiple endings. So what I thought would be a few weeks of writing, will probably be multiplied by 4, and then 4 again so there are many optional routes! Argh, why didn’t I just make this linear!
Meanwhile, I’m working in my home office and there are a lot of faces in here, all looking over to the right, at something.
https://vine.co/v/OghMdWhlqKa
I think Chi…
Whatever, it’s creeping me out!