Don't Toy With MeTen thousand downloads! This is definitely too big of a milestone to go unmentioned here so I just wanted to take the time to say thank you to everyone who played a part in this! People who downloaded the game, Let's Players and their viewers, people who told their friends about the game or recommended it to others or drew fanart or made fan pages. All of you made the game such a big success! It makes me so happy to see something I made being enjoyed like this. I can only hope that you guys will enjoy my next game just as much. ❤ I'd also like to thank everyone who has paid for the game and who has contributed toward the Queer Games Bundle. Not only is it exciting to be able to sell copies of something I made, this money helps toward future projects, including In Your Nature. In Your Nature: Writing and GUIWritingThis week's progress comes with a chunky 9,659 words added to drafting the script. The Common Route is just about entirely written, only needing some small additions to improve the flow and the rest of that writing went into the beginning of Oleander's route. I didn't hit the 25k mark for the total script as I had hoped to (just 1.3k away now!) but I did manage to write more days than not this week and the near completion of the Common Route means something else. I now have enough written to start focusing on visual assets I'll need for the demo. Right now I'm considering making the demo the majority of the Common Route. This will include the prologue, scenes introducing all major characters, and the inciting incident of the story, but without going into the point where you choose between characters to follow. Pre-editting, what I have for that section of the story amounts to about 16k words (some of which is optional reading depending on choices). So, comparable to the full length of Don't Toy With Me. It might be too long for a demo? I'll have to ask around other VN devs who have put out demos before I make up my mind on this. But I'd really like for you guys to have something playable that gets you invested in the story! Art AssetsI've gotten back to work on my sprites, though I'm trying to treat them a little more economically rather than just diving headfirst in. I have a big spreadsheet full of assets to keep track of what I need and while I do want to include more art than less, right now my goal is for each of the companion characters to have two poses and one outfit, plus little outerwear details like Pickles' apron which can be removed. This lets me focus on getting the most default aspects of the sprites nice and polished rather than scattering to try to hurry and do 12 sprites plus expressions plus alternate outfits and etc. etc. etc. GUI and othersI'm also working on the GUI as mentioned. This was a pretty funny bug I ran into last night. As it turned out, I had two conflicting alignment statements for the text box so when it was the narrator speaking, it would slowly edge its way off screen. I solved it before I went to bed but it really stumped me for a while haha. Right now this is how the regular GUI is looking. Right now my plans include making Fawn's side portrait a little larger, perhaps brightening up the quick menu buttons so they're easier to read. I have it designed right now with playing fullscreen in mind, and I want to include text scaling for accessibility, but the default selections should at least be comfortable for most people. So it's lots of fiddling with and adjusting things.
Other than that, I do have plans to start shopping around for a composer for the game's main theme. The money from Don't Toy With Me's sales and the Queer Games Bundle are what allows me to start considering this. Though a full sound track is still a long ways away. I might start a Patreon some time after the demo is complete in order to afford these other aspects of the game. If anyone is a patron for other VN devs or similarly narrative focused indie devs at the moment, feel free to let me know what kind of things you like to see on offer! It helps to know these kinds of things before I start solidifying any plans. That's all I've got for today! Thanks for reading as usual and I'll see you next Devlog Day! -Karma
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