New Project Announcement

This will be a much bigger project than the last and will serve as game #2 in what will, hopefully, be a long running series spanning the history of the kingdom of Katulinia. I had posted a little about it in another post but this will be the big one with all the info.

It will be called "It's All Fun and Games On The Open Road" or "Open Road" for short. It will be a VN game with some adventure game elements too it, but mostly just be following the stories of the cast.

Premise 

On his 18th birthday, Tony has signed up with a caravan to begin his life travelling the roads of Katulinia.

Shortly after leaving his small town, the caravan comes under attack by a large bandit force. Tony is forced to defend the wagons while the caravan leader tries to rally his guards. 

When the dust settles, Tony, Edmund, a grizzled mercenary, and Eleanor, a knight who had stumble by the fight, are the only survivors. They limp into Katulinia with the remaining supplies and part ways.

Unsure what to do next, Tony tries to continue the caravan company but the massive debt the previous owner left means that Tony is out of luck. That is until Eleanor returns and agrees to pay off the debt in return for becoming a partner in the caravan.

With no other options, Tony agrees but the questions remain: why is this knight interested in Tony? Will the two inexperienced owners be able to survive the business world? Hell, can they survive making it to the next town in this tough world?

Meh. We'll see. It's all fun and games on the open road after all. Anything can happen.

Setting

175 years before the events of "My Catgirl Maid Thinks She Runs the Place" in the Kingdom of Katulinia (Cynthia's home).

Genres

Comedy, Adventure, Action, Historical Fantasy, Maybe a little Drama

Gameplay

As you can expect from a visual novel, reading is the name of the game. It's going to be broken down into chapters but I'm going to set it up so you can choose which chapter you want to read next as you explore all the various sub plots and character arcs as the main story unfolds.

The order of events and which events you follow will be up to you. You'll also be able to choose to recruit additional people into the caravan or not though you can expect to not be able to do some chapters without additional people.

So, it short: hub based, chapter selection, adventure game format. In Katulinia? Here's the chapters you can do. Want to go to another city? Select it from the list. Go to that hub. New chapters there. Want to talk to a companion? Go to the Camp Hub and hang out there.

Make sense?

Questions

Choices Matter?

I'm not going to pretend they will and neither should you. A big thing I want to do as I go further into the past with this world is focus on the hero's stories and how they shaped the history of the people. As such, my vision for the main character's require them to follow a stable, consistent path in their personality and decision making. Which isn't something you can do by assigning choices to the player. 

If there is a way to make some scenes more interesting without it affecting the main character's personality than I will explore it but you still shouldn't expect much. I'll be running multiple story lines at the same time in this game. Alternate realities on top of that will just make it too hard for me to plan and create scenes.

Romance the Companions?

No. There's not going to be much romance at all as far as I can tell. I want to focus on other things. Just call it a standard harem anime to simplify it if you want haha

Adult Content?

No. I'm still semi-retired/on break/non-commited to my future on that. Besides, this game is going to have a lot of art assets and it's going to be nice to not have 80% of my budget tied up in a couple of CG scenes. A couple extra character and backgrounds sound way nicer.

Length of Story?

Who the fuck knows? haha Long. I have a lot of ideas already and won't be worried about how long a chapter is word count wise. I'm just going to put these characters through a lot and let everyone just enjoy the ride.

I think that's it. If I'm forgetting anything I'll add it. Feel free to ask about anything if it is unclear too.