Progress Report - January

I hope the start of 2022 has been treating everyone well. Let's dive right into this because I'm sure it's going to be long. 

The experiment with RPG Maker is over. I will not be continuing to develop the game with that engine moving forward.

Simply put, I wasn't enjoying using the program and just trying to force myself to keep going. It's kind of boring to work with for me and I kept telling myself it will get better soon and trying to stay hype but no dice. I'm too much of a writer, not enough of a game developer it seems haha It sucks to lose 5 months worth of work but it will be right move in the long run.

I'll be continuing the same game idea and I've already begun reformatting the ideas into a new direction. For the sake of not taking any longer than needed by playing game engine Russian roulette, I'll be working on it in Ren'py in the VN format again.

My hope is to steer it away from it being too "booky" and linear though. A lot of what I had developed for this idea is in telling a bunch of different stories through different quests and plot lines. You know, the standard rpg shitck. I don't want to lose that. 

Ren'py is pretty solid with adventure game formats so it shouldn't be too hard to continue the game's progress into what I envisioned, just minus the player control. Which is a shame because I wanted to see if I could get a turn based pike and shoot battle system into the game. Might not fit in moving forward.

A couple positives to take away from this though is that: 1) I'll have to find some artists so there'll be custom art for the game instead of the generic RPG Maker art (I can post previews much easier. And 2) It's probably smart to return to a couple things from My Catgirl Maid to create an overall series identity better. 

Building around the VN format and some ecchi artwork/jokes will keep the series consistent feeling from game to game as oppose to me just pissing into the wind using a different engines depending on the game and pretending like I don't want to make perverted jokes for the sake of a wider audience. I should probably have learned this lesson by now from previous mistakes of my past but... Can't be afraid to try and fail sometimes.

So...yeah... That's the plan and if I can be serious for a second. I'm not too happy with how this all played out. It's not the best way to start the new year, but it's been quite frustrating for some time. 

I'm salvaging what I can so it doesn't feel like the 5 months was a total waste and at least I'm happy to be working on the story aspect of the game again. The last week has already felt a little bit better with the project than the past few months. 

So, new goal:

February is a short month so a good chance to change direction and race to get this story moving forward again. March will be the 1 year anniversary of My Catgirl Maid's release. Let's do it proud by getting the next game in the right direction.

At the end of the day, it's all we can do. I still have a story to tell and you guys are interested to see what these catgirls are up too. Let's get back to having fun with this again.

Thank you for reading and I'll keep you informed with the progress at the end of February.

Artie outski!