The Direction of Runicca

Hey guys!

So! with 69 votes in, 94% saying yes, and 6% saying no at the current state of Runicca's Episode 1, I think I can safely assume that 90% of you want to see it come to life even more. Thanks for answering the poll!

Now in its current state, it's like I threw out Ramen no Oujisama with only the prologue/intro in there without any routes! I think that's the mistake or rather, the limitation of putting this out there right now. The intro also probably gave the impression that Runicca is trying to be a serious anime-turned-into-a-game kind of thing that will just have naughty bits sprinkled in it "just because". I've had some discussion with you guys about this, and at least with this I've had some time to think about its general direction.

There are two aspects to Runicca's story - the main one, and the side stories. In this game, unlike our other ones, the side stories will be developed along side the main story. But I think we'll put more focus on the side stories this time around. We can build the world and other characters and naughty partners in through this approach. The main story - as told in Episode 1 - is there to provide backbone to Runicca, in case nothing else, we at least have a story to work with. What I have in mind right now is something like this:

EP1 --> (EP1a) --> (EP1b) --> (EP1c) -->  (EP1d) -->   (EP1e...) -->  EP2 -->  (EP2a) --> ... 

The ones in parenthesis are the side stories, the day-to-day life of the MC. The side stories can happen after EP1, or in parallel to a concurrent running side story. I think key choices in the game are going to placed here, even though they're side stories.

For now, I'd like to take a shot at EP1's side stories, and give these monster/non-human characters some form. They'll remain humanoid with maybe modified or added appendages (ex: tentacles). My target style for these may be slightly more cartoony (think of Merryweather's Zone-tan) if needed, but I'll try to keep it working with our style. There are things I'm still uncertain about (ex: slime girls being translucent for one thing, tentacle movements), and this is why I may need to draw out the girls first, see if you like 'em, and then let's work on what kind of side story we can have!

MC's relationship with the Elven girl

Because we're going to have naughty scenes here and there with (hopefully) a lot of other characters, the relationship of the MC and the elven girl isn't fixed... Yet. The MC likes his freedom, and the Elven girl is there with him for other reasons (and also for the sexy stuff because she triggers his innate power and she needs him for that). But because she caused him to awaken this certain power, he's turned into something like a girl magnet - (human or otherwise) that he's totally unaware of.

MC's romantic relationships

I'm still not sure about this yet, but if we're going to go about side stories this way, this will be sprinkled about in the course of the game. I think it could be something like this running in parallel or in between the side stories (characters put in there are just samples):

EP1 --> EP1-lotte --> EP1-elvengirl --> EP2 --> EP2 --> EP2-goblingirl --> EP3 --> EP3-traderwoman --> etc...

Key decisions may be placed in these romance side episodes. These will probably need to be unlocked through other decision choices made before hand.

All right, I think that's it for now! I hope I'm getting closer to a clearer picture of what Runicca is, and something hopefully y'all will like. Next poll, let's take a look at the kind of girls and encounters to these side stories!