Behind The Scenes: Inspiration

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. - Stephen King

I find this to be true. And, while making a visual novel, I try to put it into practice. The visual novel is a specific genre and there are a lot of tools and tricks to learn and use. 

Having multiple paths is both a challenge and a joy. You didn't like the ending? It's cool! Try one of the other five!

Being able to control the visuals while writing the story feels like being a movie director that is able to use his actor's improvisation to make a scene funnier or use a mistake and incorporate it into the story in an unplanned way.

I've read quite a few visual novels and do my best to continue to do so. Even though I'm usually telling myself "why are you spending half an hour on this? You could be working on the game", I often times find something worth stealing/borrowing/tweaking/improving in each game.

Plus, and I think I've mentioned this before, I have zero experience in coding. (Unless you count learning HTML when I was eleven to make the I Hate Barney Association website to warn people of the evil message that the big purple dinosaur was secretly spreading? No?)

So if you see something new, like a better fade to black transition or the text becoming more readable or the incorporation of the characters breathing and blinking, chances are I looked up the code of some other game and copied it.

I made a list of some of the games I've played and put it up on Discord a month or two ago, but I thought I'd share it here.

Some of you have already played quite a few of these games, but I know there are also a lot of you that are new to the genre.

Patreon doesn't advertise any adult content, nor is there really a definitive list of what games are "good". There are several forums where people share their own lists, and rating systems on sites like f95zone and others that give a basic idea on what to check out vs. what to avoid, but I figured I would share my own list for you guys.

Especially if you're hurting for another update and need something to distract you from the fact that Halloween is going to be a bit of a letdown this year, here is my list of games that I enjoyed.

Most of the games aren't exactly like Hypnosis or Endowed, and they don't all share the same fetishes, style or tone. They are simply games that I would recommend.

Also, if you aren't already on the Expanding Universe Discord, there is an entire channel called Game Recommendations for people to share their favorites with the class.

Side note...

I appreciate all the feedback from the last behind the scenes post about the backstory of Hypnosis. As requested, I began writing the backstory for Endowed, but it got surprisingly in depth. 

When it reached about four times the length of the previous post, I decided to put it aside so I can take a step back from it and edit it down. I'll probably post it next week, but be warned. It's long. And personal. But hopefully not boring.

On a different note...

Not exactly related, but lately I've been happy to see more than a few female patrons.

The fact that Hypnosis has a male protagonist always made me assume it mostly attracted a male audience, but having female supporters makes me feel like maybe my writing isn't completely sexist, chauvinistic and all around shitty to women. And that makes me happy.

I assume some of the male fantasy makes you roll your eyes at times. I have enjoyed quite a few stories and games with female protagonists, but I feel like you can usually tell when they were written by a dude.

So, I wanted to send a shout out.

Thanks for the support, ladies! 

I'm very happy to have you onboard and I appreciate you!

And, as always, thanks everyone.