The Nostalgia Update

The Nostalgia Update:  I thought I would take a trip down memory lane. Figured people might find how YummyTiger Gaming came to fruition interesting. 

Image – Aylia 1.0 - http://i.imgur.com/j8qHUKU.jpg 

July 2013: Aylia is born. I picked up RPG Maker in April/May 2013, and thought I would try my hand at building an RPG. As I tend to have grandiose ideas, I knew it would not be a simple endeavor, but I thought RPG Maker could help me make this dream a reality. At this point, I’d barely gotten any exposure to the RPG Maker hentai scene, and the only hentai games I’d played were the old Jast USA games, Himeya-soft games, and a smattering of Japanese games. I started sketching ideas and drew my first iteration of Aylia. This was supposed to be a menu picture if you took off her clothes. 

Image – Bogwort 1.0 - http://i.imgur.com/mM4Q2Ih.jpg 

January 2014 – Bogwort is born. I made little to no progress in the first 6 months. It was all very overwhelming, and I quickly learned RPG Maker was not as easy to use as people claimed. It took real work to learn the system, and some actual programming chops if you wanted to do anything custom (which I did). So, as I slowly learned the system, I kept playing around with ideas. I had discovered Violated Heroine in late 2013, and knew that my vision was possible if I would just buckle down. My big idea at this point was to have a comical companion who would lead Aylia in to compromising situations. I liked the idea, and I had read a story on Literotica that really sold me on the horny goblin idea. Hence, Bogwort was born! 

June 2014: Believe it or not, I did not input a single piece of Aylia’s Story into RPG Maker until almost a year after the idea was born. Instead, I messed around with little tutorial games, and picked apart already created games online. I wanted to make sure I at least had a foundation to build from before I started my “baby.” The short introduction video was the first thing I tried to input into Aylia’s Story, and quickly learned that RPG Maker sucked for videos. In fact, it took me almost 3 weeks to get a decent convertor to take my .swf video to .ogv, and in the process it lost most of the detail. I knew that animated videos would not be part of my game at this point. So… back to the drawing board. 

Image – Early Game Screen - http://i.imgur.com/ADeE3Yh.jpg 

July 2014 – Once I started building the game, the development picked up real steam. Instead of just fiddling with RPG Maker once every two weeks or so, I began to mess with Aylia’s Story almost daily. I was excited as things started to take shape, and by the end of July 2014, I had the skeleton of a prologue in place. This version is a far cry from what you’ve played, but I’d like to think it already had some of the charm. 

Image – Shades of Aylia - http://i.imgur.com/14G9xyw.jpg 

August 2014 – It was the end of August before anyone besides myself actually played Aylia’s Story. In August, I decided it was time to get a little feedback, and released the game to a small online community. The reception was overwhelmingly positive, and that spurred development significantly. My foolish endeavor seemed more and more realistic! Those early testers really helped guide the game into something so much more. Instead of a single standing portrait, I started to create different facial expressions for Aylia. I shifted away from the more monster-like appearance of Bogwort, as I wanted him to be somewhat humanesque in appearance—I thought it fit his comical character better. This was also when munchkins were born, because the idea of little gremlin like creatures taking advantage of Aylia really got me excited! My art improved so much between August and October 2014, as for the first time in my life, I was drawing almost every day. It was awesome! 

Image – Aylia Evolves - http://i.imgur.com/UrsdxBw.png & http://i.imgur.com/F0bQZ7Y.png 

October 2014 – The first time I thought I had “finalized” the prologue, haha! By this point, I had revamped all my earlier artwork in order to bring Aylia up to my new standards. The difference was incredible, in my opinion. I was so much happier with the new versions. All the mapping was finished now, the prologue was playable to completion, and I only had a few minor additions to make (a couple facesets, Triste’s sprite, etc.). At this point, I knew that short of some life-altering incident, Aylia’s Story would be completed. I still firmly believe that today. This was also the version where I decided to try my hand at “chat events” and implemented the first one at the end of the prologue. Holy crap, did I underestimate what a bitch those were going to be to create. In fact, Chapter 1 does not include any new “chat events,” but I have not given up on the idea. The final version will probably include them again. I do have some nifty ideas I want to implement as Bogwort and Aylia’s relationship improves. 

Image – Early Battle Mock-up - http://i.imgur.com/J1rfF25.jpg 

December 2014 – I consider November and December a bit of lost time. I commissioned some work on a battle system, and when the person who accepted the commission disappeared early December, I realized I might be in trouble. I knew I wanted to have a custom battle system, at the standard system was just not fun enough in my mind. I wanted more interactivity, and I wanted Bogwort to play a unique role. My original intention was to release the demo publicly when chapter 1 was complete, but I threw that out the window in hopes that someone with programming chops would play the demo, love it, and offer to help. Cue Balduindrake! 

Image – Aylia stabs her first enemy… - http://i.imgur.com/l900Uz4.png 

January 2015 – As January passed, Aylia’s Story made significant progress, for the first time since October. Thanks to the generous help from Balduindrake, my vision of the battle system became a reality. In the beginning of February, I once again declared the prologue "finalized,” but this time it had battles! Woohoo! I raced to tell my growing number of Patreons that the game was moving along and February was going to be a great month! Me being me (see my Patreon page discussion of optimism), I thought I would release chapter 1 and Hunter’s Quest in February. Yea… 

Image – Chapter 1 - http://i.imgur.com/FE8pA0G.jpg 

February 2015 – And then February came and went. Between birthday drinking, a family emergency, and my full time job becoming hectic, progress on the game slowed down. By the end of February, I’d gotten things back on track, and was glad I set my Patreon up to charge per update. While I felt a bit guilty for not getting more content out to you guys, I knew that as long as I had not taken any money, a missed release date was not the end of the world. Plus, in my defense, I warned you all of my optimism from the get-go, haha! 

March 2015 – And that brings us to today, a year and a half later, my little idea has grown into a playable game! Deep down, I know that I should have grown tired of playing through the beginning of Aylia’s Story by now, but somehow, I haven’t. I simply love it. Yes, it has flaws, and is sometimes too corny, but it truly is my vision brought to life! The best part is, I can feel you guys’ excitement as well, and that makes this whole journey so much better. March has been an amazing month, and I’ve found time to work on the game almost daily… well almost—Damn you Skyrim!  

I wanted to share this story with you all, as you guys are the people who will make Aylia’s Story a reality going forward. It is no longer my dream, and that is just fine. The ideas I’ve gotten from you guys and the polls we ran in January were flat out FUN. They were gasoline to my creative fires. 

I want to finish this long winded story with a simple message to all you guys: 

THANK YOU!