Q&A: The Answers

Hello! Here are the answers to your questions. Thank you so much for participating if you did, and if you didn't I hope you'll still take something interesting away from my replies! Regular dev logs will begin next weekend, presumably on Sundays, but things may vary as this is obviously all quite new still so it may take a little time to find a good routine. We will see!

(This is quite a long post. It's in a little bit of an order, I tried to group similar questions as I went through answering, so it's not in alphabetical or chronological order, and I've separated out multiple questions from the same people too.)

Justaphase asked:

I know that we are a long way off but do you have any idea yet as to how many chapters we can expect? 

Yes. Kind of. It's complicated, really. I've always said that there are 11 chapters to the game. But this isn't exactly true. There are technically 11 'chapters' and 11 updates, but these aren't the same thing. I can't really explain further without spoiling stuff. But I guess the main answer is that there's going to be 11 updates to the game. So right now we're 3/11. It's also worth noting that they're not all going to be consistent in length. Some might be considerably longer or shorter than what you've seen so far. More on this in the next question!

Glowing Radio asked:

Just curious as to how the game is being made BTS. Do you have a general idea on how all the chapters of the game is going is go?

Yes! I know exactly how every single chapter is going to start and end. This was pretty key for me when planning the game. I have a few canonical moments in the story that are the key story beats, and a lot of the later content is intrinsically tied to the chapter names as well. And so naturally I then planned around the most impactful way the later chapters could end and start. My favorite is the end of chapter 7 into chapter 8! There is still a little room for movement here and there, naturally if I get a better idea for something I'll act on it. But the main throughline of the game is pretty set in stone, and the rest of the game has been built around it.

Zeugll asked:

Love the game so far, have you given any thought to adding some animations - even just for the big scenes? Your renders are great but I feel animations really add to the quality. Would definitely elevate the experience.

Animations and music are two things I'd be very keen to add at some point, as they generally improve the overall quality and feel of AVNs. But only if it's to a high standard. Bad animations, bad music, can sometimes almost ruin an AVN too. So realistically they're not going to be added any time soon, because I wouldn't be able to do them to a good enough standard. It would likely require this becoming a full time endeavour, which is quite far away, if it were to happen at all. Not that I'm pressuring you or anyone to support any further, I'm incredibly grateful for where I'm at, but right now I don't have the time to learn to make them to a high enough standard (then also pose them and render them out for each scene) and I couldn't justify an expense outsourcing the work in any way. So it's definitely something I want to add, it's just right now it's not really a possibility without massively increasing what are already pretty long times for updates. Pretty much as things stand I'd rather get updates out quicker without animations. But I'd love to be able to include them at some point, naturally.

Zane asked:

Who's your favorite character? As in the one you enjoy creating content for the most. And why is that character your favorite?

This is a difficult question to answer. As you could probably have guessed. I think I'd be lying to myself if I said anything other than Mia was my favorite character. From an aesthetic perspective she's my favorite (Ava is close), and as a charcater her dynamic with the MC is fun to write (Tegan is close here too). Imogen is fairly high up on both of those metrics as well, to be fair. But I'd say going into making a scene, I'm more excited I suppose when it's a Mia or Imogen scene. But that's also probably because those two (and Ellie) have the most intricate stories, so threading the foreshadowing of future stuff throughout the conversations is both fun and satisfying to do. (and if by 'creating content' you meant 'content' content, it's Mia or Tegan, probably. though the Lucy gym scene was fun as well.)

Meiri asked:

I suppose this question is very specific and will depend on the girl, but let's say initially in these first chapters you refuse a particular LI – does this mean her route is closed? Or will we have a chance later on? I am thinking of Imogen in particular, but I think it's applicable to the other girls.

Bit of a cop out answer, but it depends on the girl. For instance in ch3 you get the chance if you're a study partner with Tegan but not fucking her to ask her on a date, which is another potential way onto her path. So there will be a few extra opportunities to jump onto a path at a later date, but in most cases you'll need to have at least shown interest beforehand (i.e. if you've not picked Tegan as your geography partner I don't believe there's going to be a way onto her path). I didn't want this to happen too much really, it's a little 'Alex's Pen' of me to near enough gate off a path behind a single choice but obviously there's only so much choice and branching it's reasonable to do. On Imogen in particular, there will be a later jumping on point if you've not pursued her so far. But that won't be the case for all of the girls, some you'll need to be pretty actively pursuing the whole time otherwise you'll miss out.

Muhammad Tayyab asked:

How long till it take so we only get to only one girls like exclusive?

Similar to above, it's depends on the girl. But the earliest exclusivity is coming in chapter 5. But most girls won't have exclusivity until later in the game, and there's going to be a few points where it could start. You will be given a choice for it.

CommanderCrayton asked:

Hi, I get that in most cases it makes sense that a side girl won't have an "ending" with MC. But referring to Melody, she strikes me as the kind of girl who would want a possible serious relationship. If not spoilerish, could you please explain your reasoning about that? Thanks!

I'll be honest, I don't really have a good answer to this one, that isn't too spoilery. But you could probably say the same about a few other side girls as we go, that it would make sense for them to want to establish a relationship with the MC. With Melody's scene in ch3 being one of the more naturally romantic, for lack of a better description, in the game so far, it does kind of lend itself to the beginnings of a serious relationship. They're not rushing in to things, but there's clearly a mutual attraction there. But I think part of it might be that I wanted to illustrate some times that things don't always follow a natural progression. I've mentioned before that I really enjoy subveritng expectations. Now, this isn't to say that Melody in particular is going to veer wildly off course or anything, but I wanted to make some of the side girls a little more intimate than, say, Mariah was as a quick little scene. So some side girls, like Melody, will probably feel a little more like they could/should have been main girls. And without telling you too much, I can't really justify my reasoning for them not being, to be honest. I hope this at least partially makes sense. I'm sorry if not!

Justaphase also asked:

Aside from the MC, which of the characters and their stories that you've written and planned so far is your personal favourite?

My favorite character arc in the game is a character you've not been properly introduced to yet. And telling you my second favorite would probably spoil a surprise in their story that you're not expecting, because if I told you they were my second favorite character arc you'd realize they're a more complicated character than they've been presented so far. So, uh, sorry about that. At least you know the best is still to come? If you want a better answer, two of my favorites, based off of my future plans, are Imogen and Ellie. I think they are two of the stories with more depth than the others (that aren't also heavily tied to the MC's story) so they're the two I'm most excited for, I would say.

Zane also asked:

I remember you mentioned previously that you have the whole history of the game already planned? If you could change something at this point, what would it be?

Tough one. Honestly, the one thing I would change is making a different game first to have given more time to both learn and plan. Do something smaller to get better at everything, then jump into a bigger story. But that notwithstanding, there's not a whole lot I'd change. I think anything that I would change would just be in service of making the first chapter better. Beacuse there's a lot more foreshadowing etc. in chapters 2 and 3, and generally by the end of chapter 2 I had things locked down more, from both a visual and story perspective. The other thing I would possibly change is making more of the paths linked. A lot of them are fairly standalone, so if you're not on a girl's path she'll not appear as much throughout the story generally. I think that would've been better for worldbuilding purposes.

Meiri also asked:

Will characters from our past, like Kasp, appear in some form? And is a timeskip planned at some point to progress the studies, or will everything in this story happen in the first year?

Hmm. How much do I say? Will characters from the past appear? Yes. Is a timeskip planned? Yes. But not in the way you might expect. Everything in the story will happen in the first year, that I can confirm. There will be smaller timeskips here and there, generally represented by letter writing as in chapter 3, because I know exactly when in the year certain events need to take place. For instance, the ending of chapter 5 is on a specific date. And the whole of chapter 4 proper is on a specific date. So I've got to skip over a week or two here and there. But hopefully it'll feel fairly natural. This was one of the tricky things to balance, because realistically skipping over a week in your first year of college could mean missing out on a whole load of things happening. So there's  going to be a little assuming you'll have to do in some instances of what's transpired in the days skipped over, and just assume they've been fairly normal unless otherwise noted. Like, went to classes, hung out with the frat guys, did some studying, nothing too noteworthy. That sort of thing.

Glowing Radio also asked:

Also, curious as to how you envision the game ending to be. Will there be multiple endings per LI? Or will each LI each get one ending etc.

I've mentioned before somewhere that the ending of the game is already written. As in, the final 8 lines of dialogue. That's the ending no matter what path you're on. But the LIs will have their own variants of the ending I guess. But essentially there is one ending to the game, with 9 variants. The choices you make won't impact the ending itself. It'll just change your journey to getting there. There will be individual endings to each girl's path, I suppose, where their character arcs come to an end. But the actual definitive end of the game is the basically the same.

Thank you for reading! If you submitted a question, I sure hope I answered it in a satisfactory way! And once again thank you all so much for your support, it's very much appreciated and incredibly gratifying to know that so many of you are interested in this little project I've got.

Y'all are the best.