Devlog - July 2021

A lot of stuff is going on for me game-dev wise, so I thought I'd post about the current status of my projects. 

Jester / King 

We had an audition for voice actors on Twitter and it was wild! Voice actors have been chosen for the seven main roles in Jester / King, and due to (thankfully!) many applicants, it took some time to listen to all the auditions. I listened to them as they arrived, and pretty much couldn't do anything else for those ten days. Notably for DH fans, Steven Kelly (the voice actor of Raze) will be voicing the main character, Madion.

Tweet with the selected actors: https://twitter.com/Rolling_Crown/status/1412102523612184578

Now I'm working with the voice actors, sending scripts with explanations for each line, and listening to the lines they deliver. I went for partial voice acting again because this work is really intensive for me. It takes me one workday to put 50-100 lines in the game. That includes listening to different takes multiple times, saving the chosen lines, and putting references to the lines in the code. It takes a lot of mental energy to make all those decisions and take care to name and reference everything correctly, so I have to take breaks when the mind starts going blank. :')

Thankfully, the text is finished, and I'll "leave it in the drawer" for a while before getting back to it to polish it a bit. Partial voice acting allows for this. =)

The new VN in the Demonheart world

Now this one doesn't officially have a name yet, but it will soon. I'm still trying to decide if it should have "Demonheart:" at the start! It's not a sequel, and it's not about Bright, but the Demonheart vibes will be strong. (BTW, the dark vibes, drama and humor should be present in all of my works. And a winged guy in chains is inevitable, I always squeeze one in!)

I'm working with a character artist and a background artist to get some graphics ready to inspire me to write, and so far, it's going great. I have a pile of notes and conversation ideas for the new game, and each time I get a new illustration, I write some more. The plan is to get the sprites done first, and some special character scenes after that. How many special illustrations there will be, I don't know yet, it depends on the artist's availability and how big this project will grow.

I started off with the idea to make three romance interests, but immediately found some problems with this. The way I imagined them, all of them were shady hotheads. It felt like I'll be writing the same character over and over. Then I tried to change it so that one of them is a nice guy - but I immediately knew he'd be my least favorite, and a chore to write. So I said - if you don't enjoy writing it, why do it? I definitely want to write romances for the two shady guys I have planned out, so I'll do that and see how it goes.

I can already see the reviews, "More unhealthy men to romance..." Well, yes. Don't take it seriously. The bad guys I'm writing are not real, and that's what makes them safe! Bad guys IRL are just bad, and you should stay away from them. The ones in my works actually do love you! This is fiction, we can have stuff that doesn't happen IRL.

So the plan, for now, is that there will be two romance paths and likely one more path with no romance, or like a mixed bag. I'd like to make the game branch out like some dating sims do, but you learn something new in each branch.

I'll have the next sprite ready to show soon - the main character!

Thank you to everyone who became a patron! With your support, I feel more confident that I can keep working on new games.