i107760

DAY11.SCENE03

Belated merry Christmas and a happy new year, everyone. I had intended to post this scene around that time, but, well... travel, family gatherings, and all that came along with it just took up too much of my time.

In any case, regarding the scene, it's about the after-effects of her walking in on you. I tried to showcase the tension that is inside the boy's head, his worry about the future, and how to fix things. And also the guilt Julia feels and the resulting awkwardness between them....

DAY11.SCENE02

I had meant to post this last week, but I caught a stomach bug, so I spent the weekend feeling miserable instead. It's a shorter scene, at about 1000 words. 

It used to be a bit longer, but I've trimmed some dialogue during the editing that wasn't working as I had hoped. I plan to re-add (some) of that deleted dialogue when I have found a better way to word it.

A small update on the update is that I finished the writing for the third scene, and have been working on...

DAY11.SCENE01

A pretty long scene this time around, at about 2400 words. I'd written this scene a while back already, but just hadn't gotten around to editing it yet. Finally got to do it now, so I'm posting it. 

I have also finished the writing for the second scene, and I'm making good progress on the third scene. I estimate to have completed 45% of the overall work towards the next full update.

It starts out with another "point" to score towards the Sarah route/ending, it's a ...

DAY10.DIARY

This was a very tough scene for me to write. I wanted to show the distress she was in, the confusion, dependency, and jealousy she was feeling, and the realization slowly setting in that she might want something more from him.

Some of the text is a bit repetitive, I tried my best to avoid it, but it's pretty hard. The vocabulary needs to stay simple, and I want to show a stream of thought, and when someone is panicked and full of doubt, they tend to repeat themselves. Still, ...

Housesitting v0.10.0

The next update is here, finishing off the ninth day of the story, adding four new scenes. It took way too long, I know. I'm very sorry. I've tried to explain at the bottom of the post.

Anyway, for the update itself:

In this update, we have another exciting encounter between the boy and Sarah, and the rift between the boy and girl further develops, building up into a conflict. What will happen? Who knows...

There's also various engine improvements (some of which fix bugs whe...

DAY09.SCENE04

A scene with a bit of downtime again, with some normal conversation between the girl and boy. And her reaction to Sarah and the boy kissing.

I'm trying to convey the picture that their relationship is now growing back to normal a little in the boy's eyes, and he is truly falling for Sarah.

I also want to show that the girl is starting to feel uncomfortable with the relationship between Sarah and the boy, but she is trying to hide this, because she did encourage them to ...

DAY09.SCENE03

A lengthy one once again, and an exciting one too boot (hopefully). Writing the sex scenes is quite hard, actually, so I hope I did alright. I always try to do a slow build-up and believably build the excitement.

I hope the dialogue and actions are exciting here. I didn't want to go too far either, so I decided against oral sex but having her go a bit further than a handjob. I hope it strikes a nice balance.

There will be one more scene, then after some more ...

DAY09.SCENE02

This scene is of average length and starts with Sarah teasing the boy a little, then some downtime with a conversation with coach Mike.

Also made a point of the boy worrying about the girl's reaction to the suggestion of getting massages, where he discusses it with Mike. We get information that she used to have no problem with it in the past.

I suppose this scene isn't too interesting, but a bit of rest was needed between events of the previous day and the ne...

DAY09.SCENE01

I'm done with the next scene, finally. The supposedly "minor editing" that I had to do turned into major rewrites as I hated my writing when coming back to it. 

In general just have very little energy right now and not in the best mood, and it's bleeding into my writing (or perception of it), where I think it's all very bad. Can't keep putting it off forever so decided to just release it in this state even though I'm not really happy with it.

I've also been working on the nex...

Update on Update

Hello everyone, apologies for not managing to release the new update last week. March has had me way more busy than expected, and I just couldn't finish it on time.

The next two scenes are basically complete now, they just need some more minor editing. I'll release them individually as soon as possible after I write a little devblog for them, and then also release a "bugfix" type of update, v0.9.11, that includes those two new scenes as well as many bugs.

The thir...

Housesitting v0.9.8

Hello everyone, the update is here, adding four new scenes (1 diary, 4 regular) and rewriting some old scenes, including the conversation with the landlady.

In this update, some time is starting to get skipped between scenes, and the story is going to start moving a little faster. You've been introduced to the characters and their daily life, and if I keep going as I have been, it'll start to get boring.

Of course, I'll still show parts of their daily life, especially surrounding ...

DAY08.SCENE03 & DAY08.SCENE04

Once again, this was a big one (note: I decided to split this up into two scenes after writing this dev blog) with many things happening on two fronts—first, between the boy and Sarah, and secondly, between the boy and girl.

On the first front, I hope the scene with Sarah was exciting. I tried to show both the excitement of new love between two youths, the eagerness as well as the hesitation that they'll naturally feel.I don't want to move too fast with the sexual progression between ...

DAY08.SCENE02

This scene is a bit reminiscent of a past scene where he was cooking risotto as well—this is sort of intentional; I'm trying to show that he's cooking something he's confident about and something that is a staple in their diet. Plus, the girl has bragged about this specific dish, so I think story-wise, it makes sense for him to cook it.

In the scene, Sarah starts to tease him, and I hope I wrote this well. I'm trying to showcase the differences in personalities and also slowly build u...

Housesitting v0.9.3

NOTE: This is not the full update that I was planning, and only adds for new scenes: "DAY07.DIARY" and "DAY08.SCENE01" (the scenes already posted individually, with no changes). So don't expect much new content in this one! I'm releasing this for new readers because it touches quite a bit of old writing.

This update was released due to quite major rewrites to "DAY01" and part of "DAY02", notably conversation with the coach. I wanted to release this already before the re...

DAY08.SCENE01

A bit of a shorter scene with a bit of downtime. Nothing much happens here, except for the boy and girl talking about the night before a little. Since there was a bit of downtime, I decided to also add in the meeting with the nutritionist.

It's not important to the story, but, at the same time, it was mentioned in a prior update, so I believe mentioning it now is good for the sake of continuation/immersion. 

It's pretty dialogue-heavy. I hope its writing is passable and that ...

DAY07.DIARY

This is the diary scene that covers the seventh day. It focuses on the girl's emotions and her struggle with them. I hope to showcase a so far unnoticed/recognized gradual shift in her thoughts regarding the relationship between her and the boy.

I'm not entirely happy with the scene. I will keep tweaking it every now and then until the next update is released (and possibly, after that, since I find these diary entries tough to write).

As for the plans for the next two updates, I h...

Housesitting v0.9.0

Hello everyone, I am back, and the update is here, and the sixth day is now complete.

I've been totally swamped and mentally exhausted, and I have not touched the project for the past few months. Nor have I logged into any of my accounts. I didn't have the energy to play any games, much less for writing a story or creating one. 

Luckily, I have had the past week off, and I had the urge to write—so I finished the update in the past week (there was just a single sc...

DAY06.SCENE05

Hey everyone, I hope you had a nice time this summer, and are doing well. I had meant to post this scene before I went on my holidays, but more on that later. 

My holidays were a bit longer than I had planned, family asked me if I wanted to stay a while longer, and I had no real reason to decline since I didn't have any engagements at home.

In this scene, the boy tells the girl about the date. I was nearly finished with this scene a while ago, before my holidays, b...

DAY06.SCENE04 & Explanation For Hiatus

Hey guys, it's been a while. I'm still alive and just finished writing the next scene. If you want to read a bit about what happened, I'll put it at the bottom.   

In this scene, the boy comes home, and I'm trying to show a 'rift' growing between the boy and the girl, where she doesn't seem to be priority #1 anymore for him.  

I played around with having her walk in on him, but while hot/exciting, it wouldn't fit with the overall plan I have for the story...

Update on Update

As people have likely noticed, and as said in other development blogs, I've not been very productive when it comes to the game due to my normal life. 

Well, stress has caught up with me, and I'm dealing with major burnout and depression issues. I'm taking steps to hopefully remedy this in March, which will give me more free time.

However, I've discussed with my therapist, and it's important I really do take it easy. I write the game as a hobby, so I will work on it...

Housesitting v0.8.4

The update is finally here, adding four new scenes, adding more than 7500 words. I hope it was worth the wait. To all the patrons that stuck around despite that, I thank you a lot! And for those who didn't, I hope you will press the "follow" button, so you can keep following the story, I don't do it for the money as said before.

This update is mainly about the date with Sarah, and Sarah in general. We get a glimpse of her family, I hope to show some characteristics of the mot...

DAY06.SCENE03

Hey everyone, just finished writing the final scene of the next update. Plan is to release it this Friday, if I manage to finish all the revising and editing by then.

In this scene we see the rest of the date play out. Things have relaxed a little, and seem to be going right, they're both enjoying themselves. I'm not 100% sure of the way this scene is written, as expected, there's a lot of dialogue. 

I tried to write some interesting snippets to showcase that they ...

DAY06.SCENE02

The next scene is done. It kept growing and growing, so instead of ending the update with this scene, I have decided to make another scene before releasing the update. I've already written about 800 words for the next scene, and I hope to have some free time again soon to keep working on it.

In this scene we meet Sarah's parents, and the date begins. I tried to accurately capture the "first date nerves",  in their dialogue and the way they act. It's been a while since I ...

DAY06.SCENE01 & A Merry Christmas

Hello everyone, merry Christmas! I hope you all will have a nice time, despite Corona. Personally, I'm quite sad about being unable to celebrate with my (extended) family, celebrating it at home is a little lonely. Still, I'm really glad to have a week off, and I have used this week to work on the game.

Plan was to release the update itself this week initially, but I didn't like what I had written, which is also why I had not released it as an individual scene so far. 

In my ...

DAY05.DIARY

Hey guys, sorry for not posting this during the weekend after I released v0.8.0 like I had intended to. Basically, what happened is that I believed to be able to finish writing it, and I did. But it was way too long, and I wasn't happy with it. Plus I wanted to incorporate some more of her thoughts into it.

So I ended up wanting to rewrite it, but didn't manage to do it until today, due to a lack of time and a lack of motivation too, I guess. In any case, I rewrote it again today and am...

Housesitting v0.8.0

It's here, finally. The fourth day is now complete, which finishes the "prologue" to the game. I found it a hard day to write; there wasn't too much happening, it was mostly preparatory work for new content, and it featured much dialogue, which is not my strong suit. Most of the time spent on this update was dedicated to the conversation with the landlady, which admittedly is still far from perfect, but for now, it's the best thing I could come up with. 

It was pretty hard to wrap ...

Update on Update

TLDR: Hello everyone, was hoping to release v0.8.0 tomorrow, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to make it. It will be released next week Friday.

The first two weeks after v0.7.7 I was very busy, which I knew about beforehand which is why I released v0.7.7 at the time despite it not being 100% ready. I was hoping to finish everything by this Friday, but I wasn't able to. Mostly because I was more exhausted than I expected, and the fact that I really suck at writing d...

Housesitting v0.7.7

It's here. It's not complete; I had some trouble writing the landlady dialogue and had more work than I expected. Still, I hope you'll enjoy it, and we are nearly done with the fourth day now. 

I'm not entirely happy with the new scenes, and the fourth day in general, so for those of you who are patient or only do a play-through every so often, I'd recommend waiting for v0.8.0.

Changelog:

- fixing loads of typos and errors

- finish "DAY04.SCENE03"

- add "DAY...

My development process

I thought I'd write a little about my development process for the people that are interested in knowing how I write the story, and how long it takes me to write a scene. I'll talk about the general process, and give specific examples for one scene (DAY04.SCENE04).

The general process for writing a day, starts with me writing an outline for the day. For the fourth day, since the PC had made a schedule for the ...

DAY04.SCENE04

Just finished writing another scene. It's kind of reminiscent of an earlier scene, which was troublesome for me. I tried to abbreviate the homework and cooking scene, to have it stay interesting enough to read.

I'm not entirely happy with it yet, and expect to do some more revising on it, maybe expanding on the boy's thoughts a little. The idea is for his sexual desire to be increasing, while not really having an outlet for it.

I'm also trying to show the strained relationship bet...