How The Heck Did We Get Here? | Devlog #1

How Did We Get Here?

Have you ever seen the movie Legally Blonde? There's a part of the film where one of Elle's professors is speaking about her, and he says, "It's like she woke up one morning and decided, 'I'm going to go to law school.' " That quote makes me laugh right now, because in many ways it reflects how this whole venture of writing, programming, and publishing a visual novel got started for me.

I've always been one of those ridiculously optimistic people who takes the whole 'new year, new project' thing very seriously. I like the idea of having a dream and a scheme. Something I'm planning long term and something I'm actively working toward short term. It was about ten days out from New Years Eve and I was thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in 2025.

My boyfriend (Jay) and I were planning some of the games we want to play or complete in the new year. And since the Steam Sale was on I picked up the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, and Steins;Gate. Those were all on our list, and we do better if we each have a copy of a visual novel if we're going to read it together.

I've tried to make a video game before. I spent several months in RPG Maker trying to make an RPG and really enjoyed that--until it came time to build the combat and it occurred to me that, "Hey, Kat? You suck at math. You know that, right?"

More importantly, I generally don't play MOST games for gameplay. I play them for interaction, character connection, and story. And then it hit me: what if I was trying to make the wrong kind of game? What if I tried making something different instead?

Then I started thinking of two things that have lead me to think about this before. One of those was the interactive YouTube stories made by Markiplier. We played those several months back and I remember commenting to Jay that it would be cool if someone made something like that with a focus on Paranormal Romance.

The other was a project Jay and I worked on when he was taking a course to learn Python. One of his assignments was to write out a short Choose Your Own Adventure story and use the coding he'd been practicing to connect it together. So I wrote the story, and he did the code, and we actually did make a little, baby-sized, choose your own adventure. But we got busy with other projects and I forgot about it.

Until that day, where I was thinking about what to do in 2025. And just like that, the idea to make a visual novel was born.

In Search of a Story...

As with any storytelling adventure, though, this just lead me to the next logical question: if I'm going to make a visual novel, what is it going to be about?

When I was a kid, my aunt Brenda used to babysit us, and she was really into Deep Space Nine. She got us all into it too, and since she bought the Star Trek magazines and ended up with tons of posters, she often used them as prizes during card and board game tournaments she would host for us when she babysat us. 

Among the games we would play was Clue, and eventually she took assets from a random copy of that purchased from a garage sale, clipped things out of magazines, and made her own custom board, cards, and tracking sheets. 

I borrowed inspiration from this when I started brainstorming my visual novel. As a solo dev, I knew I wanted to TRY and control the size of my scope. I figured starting with a well controlled location would be a good first step. So I decided that my story would take place in an interesting looking house, surrounded by a few landmarks and a town my characters could occasionally visit a few locales in. 

Of course, anyone who's looked at the characters page knows that my 'control the scope' logic got thrown out the window the moment I went to choose a heroine. Penny, Shayla, and Winter's designs all spoke to me in different ways, and once I realized how distinct their personalities were, and how interesting each of their stories was, there was no way I couldn't write all three. I didn't even realize just how much extra work it was at first. Til I sat down to start writing and realized that with three heroines and three love interests that I now need nine different paths.

Fortunately, that's going reasonably well now. But at first, you'd better believe it was overwhelming! As time has progressed and I've figured out more about what I'm actually doing with the game, I've found other ways to get this under control and to even use it to enhance the overall gameplay experience. So we'll see how it turns out in the end.

But I think that'll wrap it up for this very fiest devlog. It's getting late and I'm getting sleepy. There are so many things I want to talk to you guys about with regard to this project, but there's no need to try and put them here all at once. Have a great day!