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[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

For the Yellow one, i guess it's the posture that need some tweaking, at the moment he's having a heroic posture a la superman, which makes him appear confident (shoulders posture). was thinking about the earbrows too but i've seen that on shy characters too (carton & anime) so it kind of suits.

For the zombie, i think that the choice of Green color (the jacket) makes it more difficult to work on the zombie skin side which tends to go to green. and his posture, maybe by adding some disarticulation. He looks too stiff and clean to be a zombie. (even the zombie in warm bodies is more convincing). He either should look more damaged or more sick looking.

Red & Blue , seems like you have more ease with female drawing, they seem more solid on the design.

[BeautifulGlitch]

BAKKUSA: Well, we can change the posture or rethink which traits he will have, personality-wise.
We deliberately decided not go too far on colored skin on playable chars. We prefered that the clothing conveyed the color. It had to be all skin-colored or clothing-colored. And we decided to go with clothing-colored.
And, well, RED has given us a lot of headaches. Now I will share another take on her.
The zombie issue is real. We have to decided a middleground between a classic zombie character and an appealing+attractive monster "a la Twilight".

Third take on RED char (w/ color). Still not convinced. Next one is a lot closer to what we think it will be the final design. This one was still pretty bland.


Soon: icons+chars with lines.

[Jasmine]

Really dig the current poses for Red. I also wasn't too keen on the odd stances. I think the current postures are more... form-fitting, but what kills it for me is the facial expression. One thing I dug about the original Red form was the sassiness in her facial features. The simple check smile erased a lot of that personality. Not sure if that was added since it is a work in progress. If so, take it with a grain of salt.

I think the zombie still needs a bit more work to be convincing. It could be that when I think of a zombie I associate them with dilapidating skin or exposed flesh. I tried searching up a few zombie pictures. Perhaps have areas exposed away from the face? Show his flesh rotting on the side of his head?

Zombie Guy 1

Zombie Guy 2

I tried to find references of the average attractive male zombie.

Also, want to say that I seriously dig that fact that you guys are so open to criticism! I've really enjoyed viewing the suggestive comments in this thread.

[Rosstin]

This looks super cool! I'm into it!

[TammiDev]

TAMMIDEV: tonight or tomorrow we will probably upload the versions with lines. First we want to solve some issues, like the "zombification" one. What do you think about that?
What you say about the sketches is tricky. It's the classic reason why sometimes we like the sketches more than final version. Since they're on pencil, there are certain imperfections that seem really cool (like differences on thickness). But on a final version, with ink and color, it tends to look simply bad ):
You need some simmetry and regularity to keep it simple and appealing.
As said before, to Bakkusa, now is the time to share with us what do you think about playable character personalities. Since their traits won't have an impact on narrative, we can adapt a lot more to what you think (since there's less planned on that). So maybe you can help us to figure out these small traits on them that will be reflected on the "event illustrations", you know?

I totally agree on BLUE being kinda sweety. We're now between two designs. You will see that the other one fits even better with that definition of yours.

RED is giving us some headaches. But it seems we're finally getting there. We're going with stuff we did on the sketches. An expression that feels a bit more hot-headed and cocky.

KEEPER: Thanks, mate! (:

Ah yes, I think you are right about the lines.  It's probably my lack of experience with converting sketches to an end product so I believe you when you say that with ink it actually starts to look bad.
Can I ask if the characters will be mostly standing still? I thought maybe instead of going on this difficult route between zombification and appeal you could make a limping animation. Zombies have a hard time moving their cold limbs/ stiff joints. Maybe you can make a bone stick out one of the arms/ legs (through the clothing). I think it could look cool and not affect appeal.
I will think of trait suggestions when I have more time ^^ Great work in this thread ^^

[BeautifulGlitch]

M4UESVIECR: agree on the current pose being better than the odd former one. We're working on a final approach. The pose is a bit more dynamic but without being weird. And TOTALLY AGREE with face being an issue. We've done exactly what you say: improving the pose while going for the former sassy expression!
On the zombie: took note of exposing more the non-facial areas. Prob with your examples are that they have a lot more detail than a 2D illustration. But I took note on the idea of object/debris on the zombie (like the shards of glass in the second one).
And I thought, looking at these examples, that we can improve it by working on his eyes. Still we can't go for an expression like the first example, because is clearly evil. That works good for an Survival Horror game, but not for a dating sim. Still I think we can maybe accentuate the eye-bags and give him a kind of sexy lost gaze.

Sure, dude, the main idea of having a devlog is (aside gathering some early audience) to discuss the progress with people.
And we're SUPER GLAD to see that people is being interested about our project. That encourages us a lot. So, please, tell your friends to check the log and comment. You know: participation leads to even more participation. The devlog is starting to get some nice traction now (:

TAMMIDEV: Your idea is good, but they will mostly stand still. Kickstarter might be an option (not sure). If so, that surely would let us see if we can get enough funds to improve the game. A way of doing that would be adding some little small animations to the character illustrations. But even if we do so, this will be applied to NPCs. Note that this current illustrations on the playable characters will be displayed only on promo art and in the character selection screen. When playing, you will only face the NPCs, as in a classic dating sim or JRPG. You will see the playable chars in the "event illustrations". This means that if you go to the "CLASSROOM" you will see an illustration of your char at class. But it will be that: an illustration. NPCs, when encountered, will appear as models with different expressions (5-6 so we can convey emotions when they interact with you). Those models are the most likely to get animations if we have enough funds.
The bone thing is interesting. I will discuss it with the artist. He's now working on other stuff, but maybe we can try that and add the option to the current ones.
About that: which one of the 4 ones (original, no eye, no nose, no mouth) do you like the most so far? :O

ROSSTIN: Thanks, mate! Please visit this devlog to get the latest updates on our progress. We love to get feedback from other people (:

[TammiDev]

For the zombie: The original still appeals to me the most. After that the missing eye, though it makes him a lot more sad *heart breaks*. Not sure if the info about the kickstarter applied to me? 0.o (never mentioned it I think xD) If you need some inspiration with (hybrid) Dating Sims I recommend: Persona 3/4, Harvest Moon, Katawa Shoujo. And for Kickstarter info: I backed this visual novel project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chief/rising-angels-fates-visual-novel/description

[BeautifulGlitch]

TAMMIDEV: it was for you. You asked about animations on the chars and I was telling you that we might do a KS to get funds. If we get enough funds, we will hire an animator.
So... original one!
And I will go through your recommendations tomorrow.

ANOTHER QUESTION: when playing, you will be in a map with 6-7 locations to go. Each location triggers events. So you will see a map, a menu with the locations and each player will have his/her own icon to put over the location he/she wants to visit.
About the icons: option 1 (more detail) or option 2 (less detail)?

[Jasmine]

Diggin' the icons! Do you have a demo UI? Curious as to how they fit with the interface. That aside, I personally prefer the ones without the outline.

[gimymblert]

He need mock up with mock background

[TammiDev]

I like option 1 more (option 2 is cute but I'm not sure what that cuteness will contribute to?). I think the ones with the outlines are pretty (but think that the ones without will fit better if the models are also without). Zombie looks so tired XD
Ah, I get the kickstarter comment now I would back (backing credibility: I have 1 active pledge, 30 collected and 13 uncollected, https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/320813545). I've also checked more backed projects that are like yours: Tokyo Dark and Culina: Hands in the Kitchen come to mind. (reasons I'm passing along these kickstarters is so you can see how successful dating sim kickstarters detailed their campaign + rewards and make your own campaign as successful as possible).

[BeautifulGlitch]

M4UESVIECR:We're working at it now. Our next steps is a first approach on the map. This being said, it's important to note that our biggest reference is The Yawhg (even its dev is advicing us -he's a great guy!-). A lot of things on this game will be similar to it.

Obviously we're adapting a lot of things to our own specifics + being creative and crazy about some stuff.
But here you can see an example of The Yawhg: a map where you can see all the locations, a simple menu listing them and the playable chars' icons to point out where each player has been



It's a shame that most of you prefer the lineless versions, because we probably will need to use the ones with outline D:
It's a lot easier and cleanier when working with a background. If you go with lineless icons/chars, it's super hard to make them outstand from the BG ):

JIMYM GIMBERT: yup, we're working on that!  

TAMMIDEV: it's not about cuteness but about simplicity. We were experimenting with how much we could simplify their faces so they truly become "icons". As M4uesviecr and Jimym point out, we will need to see them on a background.
Nope, the models will go with outline, so probably the icons will go with them aswell! (soon I will update with the outlined models).
The KS comment was only about telling you how we're planning the possibility of adding animation to the designs (since you asked about that)! (:
You're quite an active backer! Here you have my profile, just for the sake of sharing! 30 collected and 13 uncollected! You truly are a risk-taker! I think I have ~60 collected and ~3 uncollected.

Tokyo Dark embodies one of the things that scares me the most about audience approval: generally dating sims are popular as long as they have a super traditional manga art.
Obviously our game is not a dating sim exactly. I came up with the idea because I love The Yawhg and I wanted to create a new experience/narrative with similar mechs. I've worked in the indie game industry and I can tell that, at least in my country, one of the biggest problems is people lacking a biz approach, a MKT approach and a production approach. They get involved in monstruosly big and over-ambitious projects that ultimately become nothing. I come from a sector much more experienced on those areas (advertising) -this doesn't mean I'm good at that, but at least it means I'm aware its importance!- and I mix it with my personal passion (narrative design). So I wanted to produce a project that could:

> be marketable, at least to a niche
> be light on the programming side (and so I decided with what we can label as an interactive narrative)
> have such an structure that could be easily alterable (I can easily add or sustract a love interest or a location of the game without the whole thing exploding)
> have ART and NARRATIVE as its core strenghts

When I played The Yawhg I loved it because it was a smart and beautiful project. It did a lot with so little. And that is what I admire on a project: excellence AND effectiveness.
So I started to think about this project. I loved it so fast! It contained all my requirements and it is easily escalable/modular. If it doesn't work, the loss, money-wise, won't be that big. If it works, we can take profit on all the experience, structures and engines to develop a similar experience with a new theme (meaning new art and narrative). I love modular stuff! It's one of the key strenghts on every successful project.

After that, when thinking of the themes/narratives I'd like for a game like that, I came up with several themes. Mostly around parody, since parody fuels viralization. My other favorite theme (keeping it for a future project) is a mature/funny take on the galactic warriors theme (like Sailor Moon). Something like Sailor Moon meets Girls (the HBO series). Damn, I'd love that if done right!

The other theme was "Monster Highschool". It was a theme we built when talking about another game project I'm working in. I started to build the theme and then the whole dating sim thing came to me. I loved it. It's appealing, it's weird and funny and feels a bit innovative (local multiplayer/competitive dating sim). But truth is the experience I'm looking for is more similar to a game session of The Yawhg rather than your regular dating sim. A dating sim is played mostly alone and it's fueled by pure sake of complete all the game (similar to a PKMN or a tycoon) and the appeal of its characters. Sometimes because of good dialogue (but often dialogue has less importance than art). And sometimes because pure absurdity and popularity (yeah, I'm talking about Hatoful Boyfriend). I'm OK with that. I respect all game mechs that prove succesfull (from RPGs to F2P games); but here I'm going for an experience similar to The Yawhg: a local multiplayer game that becomes specially funny when played by 3-4 people. You go through the narrative together, fueled by curiosity and fun. It's meant for one person to read out loud the texts so all can laugh at it. Its creator is so smart he quickly figured out this was a core strenght of the experience.

is just this! And it's true! I've played 4-5 sessions and it was like that.

Sorry for all the soliloquy. It was all me thinking out loud about one of the hugest challenges: deciding the way I have to market the project. I'm on an exciting but dangerous middleground:

> I want to point out that the dating sim approach it's an addition, but the core experience is based on the beautiful art from our artist and the witty/funny dialogues (such as the one shown in the first comment here). We want a game session of this game to feel like watching a funny and sarcastic and absurd TV show. We love Archer, and Rick&Morty, and SNL, and Master of None, and Man seeking Woman... But truth is that this can be difficult to convey in a brief and easy way through a Kickstarter project a videogame website or a Steam store page.
So... how we should market this game? How we should communicate it? Ah, what a challenge!  
But damn I'm having a good time figuring all of this out!

(all this started because the Tokyo Dark thing!)

[TammiDev]

Wow, nice backer history ^^ Haha, well I guess it's not really risky because when they don't meet their funding I don't have to pay. I just like game projects a lot so I'll easily throw some bucks at them (especially rpgs, story games etc). I understand your game a lot more now so thanks for the explanation. I understand it is less dating sim and more multiplayer narrative. I think indeed that a game like this is very extensible which is nice. Easy to create add-ons (or monetization). Thanks for showing me Yawhg, interested to try this Well I love the outlines so you got that going for ya

[BeautifulGlitch]

TAMMIDEV: Sure, you have to consume before producing, to help before asking for help! I mean risk taker not financially but in the sense you bet for games with no guarantee of being funded. I use to back projects I know they will get funded (I've worked as a KS consultor, so it's not that hard to identify them).
Yeah! It's a middle-ground! I hope thatdoesn't discourage you of following our progress! (:

[gimymblert]

Ha! I'm a gamedesigner, now you mention the game, I'm worried about the progression, in fact many thing confused me since the beginning but I choosed to talk about the visual lol.

How do you progress in the game? what the main interaction? where the tension come from? what are the main engagement within the game?

[BeautifulGlitch]

JIMYM GIMBERT: It's hard to explain out of the blue with no visual aid! I'm preparing a GDD.
The progress is pretty similar to the progress in The Yawhg.
There's a limited number of turns to explore some locations. Each turn you visit a location and that triggers an event that leads you to make a choice. That choice can result a success or a failure depending on some variables (stats). And it also have a consequence on that level (it raises and/or lower your stats). You keep facing events and building your char while enjoying the art and the narrative. In the end you face a final choice that will lead you to a final outcome. The end!

Let me share with you the first part on the GDD dedicated to FLOW (I'm now working on the parts that explain each "micro-stage" typ)

FLOW

• The game has 3 macro-stages. Each macro-stage is a “day”.
• Each macro-stage (a “day”) has 4 micro-stages called:

--> “Morning”
--> “Noon”
--> “Afternoon”
--> “Evening”

• This way, each micro-stage happens 3 times in a game session. The exception is the “Evening”, since the third time is replace by “Last Choice”
• Additionally, there are two more micro-stages:

--> “First choice”, which happens at the beginning of the game session
--> “Last choice”, which happens at the end of the game session instead of the third “evening”.

• This means a total of 13 micro-stages
• The “Evenings” and the special micro-stages are substantially shorter (not counting the endings as part of the “Last Choice”). Therefore, we can say that there are 9 core stages.
• At each micro-stage each of the players plays his/her turn. Later we will explain what means a "turn" in each type of micro-stage.
• “Morning” and “Afternoon” are location-based micro-stages. “Noon” is an NPC-based micro-stage. And “Evening” is a menu-based micro-stage. Now we will see what this means.

Here’s a representation of this flow:




It is clear? Sorry if not. This is meant for internal use :I
But obviously there's no prob on sharing it with you :D
Now I'm working on a description of:

> First choice
> Location-based stages
> NPC-based stage
> Menu-based stage
> Last choice

It's also useful to see a

, which -as said before- is the main inspiration (design-wise) for this game

[BeautifulGlitch]

JIMYM GIMBERT: also, here's a part of my answer for Tammidev where I talk about the main engagement within the game

but here I'm going for an experience similar to The Yawhg: a local multiplayer game that becomes specially funny when played by 3-4 people. You go through the narrative together, fueled by curiosity and fun. It's meant for one person to read out loud the texts so all can laugh at it. Its creator is so smart he quickly figured out this was a core strenght of the experience.

is just this! And it's true! I've played 4-5 sessions and it was like that.

Obviously there are differences.
For instance:
> We add a lot more weight on dialogues/NPCs
> We lack the tension from the big awesome question "What's exactly The Yawhg (within the game's narrative unvierse)?

I'm also working on ways of appeal, engage and fuel the player's curiosity. To estimulate his/her imagination.

An example: let me share with you a piece of an email I sent to The Yawhg's creator, discussing some GD stuff about Monster Prom

THE "SHOP" IDEA: as you said, I'm now starting to figuring this out, once I have clarified the general flow. I think I will do my best to include this. Why? The idea is a shop that sells you items that can trigger special events, solve other events in a special way or just have special effects. For instance, some of the secret endings will be related to succesfully going through a series of special events (3-4), and sometimes they will require a specific item.
But the awesome thing of the shop concept is that the shop always displays ALL the available items. So first time a player enters the shop he/she will see a bunch of weird items. Some of them will make sense because they will have interacted with the related events. But some of them will be a funny non-sense ("an erotic fanfiction about dragons... why I would ever need that?!") and I think it can tease the players to play more times, to discover new iterations. The items on the shop will serve as a teaser of future adventures!

[gimymblert]

No that's too much lol, I'm asking for the hi level key aspects.

For example you showed a "time based progression" where the player "make choices" in "discrete events" which advance them in the progression, depending on the stats they alter by their choices in these events. more or less.

SO it's a management game where the player progress by altering stat for desired narrative outcomes.

Now the narrative concept is lacking, what's the "stake" ie where does teh tension come from, generally dating game you manage stats in events so the main character isn't alone (failure condition) and is with the girl of his choice (win condition). This help understand what events and what action mean within the system.

But you describe the structure not the function, It's a bit like the character design, you tell "what" but not "why".

SO the nature of the choice are unclear because we don't know "why" we make them. Why there is a time base progression, location, etc ...

[BeautifulGlitch]

JIMYM GIMBERT: well, the progression is simple and rather short because the game is intended to be played in short auto-conclusive sessions (like the ones in The Yawhg), when with friends.

The progression is measured in days first because of coherence reasons, narrative wise. It seems plausible given the narrative background (prom is coming and we need to seduce a classmate). I must say that weeks seemed better, but here's the main reason why it is days finally: it is this way so we can use those micro-stages under the label of "times of the day".
And why I want the micro-stages that way?
First the game was much more like The Yawhg in terms of progression. Six turns where each turn was a week and where you faced a map with locations to visit. Then I crashed with some issues on GD and narrative which lead me to an interesting addition: add some NPC-based stages (now called "noon"). The idea was to include some turns where you could choose NPCs instead of locations, so you can actively decide on which NPCs invest (therefore affecting the chances of encountering that NPC later, when choosing locations -you can almost randomly encounter an NPC when visiting a location-). Then I come up with the idea of a "cafeteria turn". Instead of a map with locations, you would see a cafeteria with some tables (each one with some of the NPCs sit on them). Then, as in all the classic highschool movies/tv shows, you would choose to sit in one of the tables, triggering an encounter with one of the NPCs sit there.
It felt so right! Because:

> this way the player could decrease the randomness of the events, aiming (with no 100% precision) for specific NPCs (and then the game could internally learn from this and giving more chances of a random encounter with that NPC when in the location-based stages)
> this way the game differentiated itself in another way from The Yawhg and added some variety to its progress. Instead of 6 turns that are potentially the same in terms of structure/theme we get 9 turns with a variation that enrich the experience
> Also it does this following a plausible narrative ("morning" --> "a pause to eat in the cafeteria" --> "afternoon"). It's truth it forced us to shorten the progression a lot narratively (from 6 weeks to 3 days) but it's still possible (events aren't done yet, so now we need to think in terms of 1 school week instead of 6). Damn, even we can think alternatively and space the 3 days. Instead of Days 1, 2 and 3 you can talk about "3, 2 and 1 week left until PROM NIGHT" and, if conveyed in a good way, the player will understand that the events occur on a random day during that specific week! So we still have some maneuverability here!


And that's why the progression is this way.

Tension comes from different things.

We can talk about micro-tension on what will be the outcome of the choice you made each turn. This works the same as in The Yawhg. When played, you analyze the event and the options available. Then, there's some anticipation work at two levels:
> where (to what) I think a certain option will lead, given the general narrative style and the info I have
> which stats I think are the required ones to get a success outcome
There's a small tension created that can lead to satisfaction if we were right on the stats and surprise if we manage to create some good twists in the events.

We can talk about macro-tension on the general progression on our relationship with NPCs. On a lot of dating sims you basically improve your relationship undefinitely until you start to unlock new possible actions or reactions. Here there is a well-known limit: the "last choice" event, where you have to choose to whom you will ask for prom. Thing is that the "relationship meter" is internal. You don't have a clear way to measure how are you doing with that person (aside interpreting the narrative on your interactions). So there the idea is that there will be this tension where you won't be sure if you did enough good to get a "YES". Hm, so it tries to kinda mimick life itself.

Sorry! I hope I solved some of your questions! (:

[BeautifulGlitch]

Sorry if there's stuff that's still confusing. I focused on sharing art and when talking about GD I'm probably taking a lot of stuff for granted (meaning I probably forgot to share some basics on the game and now I talk to you as if you already knew them!)