WARNING: This game contains / will contain some pretty dark topics, like suicide, emotional/mental abuse, psychological manipulation, and loss of family. Be careful going in!The following is meant to be a synopsis and isn't really going to be that refined in terms of narrative.
Kikue Aimori (愛守菊江) started as a painfully average student- in terms of grades and effort, at least. One day, she wrote a love confession letter to her classmate, Kokoa Rikima. Rikima wasn't aware that Kikue was watching from afar, and noticed her very blatantly putting the letter in a place that others would find it and waiting for them to show up, to out and embarrass her in front of her peers.
One day, she finds a letter in her room, sealed with black wax, promising her revenge in exchange for a deal. She takes it without second thought.
The plot of the game revolves around a deal that Kikue makes with a strange yokai creature named Kuro. When she enters the same high school as Rikima, it becomes clear that Rikima has her own yokai companion- Shiro. It now dawns upon her that she's been entangled into a game of chess between two beings who are far more powerful than she anticipated. It's the Black Queen and the White Queen of the board, fated to fight one another until the end of the game.
Check, and mate.
Let the games begin.
Checkmate is an anime-styled social strategy game taking place in a Japanese High School, inspired by Death Note, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Toire no Hanako-kun, and My Hero Academia. You play as the aforementioned Kikue Aimori, beginning on her first day of High School. In exchange for your protection in the school in your endeavors to sabotage the charismatic Kokoa Rikima, you are tasked by the mysterious figure 'KURO' to investigate specific members of your fellow peers and school faculty. You aren't entirely sure what his motivations are or what he really wants from you, but that doesn't matter - it's your duty, now.
This art is really freaking old, but I'm keeping it here for posterity.
DEVLOG #1 - JUNE 7, 2022
Hi there! Thanks for reading that blurb. It's subject to change, but I think it's going to stay that way for a while unless I suddenly decide to take a turn with the plot.
According to the timestamps in my Unity project, I started officially working on this game April 25th, 2022. I had the idea for it while trying to kill time on a two hour flight. What if a video game employed Death Note-like social mechanics where you had to out-manipulate an equally cunning force with an unknown motive, powered by a mysterious entity and followed by supernatural events?
So far, the game basically just looks like a Unity asset flip. I admit that wholeheartedly. I'm not the best at 3D modeling, so it's mostly going to be assets. I'm using a
basemesh made by Ctool on Sketchfab for my characters.
Currently, I have a system with a crude GUI that keeps track of what season it is, what weekday it is, the time, and the year. (I plan on having the time progress, with the end of the game being graduation.) I have a random student generator, but at the given moment I've only modeled a single hair style so far. I tried using my own basemesh at first, but it looked...
Left: The basemesh I bought. Right: The basemesh I made myself. Well, obviously made by someone very new to 3D modeling.
The students I have are capable of pathfinding using Unity's navmesh system, and I can give them schedules and activities, but that's about it. Extracurricular clubs exist, but for now they're nothing more than an enum.
At the moment I'm working on animating the basemeshes. They came with detailed eyes, and I'm really new at rigging, so my blink that I made is a bit wonky, but it's functioning. The eyebrows can also emote.
As I work on it I'll keep you all updated. Feel free to ask questions and give feedback or suggestions!
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