Phew, Ok I'm Finally Ready To Share The Thing I've Been Working On. I Suck At Making Videos But Here

Wishlisted tf outta this on Steam. Do it

The Online Obsession Demo is coming out this February 14th at 3PM GMT on Steam and Itch!

Will we be able to adopt the cats at the cat cafe?

Yes! I am thinking at minimum the player can adopt at least one cat. Maybe more, I'm not sure yet, the cafe is still in its infancy but yes you can def have a cat

Well, I love you so much,

But do me a favor, baby, don't reply

Cause I can dish it out,

But I can't take it

"Well, I love you so much...

But do me a favor, baby don't reply

Because I can dish it out, but I can't take it"

He wishes you would :/

I spent most of my project time yesterday researching some specific things about the game's engine, like whether a certain mechanic would be possible etc. It all came back as good news, though I can't say what all of it was since it would kind of spoil some of the fun in playing to know ahead of time.

But what I can say is that I think I'll be able to release the game in installments and people should be able to carry their save files over between each of them, which is one thing I wasn't sure would be possible. It will just require a little bit of planning ahead of time on my part, since adding certain things to a new installment would break old save files (mainly plugins or certain types of scripts requiring data initialization at startup).

So as long as I make sure all the plugins I want to use for the game are already implemented at the first launch, there shouldn't be any problems with people playing the whole thing across one save file through multiple releases/"expansions" or whatever. And of course, I can't delete anything from the new installments that already existed in the former ones.

So that's exciting, because it means I can release a playable game sooner, though I still don't have a release timeframe set yet. What I would like to do is release 1 love interest route at a time, starting with Yurei. And obviously Kage will be in that first release and all subsequent ones because he just won't fucking leave you alone

Just a small update. Tuesday was minimal progress, just configured a few more plugins and set up an in-game credits page that's accessible from the start menu (setting it up now so I can more easily track everyone I need to give credit to; I've also hyperlinked back to contributor websites when one is provided).

There's one newly added plugin I'm particularly looking forward to, as it will allow the game to use the player's custom character portrait to make different facial expressions depending on the choices you make during conversations.

Also set up text macros for every time I have to use a pronoun in a sentence while writing to save some time. Since the player picks that at the beginning, I had to assign "he" "she" or "they" to a variable, and then write an evaluation that would assign the appropriate pronoun *and form of it* (she, her, hers, his, him, them, their, etc.) within the context of any sentence I wrote that included it...every time it would come up in writing. The macros are already saving me a ton of time with writing, so that's been pretty nice.

I'm not gonna show the whole intro scene for meeting Yurei, but I got the bulk of that written last night too. Although I still have to draw his sprites for it, so even if I showed the whole scene here it would just be chibis talking to each other. And set up a way to "sit" at the bench seats in the cat café, since I wanted that for a cutscene, and unfortunately customizable player characters mean I won't be able to have player sprites make unique poses like actually sitting.

Working on the Social Media menu for the love interests. As you learn more about each of them, their "Likes" and "Dislikes" sections will fill. Keep track of their stats here as well. (Shown stats are for display purposes only, not the real stats, still working on those).

Relationship status will change of course depending on whether or not you progress far along enough on that love interest's route. Otherwise they will all read "Single," except for your yandere, who will read "It's Complicated," because of course it is...

I just wanna break you down so badly,

Well, I trip over everything you say

I just wanna break you down so badly,

In the worst way

Working on weather effects for 2-Headed Boy, added some fog to the city map (or maybe it's just pollution, let's be real)

Kage's sprite samples. Actual size 48x48px.

I don't want to think about how many times I remade these before deciding on a simple design