Started Routing Yurei Into The Game Last Night. It's Quite A Process, Because I Have To Create A Schedule

"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"

I feel like I'm in this post and I don't like it (except I kind of do).

Was I the yandere all along...?

I don’t know if you have done this but

Yandere artist who sees darling as a muse. They adore painting them and often times have them restricted into poses

Yandere!Artist x reader

somedays youre kept dazy and tired, making it easier for you to stay still for long periods of time

other days, they want you awake. they want you aware of the art youre taking part in <3.

so you're restrained, heavily. sometimes youre strung up by rope or chains from the ceiling, sometimes draped along the couch, other times you have to sit upright in a chair for hours at a time

they become so focused, sometimes they don't even hear you asking for breaks. it's only when you start to shift in discomfort that they look up from their easel, brows furrowed, asking, "what are you doing?"

Artist having paintings upon paintings of you around their house. they can't seem to get enough of your image, spending countless hours replicating each detail

when they're not painting you, you're glued to their hip. they want to touch your skin, your hair, feel the texture of your clothes so they know what to paint next

sometimes you wake up to them watching you sleep. what better time to memorize your details when you're at your most peaceful? when you won't shy away?

Artist having days where all they do is paint, and paint, and paint, and paint, and by the end of the day your muscles ache fiercely from being contorted and held in position

but oh, oh, how beautiful you are in their eyes. you consume their every thought.

I LOVE THE GAME IDEA SO MUCH HOLY SHIIIIYTT

So anyways. Geeking out rn. So fucking COOLL

-🍏

Oh wow thank you! I'm so happy people like the idea. It really motivates me to consistently work on it!

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.

I started adding shops and items beyond just the food court to the Midnight City Mall, plus a few aimlessly wandering NPCs.

There's the book/plushie store and clothing store made so far, planning an electronic store and a shoe store next, along with a little noodle shop. Unfortunately all the items besides food are only gifts for your love interests for now (you can't equip clothing and have your character change outfits). Maybe after I release the game I'll patch that in, but for now I'm trying to mainly focus on features that directly impact gameplay/the storylines (gifts being a mechanic for boosting stats with love interests).

I also have a crafting/cooking system, and those gifts give better stat boosts with the love interests than shopping, but I haven't implemented the recipes/ingredients for those yet.

Also I finally actually put the banking system into the ATMs. Player gets a fixed amount of money every Friday deposited to their account, so you will need to budget somewhat in-game. Will add small ways to make extra money too at some point!

Frightened eyes, looking back at me

Change your mind, don't care about leave without me

"Baby, hold my hand

Let me be your man

Let me take you away from the cold,

Baby be my diamonds and gold"

I know I said haunted house was next, but I decided to start the cat cafe first. Working on the haunted house today though. (Also cat cafe isn't done, obviously there has to be more cats etc.)

Since Steam wants a minimum of 5 screenshots, I'm trying to get a little more map variety for that so it doesn't look like the whole game takes place on a handful of maps. After I get something presentable for the haunted house I think that will give me enough to submit my upcoming game page to them for review!

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