First and foremost, many many apologies for not posting anything recently! I was writing a post yesterday when in an attempt to clear some tabs, I closed the blog update page and sat in my chair defeated for a moment. But here I am again, prepared to write a new post! This post will have updates from all three games, and I am very excited to share all these updates with you~! Up first, we have Sector Chimera. All new art, including a redone MC's bedroom. In these screen shots is the new room, a first peak at the "forum" system you can use to see how the others in the city interact (which you will be able to respond to on occasion if you decide to.), an updated HoloCall system (the holocall device will be "turned off" when you have no available calls, and will be on and animated when you do.), and all new character face sprites! So far, only Quinn has a new face sprite, but everyone will be following shortly. I've also drawn up the inside of the restaurant, but that will only be available for preview on the patreon page.
Up next is Betterflies with updates on the script and UI. I've begun writing and programming the very first solo branches for the romances. I've already finished Reza, Vincent, and Magdalena's, although I may make some tweaks to Vincent's route to add more dialog between him and the MC. I've also decided to add in a daily planner feature, because I think it would best fit the game to include it. Your character will be able to decide between doing art, exercise, group therapy, and staying in her room, with other slight variations as time goes on if the story demands it. And the last update is a stats menu! I'm still iffy on if I want to include it at all, and it's very much in a rough draft stage, but if I decide to keep it, it will be keeping track of the MC's personality, romantic and friendship stats with each character, and the basic ability check stats. What these stats are, what they're named, and how many there will be is still undecided, but the preview is as accurate as it can get for now. Last but not least, Ventio Mortis! I've made many strides through the opening chapter (which is longer than I realized when I had playtesters take a stab at it), and I am proud to say that the first chapter is finally completed! I will begin writing the second chapter when my editor goes over the script and updates it, but for now I don't want to overwhelm her with too much writing. I've also received the finished portrait for Robbie, which means only Drisdon and the Detective are left and we are that much closer to the release of the Ventio Mortis demo!! If you'd like to get a peak at Robbie and a little bit more information on the hot-head, it's available on patreon. In the mean time, here is a preview of Inan and Hollowelle talking. Sidenote: I do intend to change his sizing, but for now scripting the little things remains my first priority for the game since editing his portraits will only take about 10 minutes. Link To Patreon
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I've gone back to work on Betterflies some more. It's a fairly easy project to handle, so it's nice to be able to work on something more laid-back in production. I've finished reworking all the backgrounds. I want to keep the nice pastel/pick aesthetic throughout the entire game, so I just added a really pretty set of filters over the premade backgrounds in use, and another set of filters over the characters themselves that gives it a really nice look. I am also using a place-holder textbox while I make a new one, and it's actually very cute! It's a little too dark for my taste, but the design is cute and will definitely be inspiration for the new one to come.
I would also like to add some sort of daily planner/personality stats/love meter/mental health status bar to the game, but I still haven't decided how exactly I would like to implement that. I'm not sure if I want to keep it as a plain ol' visual novel, or step it up to actual dating sim. I am leaning toward the latter as it stands. In the mean time, progress is being made pretty smoothly so far, and I am excited to continue working on it! I would like to open this post by asking for money! yes! The most detested part of development. Here's the breakdown. I've just gotten out of the hospital (and have therefore missed a week of work), I'm moving into a new apartment (where my rent will be much higher than now and therefore my money dedicated to my projects will now be dedicated to, well, living.), and I'm looking into getting a new job. It's starting to get hard to afford to pay my artists, and so progression of each of these games will inevitably come to a halt at this rate. To donate, you can support my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jingleriotgaming Now that that's out of the way: I've begun reworking the Betterflies script. When I first made the original script, it was mostly just me messing around with an idea, but it's finally be refined. I want to make Betterflies more dating sim-esque than simply a visual novel, and that will take some time, but in the meantime here's a look at the character introduction scene! Here is where you first meet Reza, Anto, Vincent, and Magda. I am excited to work more on this game as soon as my artist finishes everyone's sprites! And in other news: I've begun working on Ventio Mortis again! After finally organizing the script well enough to figure out where I left off, I've started scripting the next sequence of events. I can't give away too much just yet, since the part I'm writing now is a bit spoilery, but I will be looking for some Beta testers soon, since my script is now taking on many, many story branches and I will need testers to thoroughly test those branches and make sure any random glitches or broken dialog trees exist. Please leave a comment with your e-mail, or simply go to the contact page and e-mail me directly with the subject "Ventio Beta Testing" if you are interested!
For now, here's a preview of a scene featuring Inan, one of the love interests available to Hollowelle. Inan, Hollowelle, Dharma, and Napoleon's sprites are all done, with Robbie on the way, and Drisdon and the detective still waiting to be finished. We're almost done with the graphical aspect of Ventio Mortis and on to story/scripting being the only thing left. How exciting! A playable demo for Ventio Mortis will be released as soon as I have all the character sprites. In order to take our projects and in development games more seriously, we have relocated to an all-in-one website, where you will be able to easily preview games, download demos, interact with the creators on input toward the creation of the games, and read updates on development.
A quick overview of the progression of each game: |