02 - Perfect Son-In-Law

One more week before the Demo of Perfect Son-In-Law will be available on Steam. I'll also upload it on Patreon, but I want everybody who can, to play it on Steam. This will help me a lot. And it still works even if you have no intention of buying the full game once it's released.

With that out of the way, let me tell you what I've been doing lately.

First of all I made a Roadmap. Basically I just looked at a calender and roughly thought about what might be a realistic timeline. Realistic is a bit of an overstatement. to be honest. The timeline is actually quite optimistic. But I'm an optimistic person and at least for now things are progressing fine.

I uploaded it on reddit, and it ended up with only 3 upvotes. Usually my posts get between 50 and 200 upvotes, but reddit has a hateboner for everything AI. Idk, I thought the design looked pretty good but maybe it looks AI generated?

Lately I've been seeing Youtube thumbnails that are clearly AI generated and I didn't like that. Maybe you've noticed, but I don't have a problem with using AI as a tool. I'm botherted if the outcome looks generic and uninteresting. Feel free to tell me if my promotinal material has an unappealing AI look. I might be a bit blindsighted for things I generate myself. Honestly, this design looks better than anything I can create in photoshop.

Then, last week, I released the beta version of the Demo. Give me a few more weeks and I tell you how I really feel about it. Some people know it. Here only this much. This is why we can't have nice things.

Moving on. Perfect Son-In-Law has an affection system. The people that played the Demo already know. Currently the game tells you how much affection each of the choices is worth. There is also an option to disable this, of course.

There are some people that want to explore an AVN blind. In my experience, there are much more people, that want the game to be simple and easy. I don't mind either way. That's why I usually implement a walkthrough into my games.

How this walkthrough should look... that's a different question. An affection system is quite rigit. Some choices gain one affection, some gain two, and some gain nothing. In the end it comes down to my opinion of how a line would land in the given sitaution with the given character. Then again, that's just my opinion. Maybe a player thinks a different line would fit better in the context, but because I gave each line a number, he might pick something just to end up with the most affection points.

That seems like a miserable way of experiencing the story. Basically it turns the whole thing into a linear story where you have the option to 'gain less points'... If that's what you really want.

An idea that would fix this would be that I don't tell you the exact point value, and instead I only tell you that a choice gains affection (by marking it with a little heart). As long as you chose options indicated with a heart, you won't run into a game over screen. At the same time, you can pick what you feel is the best choice without worrying about optimization.

I wouldn't discard the mechanic that tells you the exact amount either. Some people want to see them. Usually there is a thought behind why I gave a certain choice more affection than another. Discovering that in retrospect seems like a cool thing for people that are very interested in the story and its characters.

Maybe at first the player can only see 'good choices' because they are indicated by a hear. Then, once he finishes the game, he unlocks the option to see the exact point values. I like this mechanic. It gives everybody what they want. A surefire way to get through the story without worrying about game over screens, an immersive expereince that's not centered around optimization, and a way to get to know characters more deeply by seeing which choices are rewarded with the most affection points.

Tell me what you think of the idea in the comments. I'm really curious.

Moving on. I told you there is a lot to tell this time around. The Demo releases next week and for that I created eight translations. German, French, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese.

I think that's a good start, isn't it? Tell me if you think I'm missing a language that should be included.

And finally, some information you might actually care about. I finished writing the main storyline for the game. It came out at a little less than 50.000 words. Once the side storylines are implimented, the game will comfortably reach the length of normal book. I heard some people dismiss the game because I'm aiming to develop it in a bit more than half a year. Fear not my friends. We are at 50k words already and it's only getting more.

Right now I'm going through the main story, and I add variations based on previous choices. If I do my job properly each playthrough will feel like you are shaping the story through the mundane choices you pick along the way. This is something I haven't done in A Foreign World, and I also haven't done this in any of my other games. I'm curious how people will perceive this when they play.

If you're still here reading, you have my deepest gratitude. This has turned into a very long post. Don't forget to write a comment with your opinion on my proposed 'walkthrough' (where you only unlock concrete number values once you finish a character's storyline).

Other than that, I hope you are excited for next week!