A game that has been abandoned and conclusions about the first update

One day Inqel Interactive had the idea to create a game. No, it wasn't a Home Prisoner. It was a romantic story about a girl with supernatural powers. There was a burning desire to do this project because I found it exciting. 

As a result, I spent three months developing this story.

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During the process of implementation, one big problem arose. It was that I wasn't satisfied with the default RPG-maker graphics which I didn't think were able to offer a serious, cinematic atmosphere, considering that the game was supposed to be quite dramatic... With pixel graphics, that would have been extremely hard to achieve. 

Well, I couldn't think of anything better to do than to try and create my own, custom graphics with no experience.

It took me about a month to create one city district and about 10-15 houses to be the basis for a residential neighborhood. Few examples:

But, unfortunately, progress stopped there. The more I worked on the project, the more I realized a disappointing fact. The fact that I wanted to do something that I didn't have the necessary skills to do yet. 

The game was supposed to be a sandbox with a big open world, big possibilities, a story, and scenes I wouldn't have been able to bring to life at the time.

The project closed before it even had a chance to spread its wings.

About half a year later I got the inspiration to try to make something simpler. I was messing around in RPG maker, thinking about options for a new project, and I remembered a game I liked, which was made on this engine. It had huge sprites. It seemed unusual to me at the time, because the player could observe what was happening up close. After thinking about it a bit, I thought why not make the same game, only with 3D sprites? 

I created a room, a character that I could control, a small event, and tested it out. I was surprised that the game didn't crash and I completed it without any excesses. From that moment on I knew what I wanted my future game to look like. 

This is how Project Home Prisoner was born.

The development of the first episode took more than one year. I worked on the project leisurely, in my spare time. Initially, it was a polygon for learning, the experience from which I was to take over for the creation of later, better games. But I got carried away, and the project turned into something more...

I had no idea, given that graphical style, how long it would take me to release regular updates. I took a risk and stepped on the path of obscurity by starting to do this project.

What conclusion can we make after the first update?

A game with such a concept and such a graphical style takes even more time than it was predicted. Duplicating the graphics on the map, and doing a lot of secondary animations takes time, as well as putting this whole graphical puzzle together, in one, finished project on this engine.

Sure, if those animations were sex-related, say 3-5 sex scenes (In this update), instead of character gestures, head turns, and other animations that aren't important to most players, the update might have seemed more extensive.

But I want you to immerse yourself in the game, I want you to watch what the characters do, and not look at static, soulless images. That's the main idea behind this graphical style.

In this update, the characters learned to turn their heads, and began to gesticulate more, I want to make the characters more and more "alive" with each update.

So, long story short...

• Is it worth burying the project? – Definitely not.

• Was it worth doing a project on RenPy and doing updates once a month? – Perhaps.

• Is there a way to retreat? - No!

Despite all the difficulties, I am confident that we will get the game to the stage where updates will come out once a month. Starting with Episode 3, updates will definitely start coming out more often, because by this stage I'm going to have all the systems set up and the basic "ecosystem" inside the house established. 

I want to thank Mello, Andreas Gismann, Svartbrand, oho, DaSophokle, Lazkay. If it wasn't for you, the update would have come out even later, because thanks to you I devoted almost all my free time to development. Despite the fact that the release of the second episode was delayed, you remained at the highest level of support – I will not forget this trust. 

Thank you to everyone else who joined the project from the beginning and has stayed with us to this day.

And of course, special thanks to Zoppie, incoherency, Nick, Black, kaizo, Mr. Palmer, wr123789, Börje, None300, jay, Panzer4, Steven Adams. You have managed to contribute a lot in such a short period of time, this will greatly accelerate our development, and allow us to reach our next goal much faster.

Thank you to all my patrons.

And of course... Thank you for staying with the project.