Version 0.06 is up for download!

You can actually finish the story now! In the same way a half made platformer will kill you when the content runs out. There is only one ending achievable, but over 12,000 words of story to read along the way!

This is pretty much all of Act 1 first draft, excluding the individual character paths. It's taken a while, but it's really coming together!

Download Magical Schoolgirl Love Tale v0.06 here.

Don't forget to give us that precious precious feedback - we need it!

We're not dead!

You thought we were, didn't you! You pessimists! How could you give up on us like that!?

All right, check-list:

• Words are now at about 10,000, sadly that's only about 800 more than 0.05a.
• Next musical piece is ready to produce, provided I can remember it until then.
• Art for a new character is nearly done, I just need to make her expressions.
• The introduction has been reworked to make it far more interesting that it was.

Version 0.06 will be released as soon as I code up to the next major plot point. Let's call it next week again, like I did last time.

Don't give up hope! It's far too early to die yet!

~RV

Version 0.05a is up for download!

We now have a public demo! Version 0.05a can be found here.

This is approximately half of the first act, and what we have here is still up for heavy revision. All sprites are placeholders and programmer art, and it should be expected that there may be bugs and/or typing errors. Please report anything you find and give us as much feedback as possible - we need it!

The first demo is not too far away!

Don't think I've been slacking off all this time! We're just about to reach nine thousand words in the story, which feels like an appropriate number to release the first public demo to me. I'm really pleased with what we have so far, and we even have a few screenshots now to prove ourselves:

Lastly, I'm just going to drop this track that'll also be included in one particularly dramatic moment in the demo:

Version 0.05 is due for release sometime next week! Brace for impact!

Going Dark

Progress is still being made and things are still being done. It will just be a little quieter. Roast and I have decided, due to the nature of the story, to stop publishing details about the plot or characters. So why have we done this?

The reason we are revealing less about the plot is more obvious. We are crafting a story about a person's journey into an unknown world. The journey wouldn't be very interesting if you knew what was going to happen.
You would also have expectations of the story from character descriptions. If a character were described as having a hard outer shell with a warm gooey inside, you know that they will warm to you as the story progresses. You would also know they are an egg. By avoiding describing the characters beforehand we can avoid spoiling the plot.

In terms of the project things are coming along nicely. We have the backgrounds we need for Act 1 placeholders, as well as characters, so screenshots are a possibility soon.
Sadly, working on writing and plotting, there isn't much to show, unlike with Roast's music and arts. Guess we'll have to wait for the demo!

Placeholders!

Quick, press play and carry on reading:

So while neither Barnox nor I are artists, I like to think I can edit a picture pretty well. Yesterday, once B (imma call him B, so much quicker) had located some free base sprites for us to use, which came from here, I used my amazing GIMP skillery to turn them into mockups of our characters. I'm not going to give away much more, but I will leave you with a super snazzy montage of all four girls!

Pretty radical, if I say so myself. I'm working on integrating them with the story so far, and then we'll grab some placeholder backgrounds and finish this story section.

The roadmap:

1. Do some emotions for these grills.
2. Code them into the game.
3. Finish the last couple of music tracks I have planned.
4. Code them in too.
5. Finish the storyline for act 1 (B is working so hard on this you wouldn't even believe it)
6. Code that up as well.
7. Distribute act 1 around and beg for better sprites (both characters and BGs).
8. Write and code acts 2 and onwards.
9. Become recognised as gods among men.

~RV

My discoveries so far

As Roast has said previously, our community has worked on a few projects together in our time. For one of these it was Roast and I taking up coding, although not much got done that time.
With Magical Schoolgirl Love Tale, I'm experiencing a completely different side to the creation of a project. Whereas previously my projects were producing something simple (a Dragon Quest-like RPG game, randomised loot generator) this is something much more complicated. For me, not in the coding (Roast is handling much of that at the minute), but in the plot.

We knew Act 1 was going to be the greatest challenge. Deciding how the protagonist is brought into this school, how they spend their time there while not on any particular route. Choosing how the actions the protagonist takes influences what they do after Act 1. Planning the triggers and calculations for events and routes.
That said, I believe that from here the planning will get easier. The individual routes are likely easier, due to us being able to decide upon the number of endings, rather than requiring an output corresponding to each of the routes.

The script is coming along nicely. I work full time but I normally try to get out at least 1000 words each day. We've passed the 5000 word mark in the design doc script and likely have more than that in the actual game file, due to Roast translating my prose into something more suitable for a Visual Novel.
Progress is being made. Neither of us have mentioned any form of ETA and it is going to stay that way, likely for a rather long time. We cannot give a final word count. We cannot give a final play time. We can only continue working on what we have, enjoying the journey.