Game ideas!

[fullofjoy]

As advertised, this is an outreach to any writer, artist, gamer, or anyone with ideas in general for this project. It'll probably be best to start off small, and start with the ideas first.

We need:
Face art
Sprites
A general storyline
Other things

Ideas for anything, from the story to art direction to gameplay, would be most appreciated.

Maybe this should start out with a demo first, an example of how it would work.

Edit: Also, if you have an idea don't be afraid to say it because we'll consider anything, and if all goes well we might do some side projects while working on a big main game, to flex our game-making muscles.

Comments

[fullofjoy]

Aha, names sound good to me.

What kind of things would happen in each of these sections?

[freeandjoy]

Rin: his 'revenge' obviously, as well learning to write/talk to his family/friends while in Australia maybe? The focus would be on harurin conversations for obvious reasons but some scenes with him talking with people like Sousuke, Gou, and Rei for example would be nice too. And making new friends with people on his swim team.

Haru: Getting more and more used to the competitive swimming world is a big one. I think you could something where he has some trouble adjusting to it at first but then he gets more used to it with the help of his new team (plus people like Rin and Makoto in the background). Other than that he, like Rin, could also probably learn how to talk to his friends now that he's a relatively good distance away from most of them.

[platina]

A game for a ship where the ship barely interacts seems kind of pointless.

I'm sure those are interesting things to explore, but personally I would not want to play that.

[fullofjoy]

Not even for the reunion sex at the end? Though I can see your point. They spend a lot of time apart already it would be nice for exploring time together. I would suggest those ideas maybe as a prologue? But that might not be enough time to explore it. Choices, choices. Well, we can still keep that idea for consideration.

What do you suggest? It can be any span of time or any kind of setting. Would you rather focus on the time after Rin gets back from Australia or go for a different plot?

A side note but Rin's hair is a journey to figure out how to draw.

[platina]

Rin's hair is easier to draw than Haru's if you ask me. It's less likely to just look.. big and weird.

WELL, I want all the reunion sex! But I would not want to sacrifice HaruRin interaction for it. It's actually why I like the visual novel style more. You COULD have end up in a plot thread where they separate and then have reunion sex. But, again, I'd probably skip most the time where they are separated. It's just not very interesting to me unless it directly relates to them as a couple (or, idk, gathering the right points/choices to have them end up as a couple). I want HaruRin the game, not Free! the game. XD

I'm not quite sure yet what kind of game you even want to make. Like, is there an aim you as the player work forward to? How is the gameplay supposed to work?

[fullofjoy]

There are a couple of ways to go about this.

Option 1: Basically an interactive fanfiction. There are different choices that can be made but they won't have a big impact on the scheme of things.

Option 2: More visual novel inclined, with different branches and paths leading to Haru and Rin in an relationship, or not depending on the ending the player gets to.

Option 1 is easier to make as a longer game of course, while option 2 will have a lot of flags and conditionals to keep track of. Option 2 is more of what I strive towards! But option 1 can turn out as a fine fun thing too, such as the game To The Moon. Which has a lot more production values than this of course, but yeah.

So, for this game, a good thing to clearly work towards is Haru and Rin having a romantic relationship. And managing that relationship would be interesting to do as well, but the first part will be the first goal. A lot of the gameplay for this kind of game is exploring surroundings and making choices in situations that have an impact later.

Of course I could also make them fight zombies. That's not quite as romantic, though.

[freeandjoy]

That's not quite as romantic, though.

lies, if there's anything fanfic has taught me it's that fighting zombies is totally romantic.

In all seriousness though, I probably could have made it a 1000 times more clearer but option 2 was what I was trying to aim for too, I can be terrible at explaining myself sometimes. I think your idea of starting off with Rin coming back and going off from there would be a better way to go though.

[fullofjoy]

Okay then! So what should be the plot as Rin returns? Both are of course aiming for the Olympics still, but how does their relationship develop from his return? How long should it be from Rin's departure until he comes back?

Making Rin Haru's roommate would also would out pretty well for a lot of things.

[freeandjoy]

I think Olympics/romance would be enough for the plotline. I also think you could do something with the fact that this will the first time they will on the same team since they were 12 I'm just not sure what (celebration dinner? renting a movie? something else?).

How long should it be from Rin's departure until he comes back?

2 years maybe. I don't really know shit about how this works, but I think that would be enough time for Rin to do everything that he wants to do in Australia.

[fullofjoy]

Hmm, sounds good... so, what places should I make the locations for? Haru's apartment or dorm or something, the pool they train at...

It makes sense! I don't know much either, I can revise that kind of info later.

[freeandjoy]

Other than those two places the only place I can think of is the airport for the reunion scene. If you do go for the celebration dinner idea it might be a good idea to make one for a restaurant too.

[fullofjoy]

Making them look like convincing locations is... hard... but they are fun to make.

I need to make up some scenarios too that happen in the middle. They'll have some day to day stuff but there's going to be some extraordinary stuff that happens between the beginning and the end. Any ideas for that?