Wowowow I Didn't Think People Would Actually Donate Without Some Kind Of Tier Rewards Or Something But

Wow this it a very ambitious project for one person. Have you made a game before or is this your first one?

Yeah it is definitely ambitious, but thankfully there are a lot of plugins and community support (if I get stuck and have a question) to help streamline a lot of it. And I'm not drawing my own map assets, those are purchased. Music is a mix of assets I donated for and someone I know making it.

So you'll see in the credits more people than me, I guess technically I'm not doing it all alone! I just don't have a team of people, so I do all the programming and scripting for the actual gameplay, map design, writing, character design/art and piecing it all together.

I have made one much smaller game before just to learn the basics of game logic and my software, which it turns out is mostly super intuitive, at least with RPG Maker. I've never released anything though.

Hiya! I'm excited for the game! It all looks amazing. The art, characters, story! I love Kage! Especially his yandere~

I like the saying:

I can fix him I can make him worse.

I was wondering what inspired you to make the game? Or the inspiration of the characters?

Again, good job on the game! I'm rooting for you!!! Sending you all my support!

Blargh you've hit me right in the feels here, I'm so glad you like Kage and the game ;w;

The neat thing about this game is that "I can fix him (or make him worse)" is kind of a core concept/overall theme of it, though in kind of an unusual way that I don't want to reveal online since it would spoil it a bit. But I think you will enjoy the game (I hope)!

The game inspiration is a little weird. It was just over a month ago that I started this, not too long after finishing the game Omori, which is also an indie game made in the same engine that I am using for my game (Omori is actually how I learned about this game engine's existence).

If you're unfamiliar with Omori, mental health and trauma are major themes in the game, and I loved how they combined that with sweet and sentimental themes too. It was just a really touching game that hit close to home to me. My game is definitely very different, but does deal with mental health/trauma and uses the same engine.

The other inspiration is going to sound terrible, but I was literally searching online for yandere games to play, and of course the first one that popped up in searches was Yandere Simulator, and since I literally live in a cave I didn't know about it. I went to the game's website and wasn't really impressed with it, didn't care for the art or design or any of it, the only thing I liked was the idea of playing as a yandere and stalking your crush, but it sounds like the game is stuck forever in demo/testing mode and won't ever be finished anyway.

Also the lack of male yanderes was disappointing, but whatever, not every game is made for me. :) But I thought, wouldn't it be cute to go the other way with it, and make a game where YOU are being stalked by a yandere who is obsessed with you...? I did find a TON of visual novels online that have that as a theme, but I personally prefer RPG style games where there is some gameplay and you can move your character around, so I decided to go for that instead, from what I can see there are way less of those available with a male yandere stalker. In fact, I haven't found ANY so far, but I probably just didn't look hard enough.

Kage is kind of an externalized (and somewhat exaggerated) expression of all my own weird traumas, insecurities, and issues, which isn't something I'm super proud of but also something I've had to work really to overcome, which I AM proud of. He's like my "shadow" self if you're familiar with Jungian psychology, which is why I named him "Kage," it's just Japanese for "shadow" lol.

Sorry, that was a really long-winded response so...thanks for the question and coming to my TedTalk...and for your support <3

Back to working on the customization options for the character creator at the start of the game. Working on getting more clothing options and accessories in (getting rid of the ugly placeholder hats etc.). See this post and this older one for more info on that.

Also got rid of the weird giant red flowers that were locked to the twin tail hair before. Kind of made it hard to accessorize that hairstyle when those were already "built-in."

And obviously you can be a variety of colors in terms of skin/hair/eyes, these are just "base values" shown that hues can be shifted from in the generator.

I've added more in than this but I didn't feel like making samples of all the new stuff.

Also made the Save menu a little more user-friendly, like showing information on each unique save file (like the in-game location you saved at, amount of $ on that save, in-game date and time and which characters you've met, in case anyone wants multiple save files and needs to keep track of them without having to load a save just to see where they are). RPG Maker also doesn't come built-in with an option to delete a save file from the save menu for some reason, so that's been added too.

EDIT Also, none of the clothing or hair options are locked to the body types, but some of the outfits might not layer properly on certain types (mainly the largest body type with broader shoulders will clip through a lot of the smaller-framed clothes). Unfortunate but that's a limitation of working with 2-D pixel art

omg i didn't even look at the background i was too distracted by kage but the pixel work is so well done wtf... i love the room and the bits of mc's personality we see.... also having tumblr in the game is something i haven't seen before haha im super excited to see more updates hehe

Thank you thank you, I can't take credit for the pixel work, these are assets I paid for from 3 different artists who will be in the credits :) I just combined their tiles to design the maps and set up which ones "collide" with the player etc.

I wish I could do the pixels myself, but I would literally never finish the game if I had to make all the assets from scratch 🫠 I know you're not saying I should, that's just me justifying things to myself haha.

Plus they all did a fantastic job right? There's a plot relevant reason MC has a childish bedroom despite being an adult, and she's a very private person who doesn't normally let people in her room, so that's also gonna come up.

Tumblr in the game was something I decided to add yesterday I think? I thought some kind of social media should be included since it's a pseudo dating sim set in a sort of sci fi modern world.

Edit also if you see this edit can I get your opinion on something? Do you think I should try making Kage semi transparent in this sequence? And his hand holding the phone? I'm wondering if that would make it more clear that he's not in the room with MC (I mean I guess it will be obvious during actual gameplay, but maybe it would feel more like a "vision" if he was semi transparent)

Oohhh weird question but will we occasionally catch a glimpse of Kage while moving around the map? Like when we go out to the shops does he follow us?

I'm very excited for this game 💕👑

There's always some evidence of him being not too far from the player, though I'm still looking at different ways to portray that, and it probably won't be just one thing or way of knowing.

I'm hoping to make some neat moments like that too though, where you can "spot him in the wild" :)

Honestly it's just super cool you give us the option to choose clothes, you don't have to put stats on them if you don't want to, that seems like a lot of work for you 🥺

Hey thank you, honestly I think I needed a voice of reason here, and you're probably right. I would probably have to figure out balancing and stuff for the clothes if I did that. I'm hoping to give these as "mission rewards" so adding stats to them really could get too complicated.

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abrokecupoftea just bought 2-Headed Boy a Forbidden Candy on Ko-fi! ❤️

Ko-fi lets you support creators you love with donations, memberships and shop sales!

Thank you @abrokecupoftea you the real mvp :3 this is going straight back into the game 🩶

do you wanna pick the next map I make, between the interior of the haunted house at the carnival or the interior for the cat cafe? Donor's choice (I also already spent some of the $ on some more pixels for designing another mall shop, should have footage of that posted tonight)

To the anon who asked if the cats at the cafe are adoptable, here's a small demo of how that will work. You can adopt only once/one cat per save file.

But what you can do an infinite amount of times is change your cat's accessory, so if you gave it a collar and later want to have it wear a bow or flower, or change the color of the bow/flower/collar, you can do that any time from your apartment wardrobe.

Before you can adopt a cat you have to get it to a friendly status with you at the cafe, by playing with it (use the laser pointer, I'll probably add a feather toy or something too).

Cat cafe is a key element of boyfriend option Yurei's route; playing with the cats and adopting one will get you points with him. More on that later!

I'm also working on a little special something for people who donate to the game, that will be related to cat cafe.

Unrelated note here, I don't know how many people have been paying attention to the in-game clock in the videos, but some may have noticed that before it was moving like...crazy fast, a second for a minute. I realize that would make crazy pacing in the game and probably be stressful. Right now I have it set to pass in real time, so a minute in the game takes a minute in real life.

BUT you can fast forward time with various in game activities so you're not time-gated (you can skip 8 hours by sleeping, or 2 hours with a nap, as a couple of examples).

Edit: Also, time passage is not tied to your computer's clock or anything like that. Time doesn't pass in the game unless you are actually running the game (it's not like Animal Crossing for example, where time passes in the game whether you are playing or not).

Just a brief check in here since I realize it's been almost a week since I posted any updates here; I took a couple of days off for some personal business but I am still working on the game. Unfortunately I don't have much to show for it at this time because it's story writing. I have written it into the game, arranged the chibi sprite movement routes and all that, but I haven't drawn any art for a while, so posting screenshots would be kind of boring, and I don't want to post a video sequence because I'm not trying to do too many spoilers here...

But please trust I'm still working! I've also added options for the player to do their own keybinds since RPG Maker defaults to arrow keys and z/x for select and cancel. I don't know if I mentioned that already on here, but I remember playing Omori and how awkward it felt to not be able to do the traditional WASD keyboard movement, so players can set things up that way if they want to from the options menu.

Also I got it set up so that you can type things into the game when prompted for things like naming your player or putting in a word or numbers rather than having to use arrow keys to scroll through an on-screen alphabet, because that's also annoying as hell imo. But mostly it's been writing I'm working on.

I hope to have something interesting to show you guys soon though, like actual screenshots or something, I just have to get back into drawing.

Sorry about the weird creepy silence for the last couple of days, I had a pretty gross head cold so my head felt about 50% larger than normal for a few days there, and I've been kind of busy expelling all kind of unspeakable evil from my face holes.

Mostly over it now, but all I really did during that time was work on the character creator a bit more, work on some menu organization for the game and other backend things (trying to future-proof the game for installment release and other stuff), and also this thing in the video.

I was thinking about the seasonal produce ingredients for cooking, and how players might end up making something they don't actually want/have a use for, and then not only being stuck with that dish, but also having lost their seasonal produce they used to make it. If they ran out of that seasonal ingredient, they're kind of screwed until the next time that produce is available/in-season, as far as making any other dishes goes.

So besides adding the option to discard unwanted items from your inventory, I've also set up an item called the "Unmaker" that can be used to break down creations back into their base ingredients. The Unmaker is a consumable item, meaning you can only use it once per dish then it disappears from your inventory. In this video demo I have 5 of them, so you'll see that amount go down with each use.

Right now I have the percentage chances of successfully getting your ingredients back set pretty high (100% for the seasonal ingredients and 60% for all other ingredients) but I'm sure I'll end up adjusting these after doing some playtesting.