- description of a fantasy world
- replayable adventure experience with many possibilities
- rather normal people living in a fantasy world
- realistic reactions in weird situations
- description of futuristic societies
- boys in the age, where they get interests in relationships, while still being more interested in action
- communicating some values, but with options not to accept them
- lives alone in city
- a bit chubby
- black, rather long hair
- light, pale skin
- stylish clothes
- prefers boys, pretty liberal
- lives with his tribe on nature island
- trained, feminine body
- brown, long hair
- slightly orange skin
- almost no clothes
- prefers girls, but does not think about it, so is open for everyone
- lives in village with mother
- avarage body
- dark blonde, rather short hair
- light, tanned skin
- robust clothes with many bags
- prefers girls, rather conservative
- friend of technological boy
- trained body
- badly shaved beard and unkempt hair
- rather dark skin
- robust agile clothes, suited for fighting
- gilfriend of nature boy, village boy also starts to like her
- slim body, small height
- black, straight avarage hair
- dark skin
- almost no clothes
- some girl living in the same small village as village boy
- the girl village boy likes most at home
- pretty calm girl
- most of the time at home to help her mother
- tends to wear old clothes
- often dirty and a bit stinky
- long, orange, curled slightly filted hair
- some friend of village boy coming from the city
- pretty good friend to village boy
- blonde hair
- knows some technologies from the city (internet)
- some boy living in some lonely island
- well trained body, small height
- light skin
- may accompany the technological ship
- possible boyfriend of city boy
- leader of the nature tribe
- fat body
- dark skin
- almost naked, but well decorated
- rather feminine look
- long, light blonde hair
- very light skin
- helpful to village boy
- gender neutral look
- long, red hair
- possible girlfriend of village boy
- there is no leader, but he has a comparable role
- skinny body with large height (for elves)
- looks still pretty young (about 50, looks like 20)
- mean boy living in the same room as nature boy
- also abducted by the nature army
- in the beginning stronger than nature boy
- will often hurt nature boy
- they may still become friends
- leader of some training group of the nature army
- praises nature boy when doing well
- will send nature boy to battle
- young man
- wears some armor
- leader of the nature army base
- adult man
- pretty creepy person
- captured in the nature army base
- slightly chubby, but still smooth skin
- light skin
- possible girlfriend to nature boy
- strong woman, prefers to fight alone
- very athletic, almost skinny, good warrior
- rather dark skin
- wears dirty, robust clothes
- very muscular
- rather light skin
- doesn't like to fight himself
- strong fighter anyway
- partially naked, but some chains and many weapons to protect himself
- young teen boy living on the pirate ship
- funny
- not that robust clothes
- mother of village boy
- caring mother
- often sad becuase her husband isn't at home
The story is the main focus of this game. It's a story about three boys. Each story is told in the view of the boy. In order to have a motivation to go on, there are multiple goals to reach for every main character, which the player can try to reach. The goals of the different characters may conflict.
He is a slightly chubby boy living in the city. He knows much about computers and likes to do programming and internet things most of the time. He often visited some nature island since he was young. He has some friends there. His best friend is some nature boy. But in the last time, he is not able to travel there anymore. So he decides to look for some way to get there. He meets some man online, who often is out with his ship and would like to have some companion. Since the ship man misses his son, who he would not want to go on a ship, and got a programmable engine for his ship, he likes the idea of having this boy with him. The boy hopes they will be able to visit his friend, but doesn't want to tell about this yet, so the ship man doesn't choose someone different. They really go to the island after some time, but his friend isn't there anymore. He was kidnapped.
Goals:
- rescue friend
- help man with ship
- find boyfriend partner
He lives on some nature island and has a nice time there. He already has a girlfriend, he really likes and also has many friends. But after some time he gets kidnapped by some weird organization. He has to do, what they want, else he would get punished. He is not sure, if he should just surrender or if he should try to escape. It's probably best to do what they want for now and maybe escape later, when they trust him.
Goals:
- escape
- train fighting skills
- return to girlfriend or find new partners
He has a good live in a small village and often plays with some other kids of his age. But sometimes, even if he's happy, he feels something is missing. Maybe it's his father, who only comes home very seldom, but maybe he just has to find some important hobby. He thinks if he should try to steal some boat to search his father.
Goals:
- find father
- find
- find girlfriend
- initial setting for village boy
- some other people living there
- sometimes visited by ship man
- initial setting for nature boy
- important setting for
- another nature island with much to discover and only a few people
- main setting for technical boy
- main setting for ship man
- main setting for nature boy
- the leaders want to conquer the world
- they have training areas, sleeping rooms and fun areas with girls
- important setting for village boy
- strong magic elf warriors live there
- elves want to protect the region
- important setting for nature boy
- multiple ships
- place where the pirates live
- main charactres may be here as friends or captivated
- an island to meet some pirates
- a good place to hide
- an island near the city
- people with values from city can live there without surveillance
- major attack goal for the nature army
First you have to select the main character you want to play as. Most of the story is told in a visual novel style using text boxes and character images.
But sometimes you can also walk around in some basic 2D world, what will be called interactive mode. The world only contains a background and simple objects with ball collision masks to represent persons and walls. Besides of walking, you can also interact with some objects like with people by talking to them. Walking and interactions are the most important controls, but there may be a few special controls to make walking around more interesting. Most of the walkable scenes are pretty small. Entering or leaving a scene is normally story based. Normally you just choose some object to interact with and a new character.
You progress by deciding for some action. You decide by either selecting some action or answer in a visual novel like dialog or by interacting with objects in interactive mode. The available actions you can do depend on previous decisions.
You can switch between available main characters all the time. Decisions made as one character may also influence available actions for other characters. Some actions will only be availabe after some actions have been done in the story line of another character.
First you enter the title screen. There some menu opens, where you can select one of the main story lines, start a new game, load and save the current state, and edit some options. This menu can be opened anytime in the game. When you select a story line, the last progress on the currently loaded state of this story line will be loaded. If the current story line is new, the initial state will be loaded. When starting the game for the first time, the current state will be new by default. When there already is some save state, the most recent state will be loaded automatically.
Multiple scenes will be drawn in different layers, drawn one after another:
- the world background
- the world objects
- the scene background
- the scene person
- the scene text
- the menu
The title screen may be represented as scene background. For interactive mode, the scene layers are most likely empty. When talking or reading, the scene text will be shown. The scene person may also be shown in some dialogs in interactive mode. For longer, visual novel like scenes, the scene background will be shown all the time. The scene background can also be used for some special images like specific situations with multiple persons.
Depending on the situation, the interactive scene will be paused while scene text is active, but when the scene background is active, it should be paused. The reason for different backgrounds is the ability to show scene backgrounds without the need of disableing or unloading the world objects.
By storing the progress in a simple format, which only shows the decisions made, it's easy to add new story lines without breaking the existing story. These can include new main characters and new options for existing characters. This way it's easy to create updates to the game. It's also suitable for sequels, where every decision from the prequel can be taken into account, which even would allow some episodic game, so it's possible to release a small sequel every few months. It's easy to create different versions. Examples would be a text only version, a version with less text or an interactive movie. It's also possible to add versions with different story details, but same story structure, like some version more suited for kids or more suited for adults.
- character selection (1 day)
- visual novel style interface (2 days)
- interactive scenes (1 day)
- switching (2 days)
- add story system (3 days)
- more advanced features to include every resource in a simple way (7 days)
- all possible story event dependencies and a general idea for every event (5 days)
- write down a slightly more detailled story for each event (5 days)
- decide how to select specific events and which mode to use (3 days)
- write every dialog and narrative (25 days)
- a visual novel image of every important character, sometimes with different attitudes (15 days)
- at least a single walking animation for main characters (2 day)
- backgrounds/maps for walkable areas (3 days)
- some wall objects in the world (4 days)
- some interactive objects in the world like persons, sometimes with animations (6 days)
- UI polishing (3 days)
- background music (8 days)
- sound effects (4 days)
- build interactive scenes (6 days)
- connect events with dialog, narrative and animations (4 days)
- some polishing (5 days)