Shady Characters

Devblog #18

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

I am not good at writing prose. Maybe some of you have noticed that. Maybe you didn't. But I am. So, with this sudden revelation, some of you might be eager to ask: "Why the hell did you decide to make a game that is mostly prose, Shady One"? And I will answer: because that the only thing I felt more or less comfortably programming and designing at that point. I am not new to writing per se, but I am much more used to writing scripts. When writing a script, you need to be concise, focus on ...

Devblog #17

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

Still being out of town and out of my usual element, I almost forgot to write this weeks blog entry too. By only just "almost". So here I am, ready to share the news on the game development.

The most interesting part of the last two weeks' development was, of course, the arrival of two last music tracks that we consider a "necessary core" for our soundtrack. These two brought us to the total of six tracks, which we will build upwards from. But with these six tracks completed, I start...

Devblog #16

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

I have been doing these for a few months now, so I start wondering what you as our followers expect from these blogs. Development progress updates? Creator updates? Insights on the process of game development in general? All of the above? Something else entirely that I could not imagine or comprehend myself? Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn... Khem, sorry got a little carried away there.

But that little chthonic incident just now made me think about one of the most i...

New Builds 0.1.8 (public), 0.1.10 (alpha)

Hey, wizards!

The game is now available for android devises!

New game builds are up with 0.1.10a available in alpha:

New content:
-Added sprites for Thorgny and Bassant for all their respective events

Misc:
-Small fixes to multiple of the girls' sprites

Fixes:
-Fixed Meave not actually taking the money if you pay her
-Fixed the stat deterioration hints appearing even if none of your stats actually decreased
-Fixed the bug where Tiernan and Gallagher didn't actually leave during the self-study even...

Beta Build 0.1.9b

Changes in v. 0.1.9b:

New content:
-Added artwork for fairy queen Maeve event
-Added artwork for Gwen's third event
-Added two new items to the town store
-Added tooltips for main stats
-You can now get tips on "fateful encounters" during Divination Classes.

Balance
-"Rest" now restores 36 stamina (24 before)
-"Enjoy town" now restores 40 stamina (32 before)
-"Take Bath" now restores batween 1 and 48 stamina (1 and 36 before)
-Classes become more effective a bit soone and lose efficiency a bit later (ab...

Alpha Build 0.1.10a

Changes in v. 0.1.10a:

New content:
-Added sprites for Thorgny and Bassant for all their respective events

Misc:
-Small fixes to multiple of the girls' sprites

Fixes:
-Fixed Meave not actually taking the money if you pay her
-Fixed the stat deterioration hints appearing even if none of your stats actually decreased
-Fixed the bug where Tiernan and Gallagher didn't actually leave during the self-study event
-Fixed the bug where you could not switch corridors with the Steel Sentry door during the Trial of Mi...

Devblog #15

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

This week flew by like it never even was there. I could swear to you that it feels like it was only yesterday that I was writing the previous devblog, and now I am already here doing another one of these. Sadly, it seems that weeks like this will still be an entity in our development cycle as as long as this is a passion project and not something we are doing full-time. But even as is, there was some work that both me and Shady Character Two managed to complete.

And besides finishing ...

Devblog #14

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

It is time for another devblog already. To be honest, I a have been is a bit of a writers slump the last couple of weeks, so the progress on the writing was slower than I hoped it would be. I was planning on adding another event that would introduce a "rival" character that would give players additional stimuli to train appeal, and kind of show off its bonuses in the process. But after several hours of trying, I just could not make the event work the way I wanted it too. Making the "rival" ...

Some bonus NSFW sketches from Shady Two

New Builds 0.1.7 (public), 0.1.9 (alpha)

Hey, wizards!

The game is now available for android devises!

New game builds are up with 0.1.9a available in alpha:

New content:
-Added artwork for fairy queen Maeve event
-Added artwork for Gwen's third event
-Added two new items to the town store
-Added tooltips for main stats
-You can now get tips on "fateful encounters" during Divination Classes.

Balance
-"Rest" now restores 36 stamina (24 before)
-"Enjoy town" now restores 40 stamina (32 before)
-"Take Bath" now restores batween 1 and 48 s...

Beta Build 0.1.8b

Changes in v. 0.1.8b:

New content:
-Added events for learning Teleportation and Animal Form spell
-Added an event queen fairy (Explore)
-You can now train your extracurricular spells during Spell Practice
-Added sprites for fairy queen Maeve
-Added backgrounds for the Pub and School corridors

Balance:
-Exam difficulty was reworked a bit more. It is now much less effected by stamina

Fixes:
-Fixed a bug that could cause an endless loop or skip the next activity if you bet on smaller pixie during corgi jou...

Alpha Build 0.1.9a

Changes in v. 0.1.9a:

New content:
-Added artwork for fairy queen Maeve event
-Added artwork for Gwen's third event
-Added two new items to the town store
-Added tooltips for main stats
-You can now get tips on "fateful encounters" during Divination Classes.

Balance
-"Rest" now restores 36 stamina (24 before)
-"Enjoy town" now restores 40 stamina (32 before)
-"Take Bath" now restores batween 1 and 48 stamina (1 and 36 before)
-Classes become more effective a bit soone and lose efficiency a bit later (ab...

Devblog #13

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

This one was a slower week, and I don't really have anything specific to talk about, so I will tell you about some progress that we made. I was mostly focusing on the smoothing out some of the rougher parts of the game in hopes of making the gameplay flow a bit better. The exams got a bit more description, some UI elements were improved, tooltips were added to stats, etc.

I also finally decided to expand the Divination Class, not it not only affects your luck stat, but it also can gi...

Devblog #12

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

You know what? Balancing a game is hard (not 'normal' or 'easy'). You really need to maneuver between it not being too easy and not having people drop the game after ten minutes of not understanding if it is their fault or the game's. I really don't want the game to be a clicking exercise. I want the players to feel good about the milestones they are reaching. Which means that the game must be difficult to a degree.

This week I made the first major revision to the difficulty, it will ...

Concept Art Pack 2

More concepts art of girls.

Early concepts of Lily with her first lineart version

 Some Ciara concepts and sketches Concepts and drafts for Bassant. School uniform and casual Some Aisling drafts2024-10-06 09:04:49 +0000 UTC View Post

New Builds 0.1.6 (public), 0.1.8 (alpha)

Hey, wizards!

The game is now available for android devises!

New game builds are up with 0.1.8 available in alpha:

New content:

-Added events for learning Teleportation and Animal Form spell
-Added an event queen fairy (Explore)
-You can now train your extracurricular spells during Spell Practice
-Added sprites for fairy queen Maeve
-Added backgrounds for the Pub and School corridors

Balance:
-Exam difficulty was reworked a bit more. It is now much less effected by stamina

Fixes:
-Fixed a...

Alpha Build 0.1.8a

Changes in v. 0.1.8a:

New content:

-Added events for learning Teleportation and Animal Form spell

-Added an event queen fairy (Explore)

-You can now train your extracurricular spells during Spell Practice

-Added sprites for fairy queen Maeve

-Added backgrounds for the Pub and School corridors

Balance:

-Exam difficulty was reworked a bit more. It is now much less effected by stamina

Fixes:

-Fixed a bug that could cause an endless loop or skip the next activity if you be...

Beta Build 0.1.7b

Changes in v. 0.1.7b:

New content:

- Added Shopping to the town, you can now buy some items there

- Added a new event during Study

Balance:

- Slightly lowered the exam difficulty

Fixes:

- Fixed a crash in the "Corgi jousting" event if your luck was not an integer

- Fixed a crash in "Cockatrice egg hunt" event

Misc:

- Reworked "History" interface

- Added autosave every Monday

Download links:

Mega

2024-09-30 14:40:12 +0000 UTC View Post

Devblog #11

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

This is not me on the picture above. That's Maeve, the fairy queen. We do think that she will be our mascot character from now on. Not sure how that will work out, but I do like the general idea.
Her artwork and the event that introduces her into the world of Tír na nÓg are the two things that I and Shady Character Two focused on this past week. She will be just a minor character in the game,...

Devblog #10

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

Most of things that I was doing this last week was connected with the last more or less major mechanic in the game, the extracurricular spells. You will be able to find, buy or learn those during your playthrough and train them with Practice Spells activity to get extra options during certain random and story events. It took me some time to plan the training speed and its implementation, but the rough draft of the mechanic is now in along with two first spells - Teleportation and Animal For...

Devblog #9

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

A LOT was done during this past week. First of all, let's get the the small stuff out of the way. I did some major optimizations to the code. Currently, the calendar system is by fast the most cumbersome and over-engineered in the game (it had more than 6000 lines of code which dwarfed every other singular module in the game). Thankfully due to a sudden epiphany I came up with a way to cut that down by almost 40%. Yay! It is still the biggest single block of code in the game, but it is much...

New Builds 0.1.5 (public), 0.1.7 (alpha)

Hey, wizards!

The game is now available for android devises!

New game builds are up with 0.1.7 available in alpha
Alpha changes:

New content:
- Added Shopping to the town, you can now buy some items there
- Added a new event during Study

Balance:
- Slightly lowered the exam difficulty

Fixes:
- Fixed a crash in the "Corgi jousting" event if your luck was not an integer
- Fixed a crash in "Cockatrice egg hunt" event

Misc:
- Reworked "History" interface
- Added autosave every Monday 2024-09-16 12:20:31 +0000 UTC View Post

Beta Build 0.1.6b

Changes in v. 0.1.6b:

New content:

- The Trial of Mind finished

- Added a new event during Enchantment class

- Reworked how History tab works. Can now be opened and closed by mouse wheel

- Added artwork to broom-racing event

- Added artwork for Lily's introduction scene in House Talamhdan

- Added sprites for Hope, the pub owner

Balance:

- Lowered requirements for Lily's second event trigger

Download links:

Mega

2024-09-16 12:15:37 +0000 UTC View Post

Alpha Build 0.1.7a

Changes in v. 0.1.7a:

New content:

- Added Shopping to the town, you can now buy some items there

- Added a new event during Study

Balance:

- Slightly lowered the exam difficulty

Fixes:

- Fixed a crash in the "Corgi jousting" event if your luck was not an integer

- Fixed a crash in "Cockatrice egg hunt" event

Misc:

- Reworked "History" interface

- Added autosave every Monday

Download links:

Mega

2024-09-16 12:12:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Devblog #8

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

Since Shady Two was out of town for the whole last week, I decided to turn my attention to the much requested feature - android version of the game. Thankfully, Ren'py does a lot of heavy lifting in this regard, so the whole thing turned out to be much easier than I expected. Still, a lot of thing need to be done before I can be confident enough to roll it out. Some part of the interface need to b...

Devblog #7

Hey, Wizards!

Shady Character One here!

Last week was a very fun and strange one. I finally found courage to get back to interface coding after writing mostly events for a long time. A lot of people kept complaining about the lack of rollback and and "History" being inconvenient to get to. So I thought that it was time to get something done about this. After several hours of coding, looking through documentation and consulting people of discord, I finally managed to make "History" tab that would open with a wheel roll-up, and clo...

New Builds 0.1.4 (public), 0.1.6 (alpha)

Hey, wizards!

New game builds are up with 0.1.6 available in alpha
Alpha changes:

- The Trial of Mind finished

- Added a new event during Enchantment class

- Reworked how History tab works. Can now be opened and closed by mouse wheel

- Added artwork to broom-racing event

- Added artwork for Lily's introduction scene in House Talamhdan

- Added sprites for Hope, the pub owner

- (Fix) Lowered requirements for Lily's second event trigger

If you are eligible for alpha or beta versio...