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POINTLESS


There is a tumblr for the game, located at thepointlessgame.tumblr.com for more consistent updates!

This was originally 'Fenbrook', but since then has been revamped to make it more awesome.

Putting everything together, this is SO MUCH MORE than just a dating sim. It's getting to be more like a random adventure game with dating sim elements in it. And it should be illegal to have as much fun with it as I'm having o_____o

This is the game I want to play. It has all the stuff that I wish all games had: Coherent storylines, quirky characters, a ton of totally kickass things to do, more than just two or three people to woo, very GLBTQ friendly, with a side of geek and the supernatural.

I'm doing art and story, and my fiance is doing the programming



:SPECIAL FEATURES:

In the main town of Fenbrook, you don't just get a map to click on various areas and immediately transported... you get to walk to streets. If you get to the bus station, you can travel to different towns as well, but I think you can only walk the streets in Fenbrook, so the other towns with just have the map.

The base for the playing character was drawn in such a way that it is genderless: So you can be a boy or a girl, your skin can be white, black, blue, green (there are a few alternatives!) and wear whatever clothes/hairstyle you’d like. And you can decorate your apartment, and upgrade stuff.

You can get clothes at the mall, and go to the Salon to change your hairstyle, and that sort of thing.

In your apartment building's foyer, you recieve snail mail. Literally: You have a mailbox in your apartment building you can check. And you get mail from your mom. She's sends you money! And care packages! You also will probably get notices there from the town and school telling you about upcoming events, and junk mail like store coupons.

There are seasonal events where you can get special items As well as contests with totally awesome prizes.

Achievments! There will be achievements.

It's free to play, but you can donate and get in-game money. You'll never have to donate to unlock new areas, or anything like that, donators and non-donators all have access to the same areas. (I hate it when online games do that ). However, there will be special donator items you can get, to make your avatar look pretty and there is a totally cool set of "Pigs with Clothes" Donator items that reset your stats to "0".

There will be a lot of super-secret items and events for you to stumble upon as well! I'm also a huge fandom geek, so there will probably be a ton of sneaky references to Supernatural, Sherlock, Doctor Who, My Little Pony, Avengers, Gravity Falls, etc.



: DATEABLE CHARACTERS:

There are a LOT of them, both male and female. I've redesigned them (again, hopefully for the last time)! Here's a shirtless one. There are a few versions of him, in different outfits, but I thought you'd appreciate shirtles Jason Baker::





Almost everyone is dateable, male and female.


: SPECIAL ITEMS :

There are cards you can collect throughout the game which feature the characters. There will also be limited edition holiday cards.

: GAMEPLAY :

You have an item inventory and personality stats on a sliding scale. Like, one stat would be like a sliding scale from "Kind" to "Mean", basically your Good to Evil scale. And you start at "0" and as you go, decisions you make will move you: "+10 to Mean" and "+5 to Kind", which would leave you at a +5 to Mean.

Your stats effect how well people like you. Elian is fond of people who are kind, so if your stats are in Kind side of the sliding scale and you talk to him and give an answer that's a +5 to Kind, then you will also get a +5 to Elian liking you. But it's a double edged sword. If your stats are on the Mean side of the scale and you reply with an answer that gives you a +5 to Mean, then you recieve a -5 to him liking you. If your stats are in the Kind and you answer something that give you a +5 to mean, then you only get a -2 to him liking you. Alternatively, if your stats are in the Mean and you answer a +5 to kind, then you get a +2 to him liking you.

YAY GAME MECHANICS?

There are several choices and ways to affect your stats throughout the game.

Here's a mock-up I did of Elian hanging outside of your apartment door. This isn't an actual written scene in the game, but it might be.



And here's a mock-up of one of many sketch pages you find, during an event:



:THE WRITING:

Since I'm actually a writer in real life, I'm having a ball with this.




: UPDATES :

Oct 23, 2012: Finished the mainscreen UI design! YAY NARWHAL! Working on background stuff! In the UI, the black space is where the game part will go, where you move around areas and stuff. The little person to the right, is the playing character! I dressed it up in a face, hair and clothes for your benefit, so it wouldn't be just a blank slate!

Oct. 26, 2012:
Working on more GUI. Got the mail system done, working on the Love You Long Time Meter. My darling fiance started the coding today, and its going awesome. Seven different characters completed so far (in three outfits: naked, casual, formal) and nine backgrounds. YAY. Lots of new ideas for story, in-game play, and mini-games. Stay tuned for the Sheepasaurus Rex designs!

Oct. 27, 2012:
Finished most of the GUI - just a few left for the Love you Long Time Meter, working on writing out plots and character profiles. And then back to creating more characters, and college classes. Nicky is doing coding in HTML, PHP and JQuery. He got most of the HTL part done yesturday and a lot of swearing to accompany the JQuery. More swearing to come today!

Nov. 6, 2012

ELF SWAG.


Dec. 29th, 2012
A little lag there, over the holidays (I have a husband and two little boys so holiday swag hits this household full force). At the moment, Pointless has some really cool easter egg content, a few new characters and I've been working on the background art and developing some features (such as embedded flash mini-games).


Jan 30th, 2013
33% of coding completed. I've created and designed more player outfits (including themed ones), and some neat in-game swag. The GUI is about 90% done, now. My digital painting skills have gotten wicked better.



and... and... It was my birthday on the 22nd, so I celebrated by inventing... LE CAKE MAN OUTFIT.




Feb 25th, 2013
Coding is almost good to the point where I can do a test play of a scene! I'm excited like you would not believe.

I've decided to update some of the background art. It might take a little longer, but it will look 10x better, and I want it to be the best it can possibly be.



I've also started working on some quests, and creating other areas to travel to via the bus station. I don't want to spoil you, but one of the areas may-or-may-not be a parody storyline about a certain pair of vampire siblings who both fall in love with the same person in a small town called Fantasy Falls (What can I say, guilty pleasure).


Feb 28th, 2013
This is going really well. Almost done all the Park backgrounds (There are 13 in total). I'm going to sweep through and do all the backgrounds lineart and then color them in a little later. I just really need to get their designs out of the way. They do look really cool though, with just the lineart.



I'm going to update this post later, to maybe make it a bit more organized.

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The art style, story, and gameplay are right up my alley. I love your character designs. I'm reminded of Day of the Tentacle, one of my most favorite games ever.

FINISH THIS

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I WILL.

There's a looot of art and stuff that goes into it. But it's going to be totally awesome when it's live

The designs there are just the Playing Character, made in various random stuff. You can pick the mouth, eyes, hair, shirt, pants and shoes of the character you play.

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The game is going to be at least 16+. For violence, and alcohol and mature subject matter. But no naked things, so don't get your hopes up xD

Here are just two of the many characters for you to woo

ANTON: Who seems cool, until he opens his mouth to talk. He's basically your stalker:


KIRSTEN: Dear God, this poor tragic boy. POOR. TRAGIC. BOY. I will not spoil you.


KIRSTEN, YOU ARE PRECIOUS.

I love that character >.>

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I absolutely love the look of this game. Kirsten looks so cute. ^_^ and i love his quote, it's so sweet. most defintely something I would (and will) play.

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Seraph and Hellion (Complete)

DreamWalker (WIP with Junna)

The Gardener Did It! (I did not!) (WIP)

Yay! I HOPE YOU WILL PLAY IT

Kirsten is my favorite, I modeled his hair after David Tennant's 10th Doctor. (shhh dont tell, I dont think Im allowed to have a favorite, since I'm the dev! xD)

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Maybe it's just me, but the name "Fenbrook" sounds like a place name from a standard fantasy setting rather than real life... Let us know if the name has a specific meaning in your game.

Also, if I may ask, what sort of software are you and your significant other currently using to create your game?



I like some games which let the player walk around the game world, and often interact with NPCs. But if there's a constantly running clock, I will be less likely to enjoy it. Especially if the clock can't be stopped. I was able to cope with Harvest Moon Back to Nature and The Sims Bustin' Out (GBA), but my interest in Chulip wavered after the intro ended and the timer started.



Good idea... though this sounds like an ambitious project. You will need a lot of dedication and passion to get this done. And you'll need to plan carefully to get the features you want into the game.

Will this be a single player game, or will players be able to interact in any way? Also, it sounds like you're planning to release the game for free, but you will enable donations. I have read a number of video game industry articles in which people argue over whether free-to-play will be important as video games continue to evolve. Do you have any opinion on this?

The name is just the name of the town, no particular deeper meaning behind it, I just thought it sounded cool. ^.^;;
I'm doing the art in Photoshop CS2, he'll be programming in PHP and Flash.



There is no clock, I hate that too (although on Harvest Moon I managed to find an in-game loophole that allowed my character to run around all night without passing out). We haven't quite figured out this bit yet, but it might work as: You get a certain amount of Stamina points and you use those up going around certain areas - like the college, the park, and the other playing areas. You can travel the streets, the shops, and your apartment building without using up your stamina. And you get new stamina points every day to play with.



Oh I KNOW. But I love planning and I spend about 60% of my time doing fancy elaborate arts and then scrapping it when I'm done, so it's a good focus. It doesn't really seem like work at all, it's just really fun to do.



Still working on player/player interaction ideas, but at the moment all I have is: the player has an actual physical mailbox in the lobby of their apartment that they can send and receive letters from other players.



Free-to-Play with enabled donations are the best games ever People can play them and if they really like it, they'll support the creators and willfully give donations - as opposed to the creators forcing people to pay in order to unlock areas or character classes. Just look at KoL (Kingdom of Loathing). That's a free-to-play game, and it's making enough money on donations to support their entire dev team.

It's a similar decline with console games - some of the games released are skeletal at best, and to get all the content, you have to buy it at the online store (Disney Adventures, I'm glaring at youu). And some of the games are so focused on graphics that their storylines suuuuck (re: the ending of Assassins Creed: Brotherhood. Seriously. WTF? W. T. F?). People are basically being driven to game online and, when they get here, the free-to-play ones are getting the most exposure. Yknow. Cause they're free

But that's just my own humble opinion. What do I know.

I'll just step off that soapbox now...

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Haiwaii?! What mystical land could this be??
Jokes aside, you really outta proofread your first post. You seem to have accidentally placed a colon before the word "Dateable" in your Datable Character heading, rendering " ATEABLE CHARACTERS."

I like your art style quite a bit, but the left arm on the genderless base is really bothering me >__>;; Don't let my personal opinion stop you if that's what you were going for though! This definitely sounds like an ambitious project and I wish you luck.

Not just you (.__.);; I actually clicked the title because I thought this was going to be a fantasy game xD

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tumblr | twitter | I believe in you!

It's been almost a month. If I may ask, how is this project going?

The artwork is lovely, I must say. That's just quality ^^
When I look at Anton, I'm reminded of Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler, Yu-Gi-Oh!). Must be the hair.
So long as Kirsten doesn't turn into an Emo, he'll be an awesome character.
Deliliah seems like the "Cute Goof" that every college group has. Nice!
Sorry to say this, but Tiffy... Oh my word, she looks like the College Bike.

I'll keep an eye on this myself. Seems very ambitious! ^^

Peace and Love,
Squark

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Peace and Love,
Squark

Current Projects:
Universal Hope
Raven Hollow (on hold for now)

OKAY I HAVE A TITLE NOW

It's called "Pointless"! And I'm redoing a bunch of graphics, but I created the UI so that makes me happy ^___^

I'll put the UI in the first post so you don't have to dig around to see it!

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I'm SO SORRY, I JUST saw your post o___o

It's going well! I have a few backgrounds done, a UI, a game screen mock-up, finally a character art style that I'm pleased with... I've started in on the writing and am quickly learning how to draw really cool looking vector backgrounds. I have a lot of the game mechanics figured out... Hopefully it won't be too long before I can put something like an early stage alpha for you guys to test play! <3

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Thanks for updating. I was worried that this project had stalled, but I'm glad to hear that it's still active.

I stated earlier that the title "Fenbrook" sounded like a location from fantasy fiction. It's not a bad name, though it's a bit vague. So why did you choose to change it to "Pointless"? It seems to have only negative connotations. You might want to consider a different title. Are you trying to tell fans that you're creating a sandbox-style game with no set ending or goals?

A less important note: the colorful logo that you're using looks a bit similar to the one that 4Kids Entertainment used in its last years. The company's legacy is mostly negative. I admit that any logo similarities might be a coincidence.

One thing that worries me... You may benefit by only including a moderate amount of comedy. About five years ago, there was a professionally made game called Brooktown High that sounds vaguely similar to what you're creating. I didn't find the gameplay all that appealing (kind of like The Urbz from a few years ago, but with a younger cast), and I didn't like the visual style... but most of all, I could find anything positive to say about the writing. It sounded like the writers were desperately attempting to make the narrator and characters sound cool, but I didn't find it convincing at all... TL;DR version: try not to force jokes.

Yeh the reason it took so long was that I was doing resources, and then decided that the style wasn't one that I wanted to do, so I switched to another style and had to redraw everything. And I did that about 6 times. I'm glad I did though, I have a style I like now! And I'm a lot better at doing backgrounds (I've attached one of the apartment halls as an example and trust me, its WAY better than the first version).

There are fantasy elements to the game, but it's not strictly fantasy. Like, I'm pretty certain there will be werewolves and evil gnomes, but you aren't about to go trapsing around in Mordor hunting elves. Well you might, but as a weird side event you can stumble upon, more than any part of the actual plot. The best way I can describe it, is that it's similar to Gravity Falls, but set (mostly) in a college town and aimed at an older audience. Urban fantasy, I guess?

I call it Pointless because ostly I think it sounds neat, though it doesn't have a set ending. I was tempted to call it "Do All The Things" but that seemed a bit odd for a game title xD It's basically pointless fun. It's not just one thing, it's everything, in all the genres. Ambitious, I know. I'll try to think of a better name!

I have never seen that logo. It's cool though. But not exactly the same font, and my thing isn't for kids, so I think I'm good

It's still the rough draft of the writing right ow, so I'm sort of just screwing around with it ^.^ Brooktown High looks neat, but I'm not terrible fond of the 3D designs. They look kinda bland.

Thanks for your input, by the way! <3

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