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Idea for the story:

Title: Love of My Life

How Long: Either 30 or 60 min.

Setting: Osaka, historic city of Japan.

Exposition: a fancy word for the beginning of the story- where the author "sets the stage"- in this part, the situation of the characters in the story is explained and it leads up to the further development of the plot- the point of view and the setting (the where and the when) is also explained

The protagonist is the a young man by the name Fukai Kanashimi(Deep Sorrow). He has had major problems in his life. When he was only 6 years old, his mother died in a car accident. And at 12, his father drowned to death after he jumped in the Amazon River in South America, saving the life of a young child. So, he was an orphan and he had to live in orphange. After he graduated high school at 17, he went to college and got married soon after graduating. Problem is, he divorced her after she was cheating. So now, he's divorced and now is looking for another wife.

The game is silimar to Ori, Ochi, Onoe & Senior Year, but I'm trying to mix them together.

Hope you like it.

Not really... The problem is that it's very generic. You'll have to pull hard to keep from being the same old, same old. I'm sure you can do it.

All I can say is that I like the fact the game takes place after a failed marriage. We need more "reconstruction of your love life" games

The divorcee part is unique, for a Japanese-setting bishoujo game at least.

Well, as they say, it's not just in the concept, it's in the execution. A creator can have the coolest concept in the world, but in the end its the one who executes the concept the best that is the winner.

Not much to go by on, but I'm pretty sure should you flesh out the heroines well, you'd have something really nice... it's the journey that counts.

So, make it a divorce? Okay. This is the first game I made, so I don't know much. But the idea just came to me.

A divorce, a separation, it's not something new but it might be, given the way you write about it. You might consider this an exercice of style or rather something that should make people think twice about this kind of situation.

DaFool wrote:Well, as they say, it's not just in the concept, it's in the execution. A creator can have the coolest concept in the world, but in the end its the one who executes the concept the best that is the winner.

For a first game, you didn't choose an easy task and if you don't have much experience in writing... This might be a little risky. I'm not against this at all, but I suggest you take special care about your script if you plan to turn your project into reality.

My two cents though.

MsDuck wrote:Not really... The problem is that it's very generic. You'll have to pull hard to keep from being the same old, same old.

yummy wrote:A divorce, a separation, it's not something new but it might be, given the way you write about it.

You two really think so? I mean, sure you might've seen it elsewhere, but here? As part of an OELVN? Very rarely do our stories have the protagonist already in or coming out of a relationship. Rather, it seems like all of our characters have been single (and single for a long while, too... which is funny when you think about it. Why aren't all those cute anime girls already taken?).

I'm looking forward to what you'll do with it. In a genre predominately filled with the "love conquers all" mentality, seeing something like a divorce or a break up, a failed attempt at finding true love, makes everything seem a little more realistic. It is your first story though, so try not to get too ambitious... they tend to fall apart that way (Of course not everyone is this way, but I can only speak from my own experience... the guy whose third story was the first one released...).

Well, you wanted honesty, so...

The most intererting thing for me will be how you'll set apart your "looking for love after a failed love" from the plain "looking for love" that is typical for most games.

Because the thing is, if your protagonist is over his former wife -which, given the fact he is looking for someone new, can be assumed - it actually means just that - he is over her.

The only thing he has is probably being more cautious or trying to look for values that he hasn't been looking for before, but the actual falling in love, the feelings, they will probably be the same as in any other ren'ai game.

As DaFool pointed out completely correctly, it's the execution that matters - and to be honest, since your game is concepted to be 30-60 minutes, I'd really see it as a monumental challenge to implement the idea of rebuilding the protagonist's love life.

You'd need to first establish a really powerful loving relationship to his former wife (that can't be done with just a few sentences), then have the cheating shatter everything he believed in, THEN going through the divorce (remember, someone he LOVED cheated on him, so it's a lot of pain and you can't just wake up the next day and be over the person). Even after that you'd need to show this empty phase where he tries to find a meaning, and is slowly coping with the situation.

And that's all before you'd get to the second love part - surely this time he would need to take his time, approach things differently and so on, the relationship would presumably move ahead slower and there are millions of small things - for which you have 30-60 minutes... it's a tall order, in fact people who can deliver these things in such a short amount of time usually go to France to pick up their awards.

So I'd see it as a really big challenge. The divorce thing can be a powerful element, but if you don't exploit it well enough, it will be just another excuse to start the dating cycle. The broken love and divorce will be a (admittedly unique) part of the STORY, but unless it's really in the ESSENCE of the game, in its core focus so to say, the feeling that players will get from it, won't be different to any typical ren'ai game.

Those are the dangers.

DrakeNavarone wrote:It is your first story though, so try not to get too ambitious... they tend to fall apart that way (Of course not everyone is this way, but I can only speak from my own experience... the guy whose third story was the first one released...).

I'm tempted to have another topic on this entirely... in my case it's my fourth story that has the most potential to see the light of day as a VN (well at least my third story is complete as a script form, unlike the previous two stories)

So maybe, just maybe... keep shooting out ideas (some people are lucky to have many concurrently, while I'm usually a one-idea-at-a-time sort of person, not proceeding to the next one until I'm convinced the first one is shot down in terms of viability).

Anyway, these brainstorming sessions are good. And I encourage work in progress forums for all ideas in production... those that eventually become complete games are practical lessons in game-making -- learning from the experiences of others (but only if they jot them down.)

DrakeNavarone wrote:(and single for a long while, too... which is funny when you think about it. Why aren't all those cute anime girls already taken?)

Don't you know? Beautiful girls always have problems finding a guy! All the guys already assumes that the beatiful girls have boyfriends so no guy would bother asking her out.

Of course, the dense protaganist never thinks of things like that and just naturally walks in and become's the beautiful girl's friend... and potentially a romantic target for said girl.

hehehe

I'm making progress on my story, but I need an artist or two to make these characters. For the background, I just used backgrounds I found on Google. I'd show you where I am in the story, but I don't know how to send the story to here.

Anyway, here are the characters I need. All of these characters are girls:

A Nun(Do they have nuns in Japan? If not, then make the character a shirne priestess.)
A Nurse
A Teacher
A Waitress