Primrose Path [Romance][Drama][Otome][Mature]

[Quiet Days]

Are you ready for an update on what we’ve been doing since last? Here's Devlog #005.

Devlog #005

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Playtesting

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Our Pre-Alpha for Primrose Path’s common route outline is nearly over! You can imagine it’s taken up most of our time! The playtest's purpose for us is two-fold. We wanted to experiment with how well Inkle Studio's scripting language, Ink, tied into our workflow, and if those in our target audience were interested in playing Primrose Path further.

The Pre-Alpha consists of Primrose Path’s common route presented as a long-form summary. It is overwhelmingly narrative—you are not reading dialogue script. And while it is interactive with a number of choices and variables coded in thanks to Ink, we only chose to create choices in the game which make the concepts we plan to have in our visual novel feasible.

That said, we’re proud to say that there’s actually a lot of opportunities to explore the setting, meet and build connections with the main cast, and have your interactions affect the way your character perceives and is perceived. At about 16,000 words or so for this entire summarized version alone, you can tell there’ll be a lot in store when it comes time for the actual script!

So far, almost all of our responses are from our target audience of heterosexual women and LGBTQ+ persons ages 20-30. And we’re delighted to hear that every single tester—target or not—was interested in playing Primrose Path further!

Playtesting majorly occurs in our Discord server. If you would like to participate in testing and give feedback, you can click this link and ask for the AlphaReader role when you join. Testing and survey submissions will close on June 17th, 11:59 PM EDT.

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Main Game Progress

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Common Route:

• Draft Outline: 100% ✔
• Revised Outline: 90%

The Artist:

• Draft Outline: 100% ✔

We are almost done with the clean outline of the common route! We’re missing the final scene that resolves the common route, but it wasn't critical to the playtest—and it doesn't hurt to have some surprises!

The next things we’ll focus on will be revising the common route based on the feedback we received from those who played the playtest, and then tackling the common route script.

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Other News
(Behind the Scenes)

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Real Life
Elm just got a new job working as a Junior VR/Real-time artist! While that may slow down some things on the Quiet Days team, the new position builds Elm’s skills in 3D architectural visualisation, which can only benefit our workflow for background art!

Lore Snippets
We told you it was coming! Primrose Path is full of fun facts about characters, locations, events and culture.

Lynn's History

The above is a snapshot from our pre-alpha. Lynn comes home from work and video chats with her friend Priya, but is notified of an incoming call from a number she had blocked. She refuses to pick up, but it’s clear that there’s a reason why that number’s blocked.

Our protagonist, as customizable and renameable as she is, exists with her own history. There are people in her life who are present and gone, precious and tenuous. We think it’s exciting that you, player, will have the experience to simultaneously shape and discover who all she is while untangling the lives of the main cast.

PlantPal

PlantPal is a young and popular plant care and delivery service in Primrose Path. Lynn is a frequent customer, shopping through their online catalog of proprietary and partnered nurseries and garden centers. From shrubs to succulents, flowers to grasses, PlantPal couriers arrive with your order and spend up to 20 minutes of free consultation to help you get started caring for your plants today!

Love these snippets? We’ll be posting more on our Twitter under the hashtag #PrimrosePathVN.

Fan Art

After playing the Pre-Alpha, a fan by the name of Hazel drew herself taking a selfie with Priya, wearing dresses from the game’s New Year’s Eve party. This photo says #NoFiter, but with how much drinking went down, of course spelling goes out the window.


If you adore Hazel’s fanart like we do and are interested in more of her work, you can follow her on Twitter @HLR_ART.

Accessibility
A carry over from our last update: Quiet Days still wants your take on what we can do to make visual novels more accessible! Your opinions, preferences, and first-hand experiences are important to us, as we all have different abilities and sensibilities—and we all deserve a chance to enjoy this game.[/b] Please get in touch with us either on tumblr or via our Discord.

. . .

We’re focusing on monthly devlogs for our Tumblr, but we have to ask:
Are there other kinds of content and updates you folks would like to see here? We want to know! Shoot us a message in our Ask the Devs inbox on Tumblr, or hit us up on Twitter, Discord, and here!

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Final Questions

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1. Do you have concerns about games built in Unity and not Ren'py?
2. Are you interested by lore snippets?
3. Would you be interested in minigames?
4. Do you consider yourself to be a completionist? (Primrose has a lot of hidden scenes and replayability, but we feel a lot of it might just stay unseen).

Please support us by sharing and liking our official devlog posts! ♥

- Elm

[Elta]

Wow, so much information on this thread! I can tell a lot of work is going into this game, it's awesome!

1- No really other then the fact that I've found quite a few that my windows security will not even let me run. I'm guessing that the people that made the games did something wrong though, as I found one that was fine.
2- Totally, lore is one of the things I enjoy most in a story. It adds more depth to the world that you get to know in the game/story.
3- love mini games, just not if they are to hard and don't allow me to keep playing just because I suck at them. I like to try, and many times I'm fine, but I've found a few games that I can't get any further because I just can not do the puzzle. When the main game isn't about puzzles, they could at least give people a chance to skip if they keep failing over and over. xD
4- YES! I love seeing every snippet of text! One game I downloaded had a % of how much of the text I have seen and I was stuck at 97, I kept playing until I got the last part of text. It's not so much about completing, It's just fun seeing everything that can be said. I like it when games show how many endings/artworks/etc you have finished.

Good luck with your project, looks amazing from what I can see here!

[Quiet Days]

Wow, so much information on this thread! I can tell a lot of work is going into this game, it's awesome!

1- No really other then the fact that I've found quite a few that my windows security will not even let me run. I'm guessing that the people that made the games did something wrong though, as I found one that was fine.
2- Totally, lore is one of the things I enjoy most in a story. It adds more depth to the world that you get to know in the game/story.
3- love mini games, just not if they are to hard and don't allow me to keep playing just because I suck at them. I like to try, and many times I'm fine, but I've found a few games that I can't get any further because I just can not do the puzzle. When the main game isn't about puzzles, they could at least give people a chance to skip if they keep failing over and over. xD
4- YES! I love seeing every snippet of text! One game I downloaded had a % of how much of the text I have seen and I was stuck at 97, I kept playing until I got the last part of text. It's not so much about completing, It's just fun seeing everything that can be said. I like it when games show how many endings/artworks/etc you have finished.

Good luck with your project, looks amazing from what I can see here!

Hi Elta! Thanks for the feedback. We're really excited about how Pre-Alpha went, and are definitely working hard from the feedback.
It's curious you had some issues with anti-virus checks, that's definitely something to keep in mind! I assume it has something to do with not being a recognised source/publisher. But I'm glad to hear you enjoy lore. The minigames are something we definitely want to push, but don't worry they won't be too hard and they're not puzzles you have to solve. Although interestingly enough, whether you win or lose can affect the plot! We're talking more like DDR, mini turn-based battles, card games, dice games etc. So there are win/lose scenarios.

Ooh! You might have a hard time with Primrose. There's definitely a lot of hidden nuggets, and they definitely can't all be found in one or two playthroughs. Hopefully, by the time it's out there should be a few hints and achievements to help you figure it out.

We are definitely looking into having completion percentages and unlocked artwork, whether it's a CG gallery or unlockable w.i.p art from the game's development.

- Elm

[Quiet Days]

Creeping in to slip a tiny little post in our thread. Actually, Devlog #006 is looking bigger than we thought!

Devlog #006

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Behind the Scenes

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Playtesting Feedback
Last month we closed the pre-alpha Ink build of Primrose Path’s common route outline, which served to prove (1) the basic concepts of our game were viable, and (2) that it interested players in our target demographic. We got fantastic, immensely positive feedback about our characters and story from our playtesters in our post-test form. Here are a few quotes from their responses:

The number of elements of the MC’s [main character’s] life added in to the story in increments helped me not only relate to the MC but also stay interested.

There’s a good variety of calmer moments and more outlandish/exciting/otherwise more high tension moment [sic], no issues for me.

[T]he clients are a rainbow of people with a few that [sic] very much stand out [to me]

By the end, I was definitely considering who I was going to chose as my client and was sad the pre-alpha ended even though I knew it was going to.

I 100% would dance [in a mini-game similar to] DDR [Dance Dance Revolution]

As you can see, the beginnings of Primrose Path went over well. Players definitely had a lot to say about our mischievous clients, too! We can't spoil it here, but you'll be able to see for yourself when alpha testing comes to our server in the future!


All that said, it'd be a disservice not to share some player criticisms too:

This might be silly, but I wish there were an option that weren’t a dress for her outfit to the party.

(It’s not silly, by the way!) This had us thinking about the different ways our protagonist, Lynn Austen, could express herself. The player's concern introduced a number of new outfits and one gender nonconforming redesign!

The beginning was a little slow, but I love Priya, so all of her scenes brought my attention back instantly.

Priya is an adored fan-favorite, but she's too busy with her own life to carry a whole story! We’ve since reevaluated and tweaked Part 1: Work Day. We discussed plenty of visual changes and cutting out entire scenes in order to tighten up the overall pace.

Harper seems harsh but has pressure on her to make her harsh, but then you see her and shes [sic] just straight up scary.

While all playtesters understood Harper’s role as Lynn’s no-slack boss, a few found her consequentially unapproachable. We have a lot in store for her in later routes but acknowledge she was sparse during the common route. We’ve since taken this concern and made her more available in new scenes, adjusted her tone in some of the older ones, and had other characters—who have a very different relationship with her than Lynn does—reflect more openly on her. We think this humanizes Harper much more.

Unfortunately [Bellarmino] feels like a snobbier, more irritating Matt. […] I personally don’t find him very likable but I’m looking forward to being proven wrong.

In our feedback form, we asked about character impressions. We also polled if players didn’t have to play all routes at least once, which clients they’d pick. While character impression responses expressed a willingness to give our model and fashion designer, Bellarmino LaFauci, a chance, he was our least popular choice in the poll. Interestingly enough, this player compared him to our interactive multimedia artist, Matthias Barousse, who tied among testers for most popular. We think that Bellarmino's personality wasn’t differentiated enough from the company with whom Lynn encounters him, so we’ve made changes to contrast him more against his judgmental cabal.

So as we went through and addressed feedback, we had some ideas of our own to implement, which leads us to…


Updated Revised Outline
Double the wordcount! Yep, we’re just shy of 32,000 words for the revised common route outline. Don’t mistake Primrose Path for a linear narrative—your choices affect the world from day one.

Beyond changes from playtester feedback, other new content includes:

• New Characters! We work to make sure our side characters leave an impression. We’ve added a few more with the means to salvage or devastate Lynn’s career. Until you yourself can meet them, look out for future Lore snippets on our Twitter!

• New Events! Lynn has more opportunities than before, and under different states of mind, to navigate and impact the world around her. Depending on what Lynn did, where, and when can completely change an encounter within that same space and time.

• New Key Items! There are a couple of items Lynn can collect if she meets the right people and takes certain actions. These items can reveal some important information in client routes later on—and some hints for others, too!

• New Areas! A few more places have been added to the common route, including whole new scenes. What could possibly lie behind these doors?

You probably read that and said “Damn, that’s hella rad”, to which we agree. But we do take feedback seriously, so when we can’t decide on what our audience may want, we leave no room for speculation. There’s really only one way to settle that:


VN Protagonist Sprite Survey
We run surveys! We wanted to know how visual novel fans preferred to see a customizable MC represented as a sprite, if at all. It’s tough for us because as much as we want to make Lynn as visually present as her sense of self, we also acknowledge that “immersion” for many players also means different levels of “intrusion” from MC’s sprite—down to none at all, for folks wanting to self-insert despite taking on another character’s existing backstory. While we think we’ve come to a happy medium that serves our purposes and would appeal to a good number of players, we’ll be sharing with you all in a separate post our findings.

Two things are for certain:

1. Visual novel players are an incredibly dedicated base, having turned out over 100 responses to our form! Thank you so much for helping us see your side on the matter!
2. The communities we frequent overwhelmingly take issue with one specific manner of MC representation—one that seems to plague the industry. If you’re not an avid consumer of visual novels, this begrudged answer may surprise you!

At the time of this post, that survey closed August 5th, 11:59 PM EDT. We'll have a detailed write-up on the results soon, so follow us on
Tumblr to read it when it's posted.

That said...


CGs in Visual Novels Survey
We currently have another survey ongoing! We've got questions about CGs: what you think they are, what role you think they play, which ones you like, and more! Anonymously submit your opinion to this Google Form until August 18th, 11:59 PM EDT: https://forms.gle/rwtrWqHYm8BhiKXe6


Greyson's Twitter
Greyson’s been taking a break from Twitter for a minute. Working Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday overheated him, and in that vulnerable time, he caught a virus! So now he’s on sick leave and we’ve promised him an easier schedule of one day a week when he gets better. His new posting schedule will be announced soon. You can still send him some love on his Twitter account. He’ll be sure to respond when he’s feeling up to it. He’s always there for you—will you return the favor?

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Main Game Progress

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Common Route:

• Draft Outline: 100% ✔
• Revised Outline: 100%✔
• Draft Script: —%

The Artist: Matthias Barousse

• Draft Outline: 100% ✔

Progress on the main game has primarily been on the common route outline. Some interesting things to note are that last time we reported our revision to be at 90%. After implementing feedback, our clean outline doubled in word count and we’ve reviewed it entirely since then. So now we’re thoroughly at 100%!

The breakdown of that is:

1. We finished up the common route’s Part 3: The Interviews, in which Lynn meets all her clients whom she may have stumbled upon at a legendary bash.
2. We elaborated on Part 2: The Party encounters and added more variations which subsequently trickle over into alternate interactions in The Interviews.
3. We added an interactive, portent dream sequence the night of The Interviews, right when Lynn hits the bed after evaluating all potential clients at work.

… and a few other additions. We’ve already started work on the draft script (among other things), but we’ve not had time to properly calculate the percentage. It’ll be updated accordingly in our next log.


What's Next For Us
Top priority is finishing up our common route draft script, focusing our efforts into creating a playable, visual alpha build of Primrose Path. We want to play our game as much as you do! That’s motivation enough!

. . .

We’re focusing on monthly devlogs for our Tumblr, but we have to ask:
Are there other kinds of content and updates you folks would like to see? We want to know!
Shoot us a message in our Ask the Devs inbox on Tumblr, or hit us up on Twitter, Discord, and here!

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Final Questions

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1. What kind of tone do you like in an MC? One with a lot of wit and humor, a fairly introspective monologuing one, or something else?
2. Would you like to see more full-page sketches of main characters, even if concepts aren't final? Or would you prefer art after designs are locked in?
3. Would you like to see a couple of our favorite revised snippets from our script draft every month?
4. What are your impressions of our project so far?

Please support us by sharing and liking our official devlog posts! ♥

- Coda

[FerventWriter]

1: For me personally, I want an MC that's somewhere in the middle of being too quiet or shy and being too loud or obnoxious. Having an MC that acts like a doormat to the romancable characters makes me really uncomfortable, but at the same time one who's too outspoken can alienate a lot of players, so a good middle balance is needed.
2: I'd love to see sketches! Even if they aren't final, I think it would be cool to see the overall progress of them. It might make more people interested in the game as well-posts with several pictures definitely seem to draw more attention than those who don't.
3:Yes! For pretty much the same reasons as above.
4:Your project seems like it's being worked on really hard and very professionally, so I hope it all works out for you! Great work so far and try your best!

[Quiet Days]

1: For me personally, I want an MC that's somewhere in the middle of being too quiet or shy and being too loud or obnoxious. Having an MC that acts like a doormat to the romancable characters makes me really uncomfortable, but at the same time one who's too outspoken can alienate a lot of players, so a good middle balance is needed.
2: I'd love to see sketches! Even if they aren't final, I think it would be cool to see the overall progress of them. It might make more people interested in the game as well-posts with several pictures definitely seem to draw more attention than those who don't.
3:Yes! For pretty much the same reasons as above.
4:Your project seems like it's being worked on really hard and very professionally, so I hope it all works out for you! Great work so far and try your best!

Many thanks for the feedback, FerventWriter!

Hey, we get that. Our MC is, at the very least, a sensible sort. After all, Lynn doesn't become a featured columnist under a candid women's magazine by being uncooperative or a pushover. Her boss Harper wouldn't stomach either of those traits! The benefit of having an older cast (mid-twenties to early thirties)—let alone MC—is considering how they've matured into their own skins by now, understanding what the working world requires of them. It introduces new concerns with identity, but stammering bashfulness or overexcited pestering just doesn't suit Lynn, really.

We won't forget your vote for unofficial sketches and in-progress writing snippets!

Oh, your words are very kind! This is a big project for us and we're gunning to make it one of the best for folks like you! It's not easy, but with some good judgment and grit—and supportive fans and passersby—it'll be a success!

- Coda

[Quiet Days]

Did you miss us? We haven't posted here in two months but here's why—we've got a Devlog #007 and Devlog #008 combo!

Devlogs #007 & #008

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Main Game Progress

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Common Route:

• Draft Outline: 100% ✔
• Revised Outline: 100% ✔
• Draft Script: 40k words
- Scenes: 17* / 98

* Scenes are counted when they are ready for internal review, qualifying them as complete for the first draft.

Since finalising the common route outline just a few months ago, we've pressed on with the common route script. In our first month, August, we hit 21,000 words. And now this past month, we've just landed at a very comfortable 40,000 words! We expect to consistently hit the same word count goals each month.

So far our process is every month we set aside three weeks to complete as many scenes as we can, then take a fourth week off to review, address side projects, and manage miscellaneous company tasks—among other things. The next few months will follow this routine and progress will be listed as both a word count and how many scenes out of a total we've completed. Given the fact that between work and part-time education, Primrose Path is being developed in our free time, so this progress is stellar! Elm even had to revise scenes on her phone as she was away for half of the month!

While 40,000 may feel like a lot, we're not aiming for the common route to be any particular length. Though we'll have 98 possible scenes in the common route alone, but you'll probably only see about a third of that in your first playthrough. Primrose Path is designed to evolve with your choices and this means the scenes you encounter will change.

On average, our scenes are 1,500 words of adventure and questionable life choices. So far we’ve been tackling interview and party scenes to get into the charming (and distressing) heads of the clients in particular. We also started interactive home scenes where you can channel surf the TV in Lynn's apartment, picking up world lore and crucial character clues.

Here’s a few of our favorite unrevised draft snips from the past two months:

My eyes dart to the Prince so I can apologize for the misunderstanding, but his gaze pierces through me as he laughs.

PRINCE: Oh, don’t be such a tease.
PRINCE: Are you getting coy over what you shared about Priya?
PRINCE: (smiling) Because that would be silly… and unadvised.

He tucks his wipe away and leaves me hanging. Ok. I guess I’ll just run my hand through my hair and pretend that’s exactly what I planned. Cool.

EZRA: Old royal buildings. It used to belong to a runaway Prussian heiress—a distant cousin of the Romanovs.

He freezes as the panel clicks open and slowly reveals a small stairwell.

EZRA: Allegedly.

His soft brown eyes take me in. I almost don’t notice the cautious press of his hand against the small of my back.

MATTHIAS: Take a moment to catch up with yourself.

Pique your interest? You don’t have to wait for one every month: we share more unrevised draft snippets in our Discord server. Join if you’d like to peep longer excerpts and chat with us over them!

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Behind the Scenes

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CGs in VNs Survey
We had questions about CGs and wanted to know what fans of the visual novel community thought about them, the role they play, examples they enjoyed, and more. We received over 200 responses from folks across different platforms—all this is in addition to our previous MC survey which received over 100! There’s only two of us, so it’ll be a while to get through all the data, but we’re excited to interpret and release them in separate posts coming soon!

Writing GitScrum Board
We’ve had this feature in our Discord server for much longer, but now that we’re writing our script draft for the common route, we’ve decided to open up our writing GitScrum board publicly. Now you lot passing by can peek into our progress on scenes at any point. Please, feel free to hold us accountable for how much we get done weekly. Your watchful eyes spur us on.

Code Blog
We’re keeping up a mini-blog on side projects and developments! Elm will be talking about developing with Unity, starting with basic knowledge and things to consider during the early stages of production. If you’re interested in hearing about 2D narrative development in Unity via our projects from start to finish, you can stop by Elm’s coding blog!

Real Life
Coda’s back in college this semester, and she’s decided to pick up a 3D Game Graphics class to learn some asset creation basics. The class will teach her how to make a low-poly asset pack for creating environments, interiors, and props in Maya 2019 to explore in the Unity game engine. Quiet Days’ method for creating backgrounds in Primrose Path uses 3D modeling as a base for our environments, which is later rendered and post-processed in 2D. This is the main reason Primrose can exist at it’s current scale! Elm is the one with the BA (Hons) for 3D, but Coda wanted to take some of the weight off of Elm for efficiency. Wish her the best; so far she’s having a great time!

Lore Snippets

BŌGLŌ

BŌGLŌ is a trendy meal replacement drink in the universe of Primrose Path. Although many consumers are skeptical about its appearance, the bioluminescent algae smoothie has become a popular drink among its eccentric audience. Creator and CEO of BŌGLŌ, Chouette Lars is a contentious figure in the natural holism movement. Many prominent holists denounce her for appropriating the ideology in her pseudoscientific and capitalist ventures. Lars’ health claims for the drink have been found inconclusive by food scientists and nutritionists. BŌGLŌ glows brighter when agitated, is allergen-free, may stain teeth, and comes in such flavors as “Pasta La Vista” and “Cake or Death”.

Love this snippet? We’ll be posting more on our Twitter under the hashtag #PrimrosePathVN, but come back here to get detailed insight beyond Twitter’s character limit.

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Moodboards
Part of our process is nailing down a strong visual guide early in development. We've been focusing on character and background moodboards, for everything from face claims and fashion to environment and interior refs. The main goal is to be able to present a collage of images to anyone involved in the project and have them immediately understand what it is we're aiming for. It's also great for us, so we don't stray too far from the original vision!

Concepts

Lynn Austen

Lynn Austen, better known as our nameable MC, now has a face! We're still in concept mode, but we definitely wanted a protagonist who felt visually acceptable to all kinds of players. We hope to be able to allow players to pick from a swatch of skin tones and hair colours to truly express themselves. We’ll be tweaking the exact tones as we go.

Bellarmino

Bellarmino LaFauci is a proud, visionary fashion designer and model—and a potential client. After writing some party scenes about the decorated host himself, Coda decided she’d scratch an itch and draw what was on her mind.

Here’s what she had to say about it:

“Yeah it’s just a sketch, but I wanted to capture the frigid air that comes with someone untouchable judging you. And that moment is as short as a breath. You don’t know if he’s thinking of you for better or for worse, but he’s seen your face now. He doesn’t forget.”

There will be more concepts for him in the future as we play around with a few facial details, makeup ideas, hair, and of course his bold fashion statements.

What's Next For Us
Our focus hasn't changed since last post—finish draft script and work towards an alpha build of the common route. That said: expect devlog updates on Lemma now to be double-log posts, two months apart. Our time will be consumed mostly by writing; monthly updates will likely be shorter than before. But you can still keep tabs on and speak to us right here in this thread, along with our other social media! We love chatting and answering questions!

. . .

We’re focusing on monthly devlogs for our Tumblr, but we have to ask:
Are there other kinds of content and updates you folks would like to see? We want to know!
Shoot us a message in our Ask the Devs inbox on Tumblr, or hit us up on Twitter, Discord, and here!

— — — — — — — —

Final Questions

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1. Considering we have a common route before the character route selection, how quickly would you like to get to your chosen storyline?
2. In choosing a route whose main character interests you, would you ultimately approach them as a love interest or as a client relationship?
3. Which interests you more: navigating the main plot through main- and side-character interaction, or uncovering character history and world lore through environment interaction?
4. Our game touches on a lot of subjects and delves into a number of themes. What's an emotional or relationship theme you'd be interested in exploring?

Please support us by sharing and liking our official devlog posts! ♥

- Coda

[FerventWriter]

First off, this looks great, and I can tell a ton of hard work and dedication has been put into it! Amazing! Now to the questions:

1. I think for me at least, as long as I can skip past the parts of the common route I've already seen on later playthroughs, the length doesn't matter to me-it should just be shorter than the actual romantic route story line or around the same length at the most. Common routes are important for the plot and background of the game, but my main focus at least would be on the romance routes, so it being longer would bother me a little.

2. I would rather pursue the characters as love interests, but if they became a client first and there was a sort of slow burn to having feelings I would really like that too! Whichever best fits said character's personality better.

3. I think environmental interaction would be a unique way to discover things in the game. Most otomes don't really have that game mechanic, so I'd be more drawn it and would probably remember the game more distinctly too.

4. I would definitely be interested in a relationship that deals with problems like trust or having a lot of emotional barriers that need to be broken in order to have a healthy relationship. That's typically my favorite character troupe/route to play in these types of games.

[Quiet Days]

First off, this looks great, and I can tell a ton of hard work and dedication has been put into it! Amazing!

Thanks again for the kind words, FerventWriter! We're doing our best!

1. I think for me at least, as long as I can skip past the parts of the common route I've already seen on later playthroughs, the length doesn't matter to me-it should just be shorter than the actual romantic route story line or around the same length at the most. Common routes are important for the plot and background of the game, but my main focus at least would be on the romance routes, so it being longer would bother me a little.

That sounds wholly reasonable. As involved as our common route is looking to be, it's certainly not going to outshine any of the individual character routes. While we can think of it as a ratio in length to a character route, if the common route "feels long" (read: drags) on its own, then that's something we'd need to address. Luckily we feel we have a good grip on pacing already, and it'll show after our editing phase.

2. I would rather pursue the characters as love interests, but if they became a client first and there was a sort of slow burn to having feelings I would really like that too! Whichever best fits said character's personality better.

All romanceable characters start off as clients! After all, they came to you because their public image isn't looking too hot. But each route has its own pacing, so if you really want it and your interactions are thoughtful, you could start burning bright with some clients pretty early on! But the question is: how far will you go?

3. I think environmental interaction would be a unique way to discover things in the game. Most otomes don't really have that game mechanic, so I'd be more drawn it and would probably remember the game more distinctly too.

I think you'll be in for a treat then. We've got a few ideas in addition to watching TV on any given day that will reveal some interesting things about the world and important people.

4. I would definitely be interested in a relationship that deals with problems like trust or having a lot of emotional barriers that need to be broken in order to have a healthy relationship. That's typically my favorite character troupe/route to play in these types of games.

You're in luck! The game itself is a balancing act of trust and insight. Every client route deals with trust but in their own way—of self, of others, of systems, of fate—demanding it or denying it. Even the protagonist Lynn has trouble trusting herself as she works out her own vices. I can't even begin to tell you how integral that theme is to the story and in all the ways it manifests. I think you'll really enjoy it!

- Coda

[Quiet Days]

Back at it again with another double feature: Devlog #009 and Devlog #010!

Devlogs #009 & #010

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Main Game Progress

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Common Route:

• Draft Outline: 100% ✔
• Revised Outline: 100% ✔
• Draft Script: 79.5k words
- Scenes: 50* / 100

* Scenes are counted when they are ready for internal review, qualifying them as complete for the first draft.

So two more months since last and after catching two unaccounted-for scenes, we're halfway drafted our common route script! In October, we breached 50,000 words. And now this past month, we're a short step away from 80,000 words! And we are right on schedule, too. We've gotten used to writing, as each month we're slowly writing more than the last.

At this point, we've nearly completed all work day scenes with just a couple left to tackle, we're over halfway complete all party scenes, and we're over a third done our interview scenes. It feels great to reflect on our progress like this.

Here’s a few of our favorite unrevised draft snips from the past two months:

I scowl at him. Is this man made of ice? Is the sight of someone dropping dead a regular occurrence for the rich?

Eh, probably.

The tall blonde woman folds her cards and rises from her seat in a huff.
SAMSON: (Chuckles) Clearly, you don’t share your wife’s sense of humour.
She rolls her eyes, throwing her bag over her shoulder.
WOMAN: Pipi, we’re leaving.
As she leaves, a small Pomeranian jumps off from Sam’s lap and scurries behind her.

MC: So you’re being targeted by whom?
BELLARMINO: A jealous, witch-hunting conspiracy of journalists.

PRIYA: Are our readers interested in intimidating, towering thug dad vibes?
MC: Are you?
PRIYA: I watch hour-long videos of a buttery-voiced Russian narrating a tournament between elephant beetles in captivity.
PRIYA: I am not the majority of our readers.

Pique your interest? You don’t have to wait for one every month: we share more unrevised draft snippets in our Discord server. Join if you’d like to peep longer excerpts and chat with us over them!

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Behind the Scenes

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# 0 0 9

Concepts

Matthias Barousse

Back at it again with the interactive multimedia artist, Matthias Barousse. You may remember this face from an earlier devlog, but he’s not quite done yet. A lot of these concepts are still preliminary work, though know that we’ve really been working on solidifying our characters! This time we're sharing some of his grooming ideas.

# 0 1 0

Concepts

Samson Opeyemi

This is a potential face concept for our auto and tech CEO, Samson Opeyemi. We're weighing in on a few other options at the moment as we play around with his sense of presence, but for now, we wanted to share this sketch!


Real Life
Coda has just been contracted for a concept and sequential artist position with an animation and video game studio! This is a great opportunity for her to get acquainted with how the industry handles production materials while exercising her composition and scene directing skills. She's very excited by the position, and this will definitely help refine Quiet Day's workflow in creating engaging scenes in Primrose Path and future titles.


What's Next For Us
December is a busy month: holidays, college finals, and a little work crunch. We're going to ease up a tad this time around, but rest assured, we'll be back at the end of January with an awesome progress report. You can still keep tabs on and speak to us right here in this thread, along with our other social media! We love chatting and answering questions!

. . .

We’re focusing on monthly devlogs for our Tumblr, but we have to ask:
Are there other kinds of content and updates you folks would like to see? We want to know!
Shoot us a message in our Ask the Devs inbox on Tumblr, or hit us up on Twitter, Discord, and here!

Please support us by sharing and liking our official devlog posts! ♥

- Coda