Lemma Soft Forums

Hey guys! We've just released our first visual novel, Kitty Love, a game about a queer catboy who has to choose between two boys. (Release Page: http://rosstin.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/kitty-love-3/, Completed Games post: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 11&t=14398 )

We feel pretty good about this first release and we're considering making a successor game... something just a little bit longer, with 3 love interests instead of 2, and a few more endings. We'd like to do this as a commercial project, and try to sell it on BMT and as an affiliate with Hanako or Tycoon or WW for $5.

Point is this-- our writer is LGBT and likes to write LGBT stories. The writer has seen romance from both sides of the fence and is equally happy writing a girls' love (lesbian, girl x girl) or boys' love (gay, boy x boy) story. Me as the producer, I'm mainly interested in what would be more popular and have more of a following.

So, I take it to you. Would you rather see another boys' love game, or a girls' love game?

Whichever way we go, we'll probably have one transgender/crossdressing character.

I'm also a bit on-the-fence about the cat-foo aspect of the game... I feel like having this cat element to the game detracts from the LGBT aspect of the game? But it also makes it slightly more unique.

You should probably make the game first before worry too much about affilates, but you will want to talk to Papillon (Hanako) or Jack Norton (Tycoon and Winter Wolves) when you are finished.

You are going to get polar answers probably with the main concesus being that generally people don't care as long as the story is good (though I can probably predict a girlxgirl will appeal more to both sexes than a boyxboy). Popularity isn't the best way to choose things but you can do that if you want to. I'm not really interested unless there is an underlining plot anyway and the characters are engaging, in which case I would go either way.

I agree with Auro, most of us don't care so long as it's interesting. Though, as a compromise, why not have 4 LI's? 2 BxB, and 2 GxG that way it sorta balances out (Of course that's more work, but as I said, it is a compromise)

Personally, I'd go for the BxB since there's a severe lack of it, and there's not enough decent love for the genre. There's already a decent amount GxG in mainstream media, so why not go for something that feels more taboo?

With one BL game already on the books, a Yuri game would serve to establish range, and then try an Otome game or a shoujo game, followed by the reverse.

That's just my opinion-- I could be wrong.

There are not very many yaoi games around here...

try10 wrote:There are not very many yaoi games around here...

I don't see much yuri either though.

Anyway, go with whatever you want, picking out a game just on whether it will be BxB or GxG seems kind of superficial to me anyway. Just see what kind of story you can think up/interests you most and go with the one in that.

If you're looking at what niches aren't being served, Sparkly Flowers Yaoi is quite lacking in English games afaik. (Of course, I capitalise it that way because that's the reason I tend to steer away from anything labeled 'yaoi' while happily reading slashfic.) BxB at all is quite rare in the English games so far. Jack's RPGs do it. The next Magical Diary game should have some ifwhen I ever get working on it. But there's not a lot, and I would guess that it's fairly unlikely that either Jack or I would write a pure BxB game. (sakevisual I don't know about. Would you? )

There are a lot more games that have one or two GxG options, but *pure* yuri games are currently somewhat limited. (And if you read /u/ you'll probably see that there are yuri fans who want games with no men in them AT ALL.)

I agree that GxG in general has more appeal and a wider audience, but it's really about the story for almost any visual novel (unless it's an eroge that has really great art)

I often like GxG stories. So if you're tallying votes, that would be my vote.

But I like a number of other things... like games/stories centered around plot, or just about groups of friends. And while there are some complex games which have pairings other than BxG, it's surprisingly tough to find complex games that focus on BxB or GxG pairings.

Also, I have noticed a number of people who are still looking for good BxB stories outside of prose, comics and animation.

If you ask me, I would say we need much more BxB games out there (*surprise, surprise* ). Although I have to admit, that GxG seems to be a bit more popular...
Well, maybe you should focus on whatever you're more comfortable with ;P

I, for one, am all about GxG. But you know, I think that might be because I'm a closet mysandrist.

asterazul wrote:Me as the producer, I'm mainly interested in what would be more popular and have more of a following.

With all due respect, this right here is precisely the wrong way to go about it. There's an audience for EVERYTHING. Make what you'd like to see first and find the audience for THAT.

This doesn't mean not to look for that audience, or not to tailor the eventual product to that audience: it's just that worrying 'will people like this' is futile without actually seeing the project, yannow?

(I've downloaded Kitty Love, but haven't got around to actually playing it. There's a lot of games on this forum that I've done the same with. :/)

I'd go with whatever you feel is right for the story. If you want to be really subversive, make all the characters, including the PC, androgynous and never reveal the sex of any character. Let the player decide whether or not it's a yuri, yaoi, or straight story.

Funnyguts wrote:I'd go with whatever you feel is right for the story. If you want to be really subversive, make all the characters, including the PC, androgynous and never reveal the sex of any character. Let the player decide whether or not it's a yuri, yaoi, or straight story.

Do you know how difficult it is to keep characters androgynous? In a Romantic (this includes english) language, this is very, very difficult to do. At best, you'll just come up with choppy sentences.

The writer decided to do a Yuri to balance things out, so it's decided now. Thanks for your input!