Dating Sim Flowchart?

[GammaBreak]

I'm currently working on one game, but I want to start considering the concept of a dating sim. Does anyone have any good examples of a logic flowchart of how one might work? I think I get the overall premise, I just want to avoid the notion of creating multiple, isolated story paths that the player just initially chooses from.

[ypressgames]

We are a successful publisher of dating sims. There are two major types (among others I assume).

The first style is a purely 'dating' dating sim. During the dates with your love interest you have to pick the right choices in order for that romance to be successful. Each choice has a stat that either goes up if you make the right choice, or goes down if you make the wrong choice. In the end, if your stats are high enough (you picked enough right choices) you win the relationship with your love interest. There are games that will accept some wrong choices and still let you win (though your endings may vary). Other games require you to pick every choice correctly to get the only good ending.

There is a second style of dating sim is the kind my company makes. It's an adventure dating sim, where there aren't necessarily dates. It starts with a unique premise and a goal that's usually, but not always, associated with falling in love. The protagonist is in a predicament and will fall in love with one of the love interests during the course of the adventure. To be successful is to win the love of the love interest and also solve the problem.

In this second type of dating sim the protagonist must have a sucessful relationship with a love interest in order to solve their outward delimma. They also get the benefit of living happily ever after as well as solving their problem. In My Magical Demon Lover, a demon will help the protagonist achieve his goal of becoming a wizard only if they marry and become permanent partners. In To Trust an Incubus the protagonist must win the incubi's trust (and love) in order to solve the problem the incubus caused by being in our dimension.

This is all a long way of saying that you've got two ways to structure your dating sim:

If it's the straight 'going on dates' dating sim, it's very easy. The beginning of the game is getting to know the love interests and whatever unique situation you have going on in general. Establish characters, your protagonist, the love interests, any side characters pertinent to the story, and establish setting. Where is your game taking place? What is the setting and premise that makes your game interesting enough for people to want to play it?

There's usually only one important choice to come out of the beginning of a strict dating sim, and it might even be the only choice for the 'demo' portion of the game: Who are you going to date?

Once you pick your love interest then you go on dates and have options during those dates.

Every time you have an option, you should have different dialogue to follow each different choice. The dialogue should give the player a clear idea of whether or not things are going well.

This different dialogue could be the only thing that changes during the dates. Or, you could establish a stat that changes the love interest's attitude toward you, or your attitude toward the love interest.

If the protagonist asks too many personal questions, you could have a stat where when enough points are earned the love interest becomes cold toward you, and makes it harder for you to be successful in a relationship with them. You could have a stat where if you make the right choices and have enough points you become more and more curious about a mystery surrounding the love interest. This will open a new thread for the protagonist where you start sluething as well as seducing.

The truth is, most dating sims do not bother with stats, and the dates are largely the same no matter what choices you make. The only thing that changes is the dialogue after each choice. This can be boring, but there are lots of successful games with this system.

Each date should have at least two outcomes: 1. You get to go on another date. 2. You screwed up and it's game over.

Things should get more interesting by the second date, where you've gone past the 'getting to know you' phase. How will you make this interesting? Conflict, problems, obstacles, these should be addressed. Also, if the player is doing great there should be some pay off. A hug. A kiss. Third base. Sex. Whatever is appropriate for your game.

The third date might not be a date but a situation where the protagonist and love interest are together solving whatever obstacle there might be to their relationship or lives in general, or whatever problem you might have introduced. If it's a shorter game, this can lead to the resolution and winning the relationship. You could got straight to a happily ever after and show us what their life is like now that they got together.

Here's your flow chart for a short game, very overly simplified. You'll obviously have more choices than this. If you use stats there can be points earned toward certain goals as I explained. One bad choice shouldn't end the game for the player. Presume there's a lot more choices here.

Pick Love Interest
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Option1 Good Choice -----Option 2 Bad Choice----Option 3 Neutral Choice
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Get another Date Game Over Get another date
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Option1 Good Choice -----Option 2 Bad Choice
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Get another Date Game Over
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Option1 Good Choice -----Option 2 Bad Choice--------------Neutral Choice
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Happily Ever After Game Over Neutral Ending



For longer games, things must grow ever more complicated. The stakes must become more dire. It must seem like you'll never win. The player must be challenged and excited to continue pursuing their goal. New information opens up new ways to solve things.

When they mess up, it could be game over, or not the ideal ending they were going for. They might get neutral endings. The don't accomplish all their goals, but it's not all bad. They could get a somewhat happy ending, but not the one they want. For longer games you don't just want all bad endings except for the best possible happy ending.

Depending on the execution these strictly dating dating sims could be boring. The dates could be repetitive and lack variety, particularly if you go to the same places for each love interest. I feel that it's harder to make an interesting game when it's strictly about dating.

My company makes the other kind of dating sim, where there's a high concept premise and an overarching story rather than the story being, 'I like this person so I'll date them and see what happens.'

In adventure dating sim, come up with a unique premise that works well with a typical dating sim set up. Give the protagonist a goal that isn't falling in love, but falling in love is the way to achieve the goal.

Examples: You're in prison and the only way to survive is to get a lover to protect you. You want to be a wizard but the amorous demons will only mentor you if you become their lover. You need the help of a god to save the world, and the god needs a spouse. You're unable to build a self-sufficient farm all by yourself and seek a lover/partner to achieve your dreams.

In the beginning you establish you protagonist and their goals and desires. Establish their setting, the world. They want something. Make us understand why. Make it make sense for them to pursue their goal. They make a choice that gets the story going. It can lead to catastrophe or be going just like they planned, but it MUST put them in a situation where their only option is to be with one of the love interests.

But the love interest has a problem too, and you like them so it's hard to focus on these problems you have to solve. And things are getting even more complicated with the risk of horrible things happening. It's too bad, because all you want to do is hold your love interest tight and never let them go.

In more complicated dating sim like this, each love interest establishes a route. In the route is a path to solve the problem and live happily ever after with your love interest. But there are also threads in each route. The threads are a completely different way to win or fail. You give the player a little taste of everything. For instance:

Main Route: You save the world with your love interest so you can live happily ever after.
Main Route good ending: You saved the world and lived happily ever after.
Main Route bad ending: You screwed up and everyone dies.
Neutral Ending: You ran away to another dimension with your love interest. The world ended, but there was nothing you could do anyway. At least you have each other.

Evil Thread: Screw saving the world! Your love interest has convinced you to become evil and take the world over with them.
Evil Thread good ending: You rule the world and live happily ever after.
Evil Thread bad ending: You both die together in a blaze of glory.
Evil Thread neutral ending: You accidentally save the world while trying to conquer it, and end up imprisoned together, living happily ever after.

You can use stats to push toward different endings, and flags to show where the routes break into threads. The more flags and threads the bigger the game.

Adventure Dating Sim Flow Chart

You're the grandson of the greatest wizard to ever live. You've always wanted to be a wizard and now's your chance to see the head wizard about it.
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The head wizard is going on vacation and wants you to watch his sanctuary. Screw your dreams.
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You demand he helps you achieve your dreams or you're not helping him.
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He says the only way to be a great wizard is to love a demon who will share his powers with you.
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This is terrible! But you agree to meet three demons.
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The demons all want you, but are each so complicated! You're apprehensive.
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The wizard forces you to pick because he wants to leave. You pick A B or C
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The demon starts giving you magic lessons to see if you're cut out to be a wizard
Thread A Thread B Thread C
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You pick the right choices You pick the wrong choices You pick the wrong choices and are a jerk to your demon
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You become a wizard, Love demon You can't be a wizard but fall in love with the demon. You can't be a wizard and the demon kills you.


This is again, over simplified. When you break into threads you're having a lot of choices to build the stats that lead to those endings. That's the fun and games of your game. You're getting to know your love interest and having love build, or are screwing up and having animosity build. You're paying attention and learning how to be a wizard, or you're not paying attention and can't be a wizard but have fallen in love through the course of your training.

Here are some of the dating sims we've made or are working on using the second technique:

[GammaBreak]

Awesome, thank you for the extensive write-up! I really appreciate the detail, and I'll be sure to go over this multiple times. Sorry for the delay in reply, I fell off grid for a couple of days.

I'm definitely looking for what you described as the first option, as that feels more approachable and what was my first instinct when coming up with ideas. More or less, my framework for the idea follows:

1. Intro scene/characters introduced.
2. First day where you approach and get to know each one a bit more, then make a decision on who to purse.
3. Date 1.
4. Date 2.
5. Date 3.
6. Ending.

What I'd like to try and do is make each character unique (currently have 3, would like 4) and result in different scenes at otherwise similar locations/settings. Like for example, if you try to woo the spoiled, bratty trust-fund baby, your character would have to pick confident or even aggressive dialogue. Whereas if you try to woo the cougar dominatrix, you'd have to be very compliant and submissive. Each character would also have different thresholds for their scenes. Like for example, if you really want to get the cougar-dominatrix in bed, you'd have to max out her points perfectly, whereas trust-fund baby may have a slutty side and you may only need 8 out of 10 points (or something like that).

I'm not a huge fan of games simply ending, so I'm open to the idea of characters sort of getting 'locked out' and getting a bad ending. Like for example, maybe you didn't buy the cougar-dominatrix the right clothing on a trip to the mall and you don't get her score high enough. When the ending comes around, instead of sex, she blue-balls you.

What I don't even have a clue to start with is regarding a stats/point system. I'd like to even go so far as to introduce a light character profile creation where you pick some basic attributes that may earn a bonus point with specific characters. If you pick 'blonde' as a hair style, maybe the shy, subservient girl is more attracted to you, stuff like that. I'm not shooting for anything overly complicated, just sufficient. I'd like the player to actually have to try to win a good ending as opposed to just getting one or two things right and that's it.

[ypressgames]

Unfortunately, I'm not the programmer at my company, so I can't give you the syntax for any code. The structure you described (1-6) will work perfectly well, but be aware, we had the same date locations for all love interests for our first dating sim and people complained that the routes were too similar. If this is a commercial game, you don't want the same date set-up for each love interest.

Add variety, but use the same backgrounds, by not having the same pattern of dates/places in each route. Maybe in your first route it's the 3 dates you want, but the second love interest you don't have a second date, just accidentally run into them at x location. Maybe see them in some sort of comflict that was hinted at in the first date, and this chance meeting serves to give more information.

In another route you could have two locations in the same date where the love interest is moving things fast, but then doesn't want another date with you. This is just an example, but maybe they don't get close to people/just want sex due to past secrets.

Whatever you do, you don't want every route to consist of the exact same dates in the exact same order. Use your creativity to find a way to give us a completely different route with each love interest.

[GammaBreak]

Add variety, but use the same backgrounds, by not having the same pattern of dates/places in each route.

This is actually a great idea, and one I was trying to focus on. Tentatively, for example, one of my date scenes would be at a mall. Working from my previous example, if you select the cougar-dominatrix, this date ends up being a period of time where she financially drains your wallet, and if you don't buy her the correct items, you don't win points with her (unless you have a 'wealthy' background, in which a win would be a lot easier). But if you were to pick a different character, this scene would play out differently. Liking picking the shy girl may just be a conversation in the food court over lunch or something.

Whatever you do, you don't want every route to consist of the exact same dates in the exact same order.

And this is another good idea, one I hadn't even considered. Don't always do the same order of scenes, find a way to mix it up. I like this concept.