Eternal Forest [Fantasy] [Raising Sim]

[Katta]

Even with the two awesome-looking WIPs (this and this) there're by far not enough raising sims to play, so I'm glad to present a huge dream project of mine - a fantasy raising sim "Eternal Forest"

Game Synopsis:
In a world of deep forests, treacherous mountains, blasted wastes and glorious cities, you are one of the lyris, a long-lived people who call the land of Lyriathis their home. Like many young people, you have come of age and are now looking to find your place in the world, but you do so during troubled times.

The dahris, a death-worshipping race and a bitter, ancient enemy of the lyris, have remained isolated within the borders of their own country, Dahraith, for many years, ever since the terrible wars of old. But now there are stirrings, and some people whisper of a new war looming on the horizon.

War or not, how you decide to live your life is ultimately up to you. If you become embroiled in this conflict, will you tackle it with steel, words or sorcery? Or perhaps you will choose to leave war to others and focus your energies on other pursuits, whether it be music, alchemy, cooking, thievery or something else. Your paths are many and varied, and as time passes your experience will grow – show enough dedication and you will become a master in your chosen fields.

Soldiers and merchants, thieves and rulers, mercenaries and teachers, mages and bards – they are forging their own paths through life. Now the time has come for you to forge yours.

Game Features:
• An original story and artwork
• Choosable name and gender
• A huge world with 2 countries and 4 peoples
• More than 30 locations to visit and 50 characters to meet
• 6 stats to raise and 12 skills to learn
• Multiple romance opportunities

Progress:
Writing 13%
Character artwork 60%
Backgrounds 100%

Game Staff:
Writer: Alex De-Gruchy
Character artists: Ningyohime07, Mimbrari, FloraDrawz
Background artist: Ruderoo
Programmer: Marionette
Logo: Anne
Music: Creative Commons

Tumblr project link

Recruitment:
Looking for writers
Looking for an experienced programmer

The story you may get in the game will vary greatly depending on the activities you'll choose to pursue and the characters you'll meet are too many to post them all in the opening post (so the pic only has MC as female and male) but I'll try to tell more about the world and the characters in the next posts. Please comment if there's anything you're particularly curious about!

[Crowgirl]

I tweet promoted your in dev VN: https://twitter.com/kim_crawley/status/ ... 9106219009

I'm excited to see it completed!

[Agashi]

Oh, I see you finally made a WIP thread for this! Congrats!

I'll be following along on the progress so here's to hoping the production goes smoothly!

[Amberbaum]

Game Features:
• An original story and artwork
• Choosable name and gender
• A huge world with 2 countries and 4 peoples
• More than 30 locations to visit and 50 characters to meet
• 6 stats to raise and 12 skills to learn
• Multiple romance opportunities

It is very nice to see that more and more VN's tend towards customize-ability and general rpg play. Consider me hooked .

[Katta]

Thank you for the support!

[iamwhatonearth]

It looks really good! Wow, 50 characters though. XD

[Katta]

Here’s the draft of the global map, that I remade for the upcoming demo. I don’t know what I was thinking 2 years ago, but the very first version of it was square and didn’t fit any possible type of screen resolution (now I plan for 1366x768). I hope to find a proper map artist for the final version of the game to match the rest, much more beautiful, game art.
There may seem to be not that many locations, but most of the actual locations will be inside the two cities of Lyr-Taer and Belgran.

[Katta]

I've got a question to all fellow creators and potential players: do you need an option to break up with the character you're currently dating? If yes, then how much? And how would you like it to work:
A) a button somewhere in the interface - then you won't get potential romance scenes from other characters until you hit the button and break up with the current date. I don't quite like the option because the break-up will kinda come out of nowhere, since there won't be any quarrels, problems etc. to lead to it.
B) you will get potential romance scenes from other characters and instead of "start dating" choice you'll have "break up with the current date and start dating this new person" choice. This option seems to be more difficult to make it look natural.
Any other ideas?

[Katta]

All the female characters' sprites are finished! With male hopefully to follow very soon.

I'd also like to make a small Yuri Game Jam project with the ladies, so I'm recruiting a scenario designer in my usual recruitment thread - ASAP!

[Zelan]

Wow, they all look fantastic! ^_^ Nice job on those. I love the green-haired woman next to the redhead - is she a dryad or something like that? That leaf dress makes me think 'nature spirit.'

[Katta]

Thank you! I really like how she turned out too, so cool, elegant and strong at the same time. It's Alirienne, she's a nature mage and a previous archmage.

[aE2S]

Those character sprites are definitely looking great, looking forward to the finished product! Keep up the hard work :>

[Mammon]

Bookmarking this for the future, fan of interactive fantasy games.

I've got a question to all fellow creators and potential players: do you need an option to break up with the character you're currently dating? If yes, then how much?

This primarily depends on the game mechanics that your game will have. If your game is still VN in the sense that it is primarily reading (regardless of the amount of choice etc.) I would say option B would be best, but just enough to give people an idea of which characters are and aren't romanceable. It would actually be an interesting mechanic to add those break-up scenes you mentioned, and that you would have to finish off that relationship before you can continue with another. Maybe even make a persistents system of anti-relationship points where breaking up with a lot of people and the speed with which you start a new relationship after it will create a negative image of you. It would certainly be unique

However, as I'm typing this out I'm already realising what a bad idea that is. Not only would it require a lot of work just to make all of those break-up scenes (in multiple levels of intensity based upon the stage of intimacy you're in at that point in time), many people wouldn't even see it because they'd stick with their first relationship until the bitter end and then start a new game to see the other relationships. Only the true completionists would be cursed with having to try out all combinations of break-ups.

If your game also has time-consuming sim elements to it aside from the reading, I would actually recommend a harem system that would allow the player to experience every relationship in one game. Or at least allow the player to have multiple relationships at the same time. As an example I name Freak-quency, which allowed you to max. all the relationships at once within one playthrough (and even gave a special harem scene for doing so), and Sunrider Academy which didn't. I played almost all the relationships in Freak-quency because I could and I liked the game for that. With Sunrider A I could only get myself to play three of the routes and disliked it because for 1 minute of text they were practically obligating me to spend 10 minutes clicking a series of repeating day schedules that got boring real fast. It actively ruined the game because you had to play the boring parts over and over for the parts that you actually wanted.

[Katta]

Thank you for the feedback!
Let's see - the game is supposed to have a lot of sim gameplay, but stories are mostly bound to the sim choices you make, f.ex. you work in a shop, you get to chat with the shopkeeper and so on. I'm not sure if that makes any difference for you, but for me it does - the gameplay for studying magic and working on the farm is the same, but it still feels way more exciting to study magic. That's why I have a map with locations and not a day-planner.
Besides the plan is for romance to be sort of additional to the character's stories, f.ex. you can help someone with their problems as a friend or start to date them on the way. So there're not that many romantic scenes in general - right now it's mostly several phrases here and there that hint at possible romance, some choice for the player to show that they're interested in romancing this person, then something like confession and a date or two. I'm open to having more developed romance-centered stories too though.
I estimate that players will be able to finish 2-3 full stories and get the beginning scenes of some others in one playthrough (though all the gameplay will need to be heavily beta-tested at later stages), so as you can see you won't be able to reach a dating stage with many characters anyway. So considering how much work the break-up system will require, maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense. Though I kinda like the idea of having a sad romance story finishing in break-up leading to dating another character, but then the break-up will be a part of this story, not available for every relationship.

[Katta]

And here're the guys - there're more of them, but with higher chances of not getting into the game in the end - FIGHT!