Chasing the Stars [BxB] [DEMO available] [RELEASED]

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Ertal77
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Chasing the Stars [BxB] [DEMO available] [RELEASED]

#1 Post by Ertal77 »

While A Hand in the Darkness is being wrapped up, let me introduce my new "baby":
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After building some satellite cities as a test, the Earth is finally terraforming its first colony, the planet Alaya.

Tirs Abril has always dreamt of going to space, and now he's determined to take part in the colonization. Following his dream, he's currently studying the last year of Environmental Engineering in college.

After breaking up with his boyfriend, he finally finds his sought-after chance: working as a scholarship researcher with Professor Marc Rossell, a prominent figure in the field of Environmental Engineering, and right now in charge of building the dome that will cover the inhabitable part of Alaya. However, Tirs soon will find out things are more complicated than he thought and his path won't be precisely a rose garden.

How much is Tirs willing to sacrifice to pursue his dream? What risks or actions is he going to deem acceptable to achieve his goal? Will he reconsider his options or advance as an unstoppable force, no matter what? His decisions are up to you!

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Pol is Tirs' best friend since Highschool. He studies History at the same University.
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Marc Rossell is an ambitious University teacher.


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Biel is working under Dr. Rossell, designing the ecosystem that's going to be implemented in Alaya.
The action takes place in a slightly retrofuturistic Barcelona (let's say the Barcelona of 20 years in the future with some steam-powered machines). The title refers to Tirs' lifelong dream, but we won't be seeing rockets: it's all about how Tirs manage to achieve (or not) his dream, so everything will happen mostly in the University: we'll see college mates meeting at the cafeteria, planning stuff in the Departments and working hard (or doing other things) at the labs and offices.

Instead of going for definite routes, for this vn I have planned more something along a gamebook, where there are many different endings depending on your choices, and you have the chance to change to another character's route at least once.

And for the seme/uke tropes, after taking a look at different opinions about BL visual novels (plus mine, of course), I want every sex scene to have an option to choose if you (Tirs) want to top or bottom, or also if you prefer to skip the scene in case you are not interested in seeing H scenes but you still want to read the story. There will be two threesome scenes as well.

MAIN FEATURES, so far:
-THREE love interests
-Multiple endings
-Top/Bottom/Skip adult content options
-Two threesomes
-Around 75k words (more or less 7-8 hours of gameplay)
-CG Gallery
-Choices Guide

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Demo available on itch.io AND Steam! Play the first scenes, roughly 9k words (less than an hour) and tell us what you think!

We have now a video opening on YouTube! :wink:


FEEDBACK TIME!

1. Is the general plot appealing to you? Is it boring, interesting...?

2. Is there something specific you would like to see in a BL visual novel?

3. What do you think about the multiple endings and the possibility of changing to another character's route? Is is too open for your taste?

4. Do you like the characters so far? Which one do you like best?

5. Any suggestion or criticism?

You can also chat about the game or BL games in general on Discord!
Last edited by Ertal77 on Mon Jan 07, 2019 3:56 pm, edited 17 times in total.
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CosmicFan

Re: Chasing Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#2 Post by CosmicFan »

Another? Already? Ertal coming at us with that one-two punch.


1. Is the general plot appealing to you? Is it boring, interesting...?

I can dig it. I also really like the setting. I like the idea of Earth colonizing another planet using steam-powered machinery. I also don't know a lot about Barcelona, so it'll be cool to learn about the city while playing the game.


2. Is there something specific you would like to see in a BL visual novel?

Not really.


3. What do you thing about the multiple endings and the possibility of changing to another character's route?

The multiple endings feature doesn't really do anything for me. I just always try to get the best ending possible for each character and then drop it. Unless the endings aren't good/bad, but more like different variations of good. Like for example, if with the same characters there's an ending where you settle down and adopt children and another where you can travel the world together, and both are presented as acceptable, good endings by the game.

But the flexibility with changing routes does interest me, a lot. Often in visual novels, you need to take every single choice that favors a character in order to get their best ending and if you don't, you're locked out. I think this could be really interesting, specially if you start on character A's route and then you change to character B's and that change is reflected in character B's dialogue, like: "Hey, I thought you were going out with A". I think this feature has a lot of potential.


4. Do you like the characters so far? Which one do you like best?

I do. From the little I know about the characters right now I like Biel the best. The black hair + him being described as "gloomy" made me think steampunk emo, which is a look and aesthetic I never knew I needed in my life.


5. Any suggestion or criticism?

I have two thoughts on Kickstarter, you may ignore them at your leisure.

First one is about competing against other games. You should probably launch your campaign after Full Service's is over. That game's campaign is still ongoing at the time of my writing and it has already broken Kickstarter's pledged money record for a BL game. It's overshadowing any gay-centric games on KS right now and it still has 37 more days of campaign to go. Also, the creators of Chess of Blades (Dovahkitteh on the forum)will be relaunching their campaign in the future, you could avoid competing against them.

Second is about the CGs. I think maybe you should reconsider not having explicit CGs. And that's not because I'm a big pervert, I am, but the reason is that games that have explicit sexual content tend to do better on Kickstarter. Think the aforementioned Full Service, Seiyuu Danshi, Coming Out On Top(the most notorious example), and to a lesser extent Sentimental Trickster.


Random Thoughts

*Is Biel short for Gabriel?

*Being able to choose who bottoms/tops is a G.R.E.A.T feature.

*I love that Tirs actually has a romantic/sexual past. Most VN protagonists are falling in love for the first time/virgins. He's a breath of fresh air.

*Threesome option is (◕‿◕✿).

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Re: Chasing Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#3 Post by Ertal77 »

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

Geez, I thought nobody was interested in this project, being because the steam look or because of my lack of visual editing skills (sorry, I'll update the main post once I have more visuals to add, and I'll try to make them look as good as they deserve).

You've got a good point about the Kickstarter! Noted down!

I'll think about the possibility of NSFW CGs; of course, it will depend on the artist. Believe it or not, not many artists are willing to do NSFW illustrations :/ For my part, I don't mind them, as long as they are done with good taste, and since I'll add the option to skip every H content, we should be okay.

-You won't see much of Barcelona: just a couple of distinctive buildings on the landscape to help you place yourself and the fact that the names are in Catalan (the local language).

-Nope, Biel is not short for anything :)

-I aim for realistic relationships/intimacy, so yeah, reversible couples with a past are something I really want to see in VNs too (plus, you have twice the amount of sex scenes, since you can always come back and see the other option). And threesomes! Who doesn't love threesomes?

Again, thank you for your input! ^_^
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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#4 Post by Ertal77 »

OK, characters bios implemented! I think it looks neater this way, right?
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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#5 Post by Red-Baby »

1. Is the general plot appealing to you? Is it boring, interesting...?
It sounds pretty interesting =D Aside from the college aspect, I hope the game play also involves when they are actually in space.

2. Is there something specific you would like to see in a BL visual novel?
I like that you've included the option for the MC to be a bottom or top! In a lot of games the characters have set roles but I know that in some RL relationships switching is commonplace.
For a BL or really any LGBTQ+ game, I'd really like to see supporting characters that are accepting of people's sexual orientation. It's always nice to see open minded people in games.


3. What do you thing about the multiple endings and the possibility of changing to another character's route? Is is too open for your taste?
I for one usually try to play as many routes as I can, so I'm all for this XD

4. Do you like the characters so far? Which one do you like best?
The character art is very beautiful. Pols is probably my favourite, he looks like a happy-go-lucky person and I generally like the 'best friend' routes.

5. Any suggestion or criticism?
I hope there will be some awesome steampunkish music accompanying this game. =]
Keep it up!

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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#6 Post by Ertal77 »

Updated cover art! :D

I hope you like it!

It will be available as a free wallpaper in full HD at the itch.io page.
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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#7 Post by illuminate001 »

Ertal77 wrote:Updated cover art! :D

I hope you like it!

It will be available as a free wallpaper in full HD at the itch.io page.
Hey Ertal77, umm the coverart link is broken (Probably just a link typo). Can't wait to see it! :D
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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#8 Post by Ertal77 »

illuminate001 wrote:
Ertal77 wrote:Updated cover art! :D

I hope you like it!

It will be available as a free wallpaper in full HD at the itch.io page.
Hey Ertal77, umm the coverart link is broken (Probably just a link typo). Can't wait to see it! :D
Really?? :? But I can see it in the post...
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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#9 Post by Zelan »

I can't see it either - It's just a Black that says "The image you are requesting does not exist or is no longer available." I think illuminate might be right about a link typo. If that doesn't work, try taking a look at your privacy settings?

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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#10 Post by Ertal77 »

Solved now, I think! :D
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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#11 Post by Zelan »

Yup, it's there now! It looks great. ^_^

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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#12 Post by AdultSciFi »

Nice work on the art! I also really like how the colors are used to give an more vintage look.

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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#13 Post by Ertal77 »

Yay, thank you!

Let's see how the artists manage to avoid it from getting boring with a brown/grey palette all the time XDD
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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#14 Post by illuminate001 »

Hi Ertal!

Goodmorning how's it? :) Thanks for the follow on Tumblr. Anyways to the point: Chasing The Stars!

Since you mentioned the art I had something I wanted to mention for awhile now and your last post was the perfect segway. Anyways this is just an idea (please feel free to take or leave it ^_^ ) but I've been thinking, the guys color palettes are all very similar. I'd suggest bringing in a splash of an accent color, each different per guy. So for example maybe Marc's neckerchief is royal blue, or Biel's shirt underneath the leather vest is a DARK purple or maroon or something.

I think it'd be a nice touch to separate each guy even further and give them an iconic color you can associate with each one.

BTW my fav guy is Marc so far. <3
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Re: Chasing the Stars [BxB] [steampunk-ish, college]

#15 Post by Ertal77 »

illuminate001 wrote: BTW my fav guy is Marc so far. <3
:lol: :lol: :lol: I wouldn't expect any less from you!

Marc is going to have some muscles hidden under those clothes, I assure you :wink:

About the color scheme... I will take it into account. There's other things that will bring more color to the screen, though: my comment about it would be all bichromatic was just a joke!
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