Saucy Suitors [NaNo2018] [Otome, Comedy]

[Lazdo]

Hello Lemma Soft Forums...! I go by Lazdo, and I'm making a VN for NaNoRenO. It's my first VN project ever and I'm doing it all by myself. So far it's been a fantastic learning experience for me. And also the project has gone from something small, to a demo for something bigger... but I digress. ^^;

I have been kinda hesitant to post about it here, but after some encouragement, sure why not. Here's some basic info about it so far.

Basic idea - a comedy otome game where you can date sexy anime men who are personifications of common table condiments. So yes, there's a sexy Ketchup-kun, a sexy Mustard-san, etc etc. In total there are six dateable condiment men (aka "condi-men" bc I'm hilarious) in the game: Ketchup, Mustard, Relish, Mayonnaise, Sriracha and Soy Sauce.

Story - the story follows a young woman named Piper who works in a food truck at a popular tourist destination. One day, she finds another group of food trucks parked where she's supposed to be parked that day, according to her permit from the city. The interloping food trucks are owned by a company called Megafoods and operated by group of eccentric men with a strange passion for sauces and condiments. A call to city officials reveals that there was a mix-up with issuing the permits and that both Pipers' and the men's permits are valid. Piper and the Megafoods employees decide to have a cook-off competition to decide who gets to park their trucks there during an upcoming busy tourist event. To make the contest more fair for Piper, she's allowed to pick one of the six men to act as her assistant when preparing her dish for the competition. Hilarity and romance ensues! .........although, because this is NaNo, the demo only goes up to Piper picking her assistant. ^^;

Progress - as of the day and time I'm writing this, here's the approximate progress so far for Saucy Suitors.
Script - 100% complete (16k words, which includes all dialogue options)
Talksprites - 90% complete
Backgrounds - 85% complete
Music - 10% complete
Sound effects - 0%
UI - 0% complete
Title screen - 0% complete
Special CG illustrations - 0% complete
Coding/putting everything together in Ren'Py - 15%

I don't know how much progress I'll make on the UI or special CGs prior to NaNo being over. I may just use google to find a free-to-use UI. CGs are something I really wanted to add but probably won't have time to do at this point. I'm completely new to all of this, working completely by myself, and I barely know what I'm doing with Ren'Py, so I'll probably need more time to figure that stuff out before thinking about drawing more art assets.

Here's some preview images of the characters! (the smaller images were shrunk more for Twitter, so sorry for the variance)







And here's a basic sketch of the protagonist Piper, although you won't see her except in special CGs.


And finally, here's a screenshot!


I think that's about it for now! Thanks for looking/reading!

[milkteebaby]

(aka "condi-men" bc I'm hilarious)

This made me lol so hard. Good luck with this project! It looks absolutely hysterical

[Lazdo]

So I'm very late getting back to this Lemmasoft thread on my demo game, but yes, it did get released on Itch.io on time. I'm sure that people who are following NaNo and have browsed the entries have seen it there already, but for everyone else, here is a link to the game's page! https://oddlazdo.itch.io/saucy-suitors-demo

Also, I have a survey people can fill out about what they liked or didn't like about it, so if you play the game and wanna share feedback, the survey is here: http://goo.gl/forms/GCHphqfA54y8Jldl2 (note: if you haven't played the game yet, some of the survey questions could count as spoilers?)

[philip]

@Lazdo-

Just downloaded the demo to my mac and played through . . . it's a neat story; the backgrounds and sprites are very colorful and well done. Was really into it . . . and then I reached the end of the DEMO. Darn! An excellent job so far and will look forward to release the completed story.

philip

[LiaSays]

This was a really solid demo. I loved the characters, especially Hunter. The person that I jived with the absolute most was Piper, the MC, because I feel like she was really relatable, and that her pov was a good window into the game. I feel like the demo was very well balanced in terms of introducing all the suitors. The only thing that was a little jarring was the fact that Piper chooses who her partner will be (I'm assuming based on player choices) without the player being able to choose directly who to partner up with.