An Amaranthine Tryst [NaNoRenO 2019][Yuri, Psych Horror, Romance][NSFW]

[NiccyNeko]

Hello everybody!

My girlfriend and I are excited to announce our participation in NaNoRenO 2019! We're a two-woman team aiming to produce a visual novel within the 31 days of March (and actually finish it this time!)

The Story
Our story "An Amaranthine Tryst" is a work of fiction inspired by true real-life events. While it's not intended to be erotica, It is definitely an NSFW, grown-ups only kind of game. It will feature some adult themes, psychological horror, drug abuse, self-harm, blood, BDSM, sexual situations, etc. you get the idea.
As of this moment in time when this post was written NaNoRenO 2019 officially begins in about an hour, so our Ren'Py project will be created then and the two of us will engage in a month-long VN producing frenzy!

The Style
We both love anime and manga, and although anime is the dominant style of visual novels, we are choosing to do our game with pre-rendered 3D scenes and characters. Why? because although both of us have artistic talents, neither of us has the particular skill of drawing in the anime style. So we're planning on using a skill I already have to produce the visuals needed for our story.

The Challenges
We foresee quite a few challenges in completing this game before the March 31st deadline, and I absolutely sure we'll encounter more. So, for now, I'll list a few that we have in front of us:

• Polishing a scrambled vague idea into a coherent series of words that make up an interesting story.
• Do ALL the artwork!
• Staying Focused (Hide the shiny objects!)
• Applying a unique style to the visual elements in general
• Finding/borrowing fitting music and audio effects
• Customization (We don't want the default Ren'Py look-and-feel)

We look forward to this experience and sharing this crazy exciting month with all the other developers out there! We're VN fans too so we're also really looking forward to seeing all the other awesome projects other people are working on this month!
~ <3 Allie and Lexie

[Zelan]

Really exciting to see a yuri VN being produced by two girlfriends! There's not too much about the plot here for me to get a grasp of, but the Psych Horror tag has me interested for sure. Good luck on your NaNo!

[NiccyNeko]

Thanks, Zelan!
Yeah sorry for being a little vague, but we want to keep a lot of the story obscured from the public at first until we have a more solid idea. We don't want to unintentionally divulge spoilers and the like. We'll post updates on this thread as the project progresses though so stay tuned for more!
Also thanks for sharing your interest! getting a nice reply like that so early gives us a little more push to get this thing done

[yoshibb]

Psychological horror inspired by true life sounds terrifying. I like the mystery behind it. It's cool that you two are making it together too! I'm excited to see what you come up with

[Evangeline Ingram]

I'm super into more gay girls making games about gay girls. And... Damn, respect to you for going right at "psychological horror" as your genre from the starting gate. Both for the drawing-from-real-life part and the that's-a-real-writing-challenge part.

I'm super looking forwards to seeing what you two come up with!

[NiccyNeko]

First of all, a huge thanks for all the awesome and encouraging comments so far! You people here are giving us the push we need to see this through to completion.

Now, Update Time!

We've got our outline for the story done, and working on adding player choices along with their accompanying story arcs. So far, although the main idea is based on real events, the story is first and foremost a work of fiction. We want to take the opportunity to tell an exciting story that players can appreciate. For instance, the setting will be entirely fictional. The story arcs resulting from various user choices will also be fictional since those choices were never made in real life. Of course, some of the real-life events may be a little exaggerated for the sake of excitement.

Lexie has also been working hard on textures for the scenery I've been creating, and now, we're seeing our first test renders. We've realized early on that we're not going to have the time we need within a single month to make everything look perfect, but hopefully, it'll be good enough to get the story across and make players feel like they are a part of that story.

Let's meet our protagonist! (and maybe the first hint at our setting)
Haylie (players will be able to rename her at the beginning of the story if they choose)

Haylie seems to have it all. After working through her education and climbing up the career ladder to an esteemed position at a leading tech firm, she has everything she thought she had ever wanted. A high-paying job, a respectable luxury sports car, an exquisite downtown loft, and a beautiful girlfriend. However, something still seems like it's missing form Haylie's seemingly perfect lifestyle. She doesn't seem quite as fulfilled as she always thought she would when she accomplished such success. Will she find what she's looking for and finally be content in life, or will her world fall apart at the seams while seeking that elusive piece of herself that's been missing?

Stay tuned for more!

[NiccyNeko]

Hey, sorry it's been a few days since the last update, but it's that time now!

We have gotten a lot done the past week, but there's still a long road ahead for the game. Trying to finish the game within a month pretty much means working on it anytime we're not at our jobs or asleep. Time management has definitely been a challenge, but we're doing the best we can and having fun together in the process.
We realize now that we might have embarked on a project that's just too ambitious to get done in a single month, but that's not going to stop us from trying anyway!
Instead of just telling the story and pulling the player along for the ride, we've implemented a navigation system and an event handler to give players a more active role in the story. Players will be able to move around to different locations using a few screens we have in place now, and our event handler tells the story as players explore the in-game world. Here are a couple of shots of the work in progress:





As always, feel free to let us know what you think! If you have any comments or questions feel free to share them here.
Our story has just passed the 4.8 K mark, and we feel like we haven't gotten very far with it at all yet, so we still have lots of work to do.
Allie has been busy with coding and modeling, while Lexie has been producing textures, applying post-processing touchups to our artwork and polishing the story we have down so far.

There's still a TON of scenery to produce, character models to build, story to be written, and well... There's still a TON left to get done.
At this time, even if we can't get the entire project done and finished within the month, we'd still like to have something playable that we'll be able to share.
Of course, we have and will have already put too much into this at the end of the month to just call it done if it's not finished entirely. So if it's not entirely done by March 31st we'll at the very least have a playable demo ready and will finish the rest of the game afterward.
So far it's been a crazy month, but it's been fun and I love that Lexie and I have been able to work on this together. We're really having fun doing this!
See you all again soon!

[Zelan]

There's quite a few games this month with gameplay elements being worked on! I'm really impressed by the dedication, since that takes a lot longer to program than just a plain vanilla visual novel.

I'm glad you guys are having fun with this project! ^_^ Keep up the good work!

[azaraih]

This is looking cool so far! Like other people have said already, the psychological horror aspect is really intriguing. I'm curious to find out more about the characters, since we've only heard about Haylie so far. And I really want to know what ends up disrupting her perfect life.

Time management is definitely tough, it sounds like you're making a lot of progress though! Good luck with everything!

[NiccyNeko]

Hey all!
It's Lexie making this post this time! Allie usually makes these posts but she just spent the past two hours pouring over her code only to find she put a period where there should be a comma lmao. I think her brain is down for maintenance and the poor girl needs a break after that.

Anyhow, let's get on with a quick update! After a review of our story today we realized we have indeed bitten off more than we can chew (at least in a single month.)
So our goal now is to produce a playable demo of the story we're making and we will continue finishing the game in April. We haven't made as much progress in the overall storyline yet, focusing more on artwork, modeling, and designing the interfaces. Although we haven't gotten very far in the story yet we're over 5000 words so far, so this is aiming towards being a decent length game. We believe a game should be all it can be so in an effort to leave no spline unreticulated we are going to give the full game the time and attention it needs. That being said, we are confident we'll have a playable demo ready by the end of the month that hopefully players will be intrigued by, and we're both looking forward to sharing it all with you!

There's quite a few games this month with gameplay elements being worked on! I'm really impressed by the dedication, since that takes a lot longer to program than just a plain vanilla visual novel.

I'm glad you guys are having fun with this project! ^_^ Keep up the good work!

Thanks, Zelan!
We originally had a vanilla novel planned, but soon into working on the storyline Allie decided it would give players more control over the story by changing up the default format a little bit. After seeing what she's coded so far, I agree this will way will be much more exciting as well as much more of a challenge to work on. I've also noticed quite a few projects bringing in some fantastic UI designs! This is the first year we're doing NaNo but we're really excited to see all the clever things other teams are coming up with.

This is looking cool so far! Like other people have said already, the psychological horror aspect is really intriguing. I'm curious to find out more about the characters, since we've only heard about Haylie so far. And I really want to know what ends up disrupting her perfect life.

Time management is definitely tough, it sounds like you're making a lot of progress though! Good luck with everything!

Thanks, Azaraih!
Hopefully, I can shed some more light on this in a spoiler-free way. The Psych horror aspect comes from Haylie struggling with some "inner demons" I guess you might call them. Some problems from her past are beginning to resurface as she's still feeling unfulfilled after achieving all she thought she wanted in life. This leads to tensions with her girlfriend, and her mental state suffers as she experiences trouble at home as well in other aspects of her life. Can't tell you too much yet though, don't want to ruin anything for you!

We're still putting some touches on some of the character's textures and artwork, but for now, let's meet:
Felicity

Felicity is Haylie's friend at work, and really the only friend she doesn't know through her girlfriend Natalie. Being Haylie's preferred extroverted counterpart, Felicity is very outgoing, loves dancing, meeting new people, and is a well-known patron of the club scene. She's the kind of person that's just about impossible not to like and always does her best to bring up the mood of the people around her. During Haylie's struggles with her personal life, Felicity lends a caring hand in supporting Haylie emotionally and the two become close. Can they become closer than just friends? I guess you'll have to find out!

Thanks again for all the awesome support from this community! We'll have more updates soon, and more characters to introduce here too!

[NiccyNeko]

Hey, everybody!

Bio time!
Today we're going to introduce:
Natalie

Natalie is Haylie's long time girlfriend. The two have shared a relationship for some time, but the two have been going through some rough patches as of late. Natalie cares about Haylie deeply but is frustrated by some of her poor choices and bad habits. Also, Haylie has been turning her attention to other things in her life trying to achieve happiness which leaves Natalie feeling left out. Natalie is manipulative by her nature and tends to hatch schemes to get what she wants rather than confront problems directly. Will she be able to get through to Haylie and work things out with the woman she loves? or will the relationship between the two fall apart leaving them to go their separate ways for good?

[Zelan]

Natalie is a CUTIE! <3 I love her hair!

[NiccyNeko]

Hey, everybody!

We've been doing some coding and debugging for the past couple days which is going well for the most part but leaves us without much else to update about other than characters, so let's get right to that!

Natalie is a CUTIE! <3 I love her hair!

Thanks, Zelan!
That's actually really reassuring to hear!
She's supposed to be pretty but I kept second guessing myself like "I don't know, did I make her pretty enough?" But your comment provides me some good reassuring feedback, so thanks!

So tonight we're going to introduce:
Jenna

Jenna is a woman with a "bad girl" reputation. Rumor has it she has a pattern of dashing from one relationship to the next, leaving a trail of broken hearts in her wake. She's a woman known for always getting what and who she wants, and now she's got her sights set on Haylie.
In addition to regularly hitting parties and listening almost exclusively to the latest indie rock, Jenna secretly has other interests she tries to keep hidden from most of her peers like cosplay and being an avid gamer.
Will Jenna ever leave her wild reputation behind? Will she be able to sweep Haylie off her feet? Gotta play to find out!

[Zelan]

Jenna is also adorable!! I thought it couldn't get better after you posted Natalie but it absolutely did. ^_^

[NiccyNeko]

Jenna is also adorable!! I thought it couldn't get better after you posted Natalie but it absolutely did. ^_^

She loves to hear that! Jenna dislikes Natalie, they don't get along.