Sweetly Sweetened Sweets [NaNo2022][GxG][Yuri][Comedy][Slice-of-Life][Sci-Fi(?)][Cute Demo, but about the full game--]

[MintGlow]

----

Big edit cuz THE GAME IS OUTTT:
https://mintglow.itch.io/sweetly-sweetened-sweets

... But if you'd like to see my progress, continue on scrolling ~

----

Hello hello, it's MintGlow again

NaNoRenO 2022 is finally here!!! I've been waiting for this event since I started making VNs last summer in 2021.
I was really impressed back then with how anyone could make a visual novel with Ren'Py, so I tried experimenting a little bit myself.

My main goal for this jam is to make as many assets as I can for a future game, while also making a small game with them.

This means I'm going to be doing this solo! That means writing, coding, sound, and music will all be done by me (which is more work, but I relish the freedom), and free-to-use assets if I can't make something in time.

Progress Dump is Back:

* Revealed the nauseatingly sweet title, Sweetly Sweetened Sweets
* Completed logo! Here are my progress shots and thought process:

This is me arranging all the elements and figuring out the layout! I'm not sure if this is how to make good logos, but I made sure to flip the logo back and forth to see if it still looked pleasing. That tip may only apply to anatomy though, not sure lol


This purple one was something I tried with a crayon effect since I wanted the opening shot to be some drawings, but I didn't like the feel or look of it lmao:


And finally, this is the one I'm choosing! I like it since it's more colorful and soft compared to the previous one :3
It also gets the theme across!


Why did I name my game something like this?? Well for the plot of my VN, leeeeeeet's just say it's a fluffy slice-of-life *for now* 🥰

As always, thanks for reading! I'll reveal more tomorrow...

Here are some other places I post progress in/on!
https://mintglow.itch.io/sweetly-sweete ... gress-page
https://twitter.com/MINTGL0W

[justcolorado]

That sounds pretty sweet. PUQFAL was really cute. I can't wait to see this one

[MintGlow]

That sounds pretty sweet. PUQFAL was really cute. I can't wait to see this one

That pun better be intended XD
And thank you for the words and for being interested!! They're going to be a bit grown up now...

----

Now for another update!

Progress Dump:

* Some sprite sketches!
* Title screen image sketch

(These things might look really messy)

Here are some slightly less edgy annoyed cat girl sketches where I totally didn't forget to draw her tail (she's the MC!).
Some of her expressions feel off to me, but I'll fix them. That's what the sketch phase is for after all:




And then I also drew the bird thing:




Yesterday evening I also slapped together a draft for the main menu/title screen, which I plan to pan horizontally and have a parallax effect (a little bit inspired by Butterfly Soup, hehe). Maybe I'll add an easter egg if I have time? Who knows :3

(idk why it's not loading properly, you don't have to click it lol)

That was the 2nd day for me! Not too much, but I took a midterm today too. (Hopefully I passed...)

Thanks for reading!! >w O

https://mintglow.itch.io/sweetly-sweete ... gress-page
https://twitter.com/MINTGL0W

[MintGlow]

bruh

Progress Dump:

* Wrote 1k words of dialogue! It's not much, but f o r e s h a d o w i n g :D . It doesn't seem like the type of game to have deep foreshadowing, right...?
* Worked on text boxes, I was also just messing around with the GUI and previously made backgrounds. I haven't coded anything in yet though, just put it together for visualization-sake. I think it turned out really cute, but it's not what the game is gonna look like:


She's laughing at absolutely nothing

If I ever make an artbook one day, maybe I'll delete all this stuff. Who knows ;3

[MintGlow]

Dumpster for Today:

* Tried making a point-and-click scene for the first time!


Other than that, here are the rough percentages of everything:

Sprites: 15.4% (Sketches of the cast are complete! If I have nothing else to share, then I'll share those lol)
Backgrounds: 0% (I will go to the city some time to take pictures of the city)
Sounds: 33.3333% (lots of sounds are from the courtesy of my mouth)
Music: 50% (A lot of it is royalty-free backup tracks)
GUI: 0%-90% (This is a HUGE range, if I have more time then I will go back and try to make it more appealing! But for now, default Ren'Py GUI.)
Story: 100% (... But it could also be 99.32% if I think something needs to be changed. Writing is like a 43%.)

Like on itch.io, I will start posting weekly here instead of daily since it takes some time to format everything. I'm going to keep posting daily on Twitter though!

So... See you next week :D
https://mintglow.itch.io/sweetly-sweete ... gress-page (< nothing here is new, just wanted to include it!)

[MintGlow]

Has it been a week yet??? No? Well, I can't wait to share progress with you guys, hehe.

The Dump Yippee:

Let's start with the visual parts of the game:

* The GUI! Ah yes, with button sounds from the courtesy of my mouth (I don't know how many times I've said this).
I didn't change much from the default Ren'Py one, but I did more than my last two games lol. Here's a short demonstration:


* I polished one of the character's sprites! It's Aq!! The main character--
...
Oh. I didn't need to give her a half-body sprite when I said I'd use side images. (I'm glad I realized this before drawing her other poses. On the bright side, it might be useful in the future though!)


* Another mistake of mine:


This is what should be done AT THE BEGINNING:


* Then I thought, layered Images PLUS Side Images?? Is it possible? Well, yes, I was able to make it work after initially thinking it wouldn't.
The link to the tweet since idk how to post GIFs here: https://twitter.com/MINTGL0W/status/1502462625505972225
(All of my posts are of Aq ._. there's too much purple lmao)

* Main Menu OST! I called it, "Freed". I usually name the titles of my soundtracks with the first thing I think of, (which can be not so good XD), but I think this title turned out pretty swell, mwahaha. I believe it's short and can be improved, but it'll do for now:


Here's how the extremely accurate percentages are looking now. We're a third of the way through NaNo!!!

Sprites: 48.3% (As you saw, I was able to get Aq's sprites and expressions implemented, which I believe will be the most difficult sprite to set up)
Backgrounds: 0% (I WILL go to the city some time to take pictures of the city)
Sounds: 55.5555% (I was able to use crayons and my nails too)
Music: 99.9% (HMM yeah I can't churn out any more pieces. If I do then it'll be the full version of "Freed".)
GUI: 100% (Woohoo!! I have a few more ideas to play around with screens and NVL mode, so it's more like a 95.27%, but it shall stay complete for now.)
Story: 100% (Same deal, but I figured out a perfect stopping point for this game! I hope this isn't TOO slice-of-life that it deters people from playing... Something else. I'm not a fan of slice-of-life lolol)


Winter quarter will be over for me soon, so I'll be able to spend more time on the VN!
See you guys again next week :D

- MintGlow
https://mintglow.itch.io/

[JenneMK]

I like your artwork so far, very bright and cute! The music you made is very nice, too. ^^

[MintGlow]

I like your artwork so far, very bright and cute! The music you made is very nice, too. ^^

Thank you, hehe :3 I love bright and cute! And I can't wait to see your NaNo updates!! I wish there were more participants posting their progress here...

----

Now, let's see some of that sweet progress:

Progress Dump:

* The title screen is complete: it pans, parallaxes, and has dust particles!! I'm quite proud of it :D (Also, I had enough time to add an Easter egg, so can you find the Easter egg when you play the game...? ):


* POLISHED sprites of Myx and Pippy! I told you I'd make new sprites of them 😤

Here, she's super excited to finally wear something other than a maid outfit because she makes money 🥰


Pippy's very rushed character card:


Note: Myx's sprite "animation" with layered images is in VERY bad quality since the GIF would otherwise be too large to upload.
Here, Myx is panicking about... Something on her tablet, eheh.


Rushed complementary character card:


I also got Aq's side images + layered images to work, as you can see from my high-quality testing and her very inaccurate character:


Percentages once again of how everything is going for me:

Sprites: 73.68% (Aq, Myx, and Pippy, the main characters at the moment are complete! Who else is going to be in the story...?)

Backgrounds: 0% (... Will I ever go to the city some time to take pictures of the city?)

Sounds: 100% (The rest were filled up with free sounds!)

Music: 100% (I'll only use the one piece I made. The rest of it shall be royalty-free!)

GUI: 95.3242% (Phone screens with NVL mode is something I'd like to work on now, so -4.6758%)

Story: 100% (I like thinking of it in the shower)

Writing: 83.333333% (Gotta find grammar problems and expand on some details I believe.)


Lots of drawing this week! Hopefully I can keep up the pace :0
I'm honestly not sure how much I'll be able to complete next week since.
It’s STILL finals week for me. 🙃

... But we'll see!


More frequent updates on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/MINTGL0W
Thank you for reading :D

[JenneMK]

Thank you, hehe :3 I love bright and cute! And I can't wait to see your NaNo updates!! I wish there were more participants posting their progress here...

It has been surprisingly quiet around here this year. Despite the jam itself on itch.io having more participants than I've seen in any previous year I've joined. Hopefully we'll get to see lots of cool projects at the end, though. ^^


Your project is looking great, love the title screen! I can see why you're proud of it.

[MintGlow]

Thank you, hehe :3 I love bright and cute! And I can't wait to see your NaNo updates!! I wish there were more participants posting their progress here...

It has been surprisingly quiet around here this year. Despite the jam itself on itch.io having more participants than I've seen in any previous year I've joined. Hopefully we'll get to see lots of cool projects at the end, though. ^^


Your project is looking great, love the title screen! I can see why you're proud of it. :D

Huh, I see... I definitely think there'll be some awesome projects at the end :D And thank you so much!!!

----

Progress Dump:

* Finally made a phone screen after a few hundred reloads and value changes :'D (I used Ren'Py's NVL mode). Wouldn't it be cool if you could press the call button?? 👀 (Disclaimer: You can't press the call button(s) right now and idk if I'll make it a feature in the full game. This is more of a tiny test if I ever use it! Looks quite similar to a certain communication platform, no?)

The café also looks a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle different, just a little.
...
At least it's still pink.
(I simply wanted to use a picture I took of a place uwu)


* New characters and their sprites??? Since the last character I made was Aq about three or four years ago, this is a pretty big deal for me. I don't like making characters and their designs and names etc. all willy-nilly... They would feel too lifeless for me.

Now it feels like I'm building a whole world!!

* So... Here is the Store Owner. You may already know her name if you've been snooping around my social media :3 They are a rat person. Who knows if they'll play an important role ~


* And this cat girl's name is Quo! Aq and Quo... Maybe you can already assume what role she plays! Quo is a few years older than Aq :D (idk why the image is so big on here)


* I finished revising the script!!! Yes, sitting at ~ 4.5k words... It really might be too short ;;

* Finally, I got the backgrounds! Yes, after a lot of indoor time crying through finals, I finally went into the outside world with my family. We went to the mall over the weekend and it was delicious :P

Kudos to you if you know where these are, hehe. If you don't, I'm not gonna tell you anyway XD







Possibly the last of the percentages of how everything is going for me:

Sprites: 100% (... Yep. That's all of the characters for now. Sorry if you were disappointed somehow, like me C: )
Backgrounds: 100% (I have finally went to the city and took pictures of the city!!!)
Sounds: 100%
Music: 100%
GUI: 100%
Story: 100% (Again, I hope this isn't TOO slice-of-life that it deters people from playing... Something else.)
Writing: 99.32984987% (A few more re-reads and it'll be good to go!)

Since the end is so near and I already have 99.888889% of the visual assets complete, I might not have time or even post anything for the fourth and final week of NaNo... Except for the game!

Thank you so much for reading this and sticking around!! And if you're doing NaNoRenO 2022 too, let's end this thing as strong as we can >:D

- MintGlow
https://mintglow.itch.io/
https://twitter.com/MINTGL0W

[azaraih]

Thank you, hehe :3 I love bright and cute! And I can't wait to see your NaNo updates!! I wish there were more participants posting their progress here...

It has been surprisingly quiet around here this year. Despite the jam itself on itch.io having more participants than I've seen in any previous year I've joined. Hopefully we'll get to see lots of cool projects at the end, though. ^^

Same here, I thought that was weird! I finally had time to check out people's projects and was surprised to not see many on here. I'm glad there's a lot of people participating though!


Anyway, I think this game is looking really cool!

One thing I like a lot about what you've shown is the fun extra functionality like the phone, moving main screen, and point + click scene. Those are really cool and make it feel a lot more animated and dynamic! I'm also impressed that you made your own music :O

The characters are really cute! I especially like Aq and Pippy :] I know you said that the story is very slice-of-life and not much happens, but I think it'll be cool to just learn about the characters and see how they interact with each other.

I'm also curious what the future game is that you'll be making with the same assets is :O I don't think playing this one would deter me from playing a different one in the future? (but I like slice-of-life anyway haha)

Awesome job and I'm excited to check it out once it's released!

[MintGlow]

Thank you, hehe :3 I love bright and cute! And I can't wait to see your NaNo updates!! I wish there were more participants posting their progress here...

It has been surprisingly quiet around here this year. Despite the jam itself on itch.io having more participants than I've seen in any previous year I've joined. Hopefully we'll get to see lots of cool projects at the end, though. ^^

Same here, I thought that was weird! I finally had time to check out people's projects and was surprised to not see many on here. I'm glad there's a lot of people participating though!


Anyway, I think this game is looking really cool!

One thing I like a lot about what you've shown is the fun extra functionality like the phone, moving main screen, and point + click scene. Those are really cool and make it feel a lot more animated and dynamic! I'm also impressed that you made your own music :O

The characters are really cute! I especially like Aq and Pippy :] I know you said that the story is very slice-of-life and not much happens, but I think it'll be cool to just learn about the characters and see how they interact with each other.

I'm also curious what the future game is that you'll be making with the same assets is :O I don't think playing this one would deter me from playing a different one in the future? (but I like slice-of-life anyway haha)

Awesome job and I'm excited to check it out once it's released!

I'm also glad there are many more participants :D It's cool seeing others' projects come to life! Do you have a NaNo project of yours?

And thank you so much!! I was focusing a lot on experimenting with "new" things Ren'Py can do to create a little more interactivity. Thanks for mentioning who you think is gonna be interesting too XD I guess I assume that demos are SUPPOSED to be exciting to leave players craving for more, which a slice-of-life may/may not necessarily deliver, if that makes sense!

The future game I'm going to make with the assets will still be slice-of-life-y, but it's gonna get a lot more... Exciting? Maybe ;D
The game will be called Acquiesce (the game page for it is extremely rough and temporary atm though!)

----

The game itself is finally released!!!!!!

(Click the link, not the GIF image unless you want to see it lol):
https://mintglow.itch.io/sweetly-sweetened-sweets

... I hope you find it (maybe a bit too short, but definitely) sweet~ 🍬

Let me know if you run into/find/have any problems, issues, questions, concerns, comments, grammar errors, anything! (I sorta had to sprint and get this out since my school starts again on Monday x.x )

- MintGlow

[azaraih]

I'm also glad there are many more participants It's cool seeing others' projects come to life! Do you have a NaNo project of yours?

And thank you so much!! I was focusing a lot on experimenting with "new" things Ren'Py can do to create a little more interactivity. Thanks for mentioning who you think is gonna be interesting too XD I guess I assume that demos are SUPPOSED to be exciting to leave players craving for more, which a slice-of-life may/may not necessarily deliver, if that makes sense!

The future game I'm going to make with the assets will still be slice-of-life-y, but it's gonna get a lot more... Exciting? Maybe ;D
The game will be called Acquiesce (the game page for it is extremely rough and temporary atm though!)

I'm not doing NaNo this year, but hopefully next year! I did a demo game for a previous NaNo, and now I'm trying to get back into games again and maybe complete some of my unfinished projects lol.

Yeah adding interactivity is great, I really like when people add stuff like that! And wow, congrats on finishing your first NaNo! I'll definitely try it out and let you know what I think! :]

[ilyilaice]

Congrats on releasing your NaNoRenO game! The character art is so colorful and distinct. I'll check it out when I get the time!

[JenneMK]

Yay, congrats on finishing your project! Once I'm done with my own project I'll check yours out. I'm looking forward to seeing your creation~~~
The backgrounds are pretty, they feel a bit dream-like! And I really like when games have screen interfaces so I find that a cool addition. That was clever to use the NVL mode to make that! ^^
I like your Store Owner character, too. Loving the warm colors in her design. ^^