Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

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Boniae
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Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#1 Post by Boniae »

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Support the patreon! Watch the development of the game and get beta testing access when available!

THE STORY SO FAR...

Ezra has come to a conclusion: he must drop out of college by the end of the semester. Amidst meeting new friends and rekindling neglected relationships, he'll say his goodbyes to an important chapter in his life and make way for the next.

Created as an entry for Yaoijam 2016.


CHARACTERS

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Ezra Walks-On-Top
Doesn't have any other redeeming talents besides his interest in science. Majoring in biochemistry. His current situation leaves him feeling confused and unmotivated to plan for the future. He's not the nicest guy on the planet, but at least he tries.

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Junya Hashimoto
Ezra's roommate and his long time best friend from childhood. He plays for the college football team. Junya's a guy with a sensitive heart and an open mind. It's very difficult to get him angry, but it's so much easier to make him cry. 

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Dion
A fellow student that meets Ezra's standards as a respectable as a lab partner. Though he's shorter than most guys and doesn't look his age, Ezra finds he's far from naive. He's composed and gives off that vibe that he knows more than he's letting on... 

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Lorenzo
Senior. IT major. Rumors have been going around claiming he's an apathetic robot, but Ezra finds he's all that plus a jerk. On the bright side, he fixes computers for a reasonable price. 

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Meera Walks-On-Top
Ezra's sister, who now works at a cafe near the campus since it's close to her high school. They don't really see each other often, but talk on the phone frequently.

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Arlene
She grew up with Junya and Ezra. She's an aspiring architect, lover of the arts, and also Junya's ex-girlfriend. Through the years Ezra's known her, she's universally known as an angel, and Ezra is sometimes obsessed with trying to find her anything but that.

GAME NOTES

This is pretty much an alternate universe featuring the cast of a another VN I've been working on called Dakota Wanderers. Due to being busy with other projects, my progress for that visual novel hasn't gotten far in the script. Since the project started in 2013, I've been worried about keeping the interest I have for these characters, so I figured Yaoi Jam would be the perfect opportunity to let loose and write my characters freely. Happy to say that working on this game for the past two months has been a total blast! I'm very excited to release this demo, and hopefully the full release won't be too far off.

This demo is roughly 16k words and may take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour of gameplay. I looked over the script as much as I could, but there's always the possibility of having errors. Let me know if you encounter any bugs or grammatical slip ups.

Also, any feedback on the demo would be much appreciated! The full release is still in the works, so any insight on how to improve the experience would be great. Thanks!

***GET DEMO ON ITCH.IO***
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WARNINGS
Alcohol use + some foul language

CREDITS
Story and Art - Boniae
Backgrounds - Morguefile, my personal photos, Sims 3(dorm placeholder)
Music - Alan Ruckus, Sunsearcher, ZuikakuP, Greg Reiter, TAM music factory
Extra - Kia's transition wipes

PROGRESS

Outline – 100%
Script – 100%
Art – 70%
GUI – 70%

PROJECT QUESTIONS
1. On your discovery of the game, does the premise interest you? (Would the synopsis benefit from being longer, or does the shortness of it make it interesting?)
2. Which character are you interested in?
3. Some expectations for the full game?
4. After playing the demo, any suggestions or critique?

Updates
  • [8/7/2016] Demo released in time for yaoijam deadline
  • [1/12/2017] After a long hiatus, I started picking back up on SB. Organized my outline for all my unwritten scenes.
  • [1/30/2017] Up to about 4k more to the script, nearly done with Dion's route.
  • [3/9/2017] +2k words, Romance scene for Dion complete
  • [3/25/2017] Dion's route is averaging more than 20k words! Woo! ^^
  • [5/22/2017] Dion's route and Junya's routes are completely finished.
  • [11/2/2017] Lorenzo's route is at 8k.
  • [1/12/2018] The writing is nearly finished! Lorenzo's route is at 28k, Dion's is at 21k, and Junya's is at 10k. (Sounds pretty short, but the majority of beginning are scenes with Junya to be fair). All that's left in the writing department is extra/non route scenes.
  • [3/27/2018] Shifting over to the art portion of the game. I'm trying to draw the CGs and BGs that are needed in the game.
Last edited by Boniae on Sun Feb 16, 2020 4:21 pm, edited 14 times in total.

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Boniae
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#2 Post by Boniae »

Oh boy, I haven't updated this thread in awhile! For anyone keeping track of this project, I'm slowly but surely chipping away at the progress in this. I just got done finishing up a super long romance scene for Dion (the scene itself is just about 7k words, but overall Dion's route is about 12k at this moment.) I have two more scenes to write in Dion's route until his side will be finished. The rest would be to work on Lorenzo's route and some extra story scenes.

To anyone interested in an in depth information about what needs to be done in the game, I have a post up here on my blog. It's kind of bummy with how slow this is going due to some other things I've been juggling outside of writing, but I'm really set on Sagebrush and want to see it complete. Thanks for checking in! :D

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Boniae
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#3 Post by Boniae »

Another update! Things are looking pretty good for the game. Dion and Junya's routes are completely finished, and all that's left is Lorenzo's route and two or three big scenes. There's also little filler scenes (short map stuff when there's really no event) to do as well. Now that I've written quite a bit, I'm now going to shift my focus on programming the game and can hopefully start uploading some screenshots.

I've also added some project questions for any of those who are interested in the game. Thanks!

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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#4 Post by parttimestorier »

Glad to see you're still working on this! I liked Forget-Me-Not, so I'm looking forward to seeing you take on a longer story. :) I'm definitely interested in a story about a young adult who's trying to figure out what to do with his life, and Dion sounds really cute. Good luck with the rest of development!
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#5 Post by Ghost of Crux »

HOW DID I MISS THIS,,
You're one of my favorite artist AND developer in general, so eyes emoji at this project, definitely. Your art just gets better and better-- I love it.
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misspells everything as unicorn. Call me Namio. They/them. | Honest Critique

Become a patron on my Patreon!

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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#6 Post by Ertal77 »

It seems I have missed this one among the ongoing game posts... :/

Gonna fix that as soon as I hit home and I download the demo!

So far, I love the character sprites, especially the main character(he's really cute, and easy to relate to. Been there, done that) . The university setting and slice of life theme is nice for a short visual novel like this, so I'm looking forward to play it!
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Boniae
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#7 Post by Boniae »

MAJOR APOLOGIES for not getting to this thread sooner!! I'm never on top of LS threads, haha @o@;;

Still a bit slow on progress, but my time is freeing up, meaning I have more time to work on SB! I posted this on twitter awhile back, but here's a recent screenshot of Junya stuffing his face with funnel cakes 8)
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@parttimestorier; That means so much, thank you for the support!!! I'm glad to hear things are catching your interest as well :-D
@Ghost of Crux; AHHH MANN TY SO MUCH WHA--you're one of my favorite artists and developers TOO HAHA *cries* Thank you so much for the support!! TToTT
@Ertal77; Haha, no worries--so many threads get bumped often! I'm glad it's piqued your interest!! :-D

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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#8 Post by PMscenarios »

Ooh, happy to see progress on this! I played the demo a while ago, and have been keeping an eye on further development.
I really liked Lorenzo btw, he was a lot of fun to converse with.
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#9 Post by Boniae »

@PMscenarios; Thanks so much! Haha, I'm really glad you like Lorenzo! (I feel he isn't as popular because he comes off as a bully, haha X'D)

So another (long overdue, haha) update to the thread, since September I've been trying to chip away at writing the game again. This November I'm participating in NaNoWriMo and using Sagebrush as my novel, so here's to hoping a good portion of the writing (mostly Lorenzo's route) will be made by this month. Lorenzo's route is already at 8k, so we're looking good!

Also, I've recently commissioned Noyemi K for the game's soundtrack, and it sounds awesome. :D Hopefully I can upload previews sometime or at perhaps update the game's demo with the soundtrack by the end of this year.

Most of my updates will most likely be shared via my twitter if anyone's interested. Thanks for checking in!

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Boniae
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#10 Post by Boniae »

Hello again! Great news everyone, the writing is (pretty much) done!!! I would say there's only about 5k or so left in terms of extra stuff, but all three routes are over with and I'm just importing the text into the game and trying to code it all. There's still such a long way to go in terms of art, though, but I'm hoping to get a huge chunk of work done this month while I'm taking a hiatus from my comic.

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Also, if you've recently played the demo, I'd really appreciate if you could answer either of the project questions! It'll be very helpful for when I'm editing and changing my script.

Thanks for checking in!

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Boniae
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#11 Post by Boniae »

Hey everyone, I'm back in the thread with another update! Around January and February I was able to code all the expressions into the current script, so my next focus is art. Although progress with SB has been a little groggy since I've had my hands full with my nanoreno project, I was still able to chip away at the art portion of the game. Currently there's a loooot of CG art that I need to make progress with which is a little tedious, but I've been going somewhere with it which is great. Crossing my fingers for a 2018 release!!!
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In other news, if you want to keep a close and intimate eye on the game's development, please consider pledging on my patreon! It will help me commission more music for the game's soundtrack and support my comic making endeavors as well! Plus $5+ patrons will get acess to beta testing when it's available, which I'm hoping will be very soon considering the writing is almooost there! Check it out! :mrgreen:
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Boniae
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#12 Post by Boniae »

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Hi everyone! It's definitely been awhile since I've posted in this thread, but I have some super great news. The writing for the game is COMPLETE!! :mrgreen: I'm so happy because this was my goal for 2018 and I made it happen, so YEHAW! My next step is to continue coding everything that's still unfinished, which, ideally, I'd like to focus only on this December, but I'm not sure if I can get the entire game coded by 2018. The good thing is--the game is getting done and that's what matters. I'm really excited to eventually get this release rolling!

If you're interested, Sagebrush has a tumblr! I switched from my old VN dev blog to tumblr now, although at some point I might just mirror both blogs due to people migrating off of tumblr these days. :'D

Also, the patreon-exclusive beta release still stands! If you're interested in getting a first look, consider pledging on patreon and keep your eyes peeled! In addition to that, I'm always updating my patreons on the game development, screenshots, and art when I can.

As always, thanks for reading! And if you have any comments or feedback on the demo even now, I'd still love to hear it! Sagebrush is still in development and I'd love to use any feedback I can get to shape the rest of the game.

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Boniae
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Re: Sagebrush [BxB][Slice of Life/Dramedy][DEMO]

#13 Post by Boniae »

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It's been awhile since I updated the lemmasoft thread, and since I updated the VNdev blog (you can go to that post for more images btw), I figured I'd post over here as well. I’m always pretty active on patreon though if you need to keep up with me! (wink wink) Using that for reference, (since I don’t have any other good ways to keep track otherwise, LOL) Here’s all the stuff that’s gotten done with the game during these past few months:

February: Around this time, I came pretty close to being finished with all the CG sketches. My goal was to sketch everything out, so I could just import it into the game, then line/color at my own pace later & replace it. Didn’t get that done though–but I think I only have like…8 or so CGs left to sketch at this point?

March: I switched over to coloring/lining backgrounds that are left. I colored 4, then actually ended up lining everything that was left. So now all I have to do is color the rest of the BGs.

April: Mid March I actually ended up falling into a really big artistic slump and only really got active this month (around the 17th). Currently I’ve been back to coloring backgrounds. BURNOUT SUCKS! But I’m really glad to be getting back on the creative track, so hopefully I’ll get a lot of progress achieved this month.

So…YEAH. Getting all the art done for this game is definitely a long haul. 😅The great thing is, the BGs are pretty close to being completed, and the only art that’s left is finishing lining/coloring all the CGs. My game plan right now is: import all the cg sketches into the game so I can actually start playtesting. Even though some of the art is unfinished, I think I have enough assets done at this point so it might look semi-polished. I can do editing, work out some of the bugs, so I can get a rough beta out to patrons this year! It would also be nice, if I can manage it, after editing and so forth: to update the public demo again. So yep, that’s the plan!

Well that’s about it. Thanks for checking in!

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