Passion Peaches [BxG] [Dating sim] [Eroge] [Demo game]

[Warmmellow]

What it's about:
Passion Peaches is a dating sim in which you can go on a date with any of the four girls at any time. After you choose who to spend your night with you decide where to take them. Each location has a unique date for each girl. Answer their questions and connect with them to end the date well. Each successful date will reward you with an image on the girls "instaglam". Once the girls like you enough it's time to get intimate with them. After that you can decide to end the game by going steady with her or go on more dates with her or one of the other girls. Your ending will be based on how many of the dates you were able to end well. The setting is current time in the U.S. with current technology.

The girls:

Samantha is an otaku who loves everything Japanese. She is kind and a bit shy. She currently works a retail job to help her pay for her college classes. She has no idea what she wants to do with her life but is working towards her future nonetheless.

Piper is living with her parents and spending her days hanging out with the ducks at the park. She is laid-back and has no plans for her future. She graduated from high school a year ago but has no plans to go to college or get a job anytime soon.

Kim spends her nights at the club. She loves dancing and drinking. She is confident and experienced. She doesn't share her history or current status with anyone, but may if you can manage to get close enough to her.

Haley is working at a vape shop for the employee discount. She has a very upfront personality and can be temperamental. She has no plans for her future and is working to support her partying habits.





Progress:
UI and coding 90%
Art 10%
Script 40%

We have a trailer on Youtube but its the same as on the kickstarter page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XSpX_FSUu0&t=5s

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17 ... on-peaches

We don't have a demo for this game yet because we need to finish 2 more backgrounds for the introductions to the girls, but we do have a short dating game we made right before this one. You can download it here. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_k77 ... 1lwY2ZlVTA

I would really appreciate some comments and criticism.
Is there anything I should fix?
Is my UI not as good as I think it is?
Honestly I'm really nervous about getting exposure. Anyone have any tips?

Well thanks for taking the time to look at our project. I'm really looking forward to whatever you have to say.

[NaiDriftlin]

Saw your project on Kickstarter, which is what lead me here.

A few observations:

The sprite work is a bit lower quality than the CGs you're working with.

I'd recommend:

Reworking the sprites to fit the quality of the CG you have (Referring to the laying down with tongue out CG from the Kickstarter page.) Consider making a CG for all of them, then using that for your base design to ensure consistency. Consider doing a few different versions of the sprites from scratch, comparing them, and getting a second opinion on the best of the lot. Iteration in design strengthens your product.

Your character cards with the horizontal and diagonal lines going through them are incredibly hard to read. You get a pass on the horizontal lines in the GUI because it's partially transparent, but replicating that in character cards without partial transparency makes it very hard to read with the text.

I'd recommend:

On the horizontal and diagonal designs, color blend the lines so they fade back into the background more, or switch to one of the designs to use across all of the character cards. Picking a single background style on the cards and color shifting the rest might be the best option, since it will provide a consistent look for the cards themselves.

The cellphone interface is a neat idea and I think you should keep it, but I think the design for the outer frame of it is a little flat. The social media concept built into the VN is nifty, and I'd like to see you build on that as a core/central mechanic.

Re: Kickstarter

I honestly don't see you getting much external support for it as is. Family and personal support could probably get you to your goal, but I'm not sure where you'd draw people in from. While demos aren't required for success, your page doesn't lend much confidence in your ability to follow through and I don't think you have much of an established following yet.

I'd recommend:
Pulling back your kickstarter, getting feedback from peers and working on building awareness for your product if you'd like to take this avenue to getting your project running.

Getting a Twitter account for your project, your studio, and yourself as a bare minimum, and working your way into building communication between peers and potential audience. Feel free to interact with me on Twitter if you need some help getting started in that area. My info should be under my avatar.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions or would like more feedback.

[gekiganwing]

Welcome to Lemma Soft!

Passion Peaches is a dating sim in which you can go on a date with any of the four girls at any time. After you choose who to spend your night with you decide where to take them. Each location has a unique date for each girl. Answer their questions and connect with them to end the date well.

1. Who is the protagonist? Is he a pre-defined character with a distinct personality? Does the player define his attributes through statistics, or through making decisions? Is the protagonist a blank slate who stands in for the player? Something else?

2. What are the dates like? Is the player asked to answer a series of questions? (For what it's worth, I first saw this concept implemented into a video game in Thousand Arms.) If so, how complex or random are the questions? How much do food and drink matter? If you have other plans, then be sure to mention how the fictional dates will be portrayed.

3. Gameplay: Will the player need to manage schedules or character statistics? Are there puzzles to solve, adventure game elements, or any other forms of complex interaction?

After that you can decide to end the game by going steady with her or go on more dates with her or one of the other girls. Your ending will be based on how many of the dates you were able to end well.

Is the player rewarded for going steady with one of the heroines? Is the player reprimanded or punished if the protagonist does not commit to a relationship with one of them?

The setting is current time in the U.S. with current technology.

I think it's often good for a video game to convey a sense of time and place. Consider whether you'll benefit from letting your setting resemble a real city where you have lived, or which you have visited.

We want to make the best game we can with well-developed characters and interactions. We're working to make the girls seem like actual people that you would want to date...

Balancing story and gameplay is never easy. Think about how much of Passion Peaches will be reading an illustrated story, and how much of it will be video game interaction. Ask yourself questions such as "What specific video games have I played that told an interesting tale, and also had compelling gameplay?" Write down a number of things that you liked and disliked about them.

While you're at it, think about what makes a fictional character compelling. What helps you care about them? What will make you not care about their plight? You might benefit by writing down specific aspects, as well as examples. Think about how you can avert problems such as a character having a one-note personality, or them seeming invincible without a story justification.

We don't have a demo for this game yet because we need to finish 2 more backgrounds for the introductions to the girls, but we do have a short dating game we made right before this one...

Please keep in mind that the LSF Rules and Moderation Policy states "Do not link to crowdfunding campaigns (including Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns) for visual novels or games unless those campaigns include a link to a nontrivial playable demo or a completed game by substantially the same team." (I am not a forum moderator.)

I would really appreciate some comments and criticism... Honestly I'm really nervous about getting exposure. Anyone have any tips?

That's understandable. Here are my thoughts as a pop culture fanboy (who isn't an industry professional):

* Write about how your characters deal with 2016 technology. How do they interact with people online, and how does it affect their real life?

* If you're not familiar with Mystic Messenger, then you might want to look into it for inspiration. It's a recent mobile romance game which involves chatting, and which has a fictitious mobile device interface.

* Consider how many complex romance games you know. Think about what you liked and disliked about them. (For instance, I liked video games such as Heartache 101 and Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side, but had positive as well as negative thoughts about them.) Then refine Passion Peaches based on what you've learned from other media.

* "Why don't the girls have other love interests?" I do not think that your game has to answer this question. However, you might benefit by hinting at why your protagonist does not have any rivals. Perhaps Samantha is too busy with fandom related activities and college. Maybe Piper has some hidden conflicts. Perhaps Haley is difficult to get along with.

* Finally, would your game benefit if the protagonist had at least one competent rival who can challenge him?

[RedOwl]

I second Nai's point about the character cards - they're really, really hard to read. Have such "noisy" backgrounds behind text (stripes, etc.) is just not a good idea.

I also find the logo difficult to read and not super appealing, honestly. To get a readable logo, you really want to start your design with a readable font. It looks like this logo was entirely hand-drawn? If you base your design on a font, it will instantly look more professional - and then you can go over it by hand if you really want that hand-drawn look.

The character sprites could use improvement. I like that the characters have a lot of personality being shown through the sprites, but the line work is too rough/jagged, and the anatomy/design could use some re-working. This is especially obvious on Haley - her face is oddly shaped, her head is oddly placed on her neck, and her eyes are too close together/too large for her face. I can tell that these design have a lot of potential to be cute (Samantha and Piper are already fairly cute) - they just need some tweaks to bump up the quality just a bit. I'd recommend gathering references in the style you are going for, to cross-check that your anatomy is on track. Overall the colors are decent, but some improvement could be used there as well - especially in the hair and rough places where some more blending is necessary (such as Kim's chest).

I think Nai's point about building up a potential fan-base and connections also makes a lot of sense. You will have a much easier time succeeding on Kickstarter if you start there, first! (spoken from experience, as someone who just completed a kickstarter campaign and struggled all the way because we failed to build enough awareness before hand. We only spent about 30 days building awareness before launching our campaign. However, we were lucky and made our goal in the end, probably due to social media and the connections we had managed to make during our short marketing campaign)

Good luck!

[Warmmellow]

I'd recommend:

Reworking the sprites to fit the quality of the CG you have (Referring to the laying down with tongue out CG from the Kickstarter page.) Consider making a CG for all of them, then using that for your base design to ensure consistency. Consider doing a few different versions of the sprites from scratch, comparing them, and getting a second opinion on the best of the lot. Iteration in design strengthens your product.

That makes a lot of sense.

On the horizontal and diagonal designs, color blend the lines so they fade back into the background more, or switch to one of the designs to use across all of the character cards. Picking a single background style on the cards and color shifting the rest might be the best option, since it will provide a consistent look for the cards themselves.

I really didn't think that was gonna be such a problem. I'll try that

Re: Kickstarter

I'd recommend:
Pulling back your kickstarter, getting feedback from peers and working on building awareness for your product if you'd like to take this avenue to getting your project running.
Feel free to interact with me on Twitter if you need some help getting started in that area. My info should be under my avatar.

I realized this a little too late. Thanks. I'll contact you once I fix some things.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions or would like more feedback.

Really thank you.

[Warmmellow]

1. Who is the protagonist? Is he a pre-defined character with a distinct personality? Does the player define his attributes through statistics, or through making decisions? Is the protagonist a blank slate who stands in for the player? Something else?

He's a blank slate for people to identify as.

2. What are the dates like? Is the player asked to answer a series of questions? (For what it's worth, I first saw this concept implemented into a video game in Thousand Arms.) If so, how complex or random are the questions? How much do food and drink matter? If you have other plans, then be sure to mention how the fictional dates will be portrayed.

It's mostly answering questions. The first few will be less important, but once you get to know them well they'll become more complex and rely on you knowing the details of their personalities.

3. Gameplay: Will the player need to manage schedules or character statistics? Are there puzzles to solve, adventure game elements, or any other forms of complex interaction?

No. I really wanted this game to be simple and open to anyone.

Is the player rewarded for going steady with one of the heroines? Is the player reprimanded or punished if the protagonist does not commit to a relationship with one of them?

Going steady with one of them is how you get to the final scenes of the game. If you don't commit to one by the end then you get a bad end.

I think it's often good for a video game to convey a sense of time and place. Consider whether you'll benefit from letting your setting resemble a real city where you have lived, or which you have visited.

Ok I'll think about this.

That's understandable. Here are my thoughts as a pop culture fanboy (who isn't an industry professional):

* Write about how your characters deal with 2016 technology. How do they interact with people online, and how does it affect their real life?

* If you're not familiar with Mystic Messenger, then you might want to look into it for inspiration. It's a recent mobile romance game which involves chatting, and which has a fictitious mobile device interface.

* Consider how many complex romance games you know. Think about what you liked and disliked about them. (For instance, I liked video games such as Heartache 101 and Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side, but had positive as well as negative thoughts about them.) Then refine Passion Peaches based on what you've learned from other media.

* "Why don't the girls have other love interests?" I do not think that your game has to answer this question. However, you might benefit by hinting at why your protagonist does not have any rivals. Perhaps Samantha is too busy with fandom related activities and college. Maybe Piper has some hidden conflicts. Perhaps Haley is difficult to get along with.
* Finally, would your game benefit if the protagonist had at least one competent rival who can challenge him?

All good points. I'll think about all of this and make some changes.

[Warmmellow]

I second Nai's point about the character cards - they're really, really hard to read. Have such "noisy" backgrounds behind text (stripes, etc.) is just not a good idea. [/quote.
Ok thanks now I know they really need work

I also find the logo difficult to read and not super appealing, honestly. To get a readable logo, you really want to start your design with a readable font. It looks like this logo was entirely hand-drawn? If you base your design on a font, it will instantly look more professional - and then you can go over it by hand if you really want that hand-drawn look.

Ok.

The character sprites could use improvement. I like that the characters have a lot of personality being shown through the sprites, but the line work is too rough/jagged, and the anatomy/design could use some re-working. This is especially obvious on Haley - her face is oddly shaped, her head is oddly placed on her neck, and her eyes are too close together/too large for her face. I can tell that these design have a lot of potential to be cute (Samantha and Piper are already fairly cute) - they just need some tweaks to bump up the quality just a bit. I'd recommend gathering references in the style you are going for, to cross-check that your anatomy is on track. Overall the colors are decent, but some improvement could be used there as well - especially in the hair and rough places where some more blending is necessary (such as Kim's chest).

Alright I'll work on those.

I think Nai's point about building up a potential fan-base and connections also makes a lot of sense. You will have a much easier time succeeding on Kickstarter if you start there, first! (spoken from experience, as someone who just completed a kickstarter campaign and struggled all the way because we failed to build enough awareness before hand. We only spent about 30 days building awareness before launching our campaign. However, we were lucky and made our goal in the end, probably due to social media and the connections we had managed to make during our short marketing campaign)

Yeah I definitely should have started on that before.

Good luck!

Thanks.

[Warmmellow]

Do you think we should cancel the Kickstarter for now and focus on fixing everything and building a fanbase then trying again?