The protag!

Title screen sketch, along with my first idea for a game title.

Overview

Hug Hug Kiss Kiss is a game about going on cute dates. You play as the protag (pictured above) and you get to choose to go on six different dates! Pick a date, choose five items (out of twenty) to bring to try and impress 'em and.... success!??!?!?

Assets

I'm planning to do all the art myself, and I'm looking at pre-existing music made under the Creative Commons license... also looking at some music by some very talented folk ;0

Characters

You've met the protag. Everyone else (the six dateable characters) is a secret.... for now >:3c

Gameplay

Go on a date. That's literally it. Don't worry about it, it's a pretty chill and short game. You get points for each item you select, and you get enough points you go on a date. There's six short routes and they'll probably each be about 5-15 minutes long ( ' u ' )b

For the My First Game Jam in January I made Cloud Mage, a VN about a cloud mage conjuring cloud sprites for clients by choosing the right ingredients. This time I'm going to make the most self-indulgent dating game of all time, so, bear with me!!!

Goals and Features:

6 characters to date
Lots of art, might need to scale back on that lmao
Finish a short but polished game in two weeks
Learn how to use imagebuttons
Learn how to use persistent values
Drink lots of water and don't die!! (pretty important)

Day 1:

- Wrote and coded the intro and shopping section, code's in place for drag and drop item selection and I made it work through super sloppy coding that shouldn't have worked, but it did and I don't know why
- Drafted all 5 expressions for the protag (everyone else will have 4 expressions)
- I had SO much trouble deciding on the design of the default hoodie for the protag, but you know what, that's sucking up too much time so I'm just gonna go with whatever
- Drafted mock UIs for everything I need

^^^ very important question

Shop screen with placeholder graphics and placeholder text.

Neutral, Happy, Sad, Surprised, and Pumped (ง •̀_•́ )ง

I have the mockups for my planned UI as well, but they're pretty much all just big blobs of saturated colours so let's not worry about those.

Plans for tomorrow:

- Write a few of the characters' routes.
- Start working on the UI
- Draft some character designs
- Write out item descriptions and things
- Implement the points system for items and dates

Day 3:

- Lots of rooting through code and making sure things work. There's still a few kinks to work out but for the most part, everything's set up!
- Also I learned a little bit of Python for some of the trickier things to do, and now part of my coding looks like an elaborate rube goldberg machine where if one single piece is knocked even a little bit out of place, the whole thing collapses. Fun!
- Started working on the UI, created lots of placeholders to figure out how everything will look and feel. Also, I made an animated background!!
- Item selection is all worked out, descriptions and the points system are all written out and coded

This gif quality isn't great, but it looks smooth and beautiful in-game and I love it. Hot pink textbox might not be final.

Ohhhhhhh boy

All the writing and coding is done up until the actual dates start, as well. Soon, I can put everything in place!!

Plans for tomorrow:

- Focus on writing the actual dates
- Draft backgrounds
- Work on character designs (I wanna start drawing the dates!! aaaaa)

Day 6:

Almost halfway through the jam!!! I still have so much to do, send help.... BUT!!! The good news is, pretty much all the coding is in place!! Even for stuff that I was going to add only if I had time at the end of the jam... I got a little caught up in superfluous stuff pfffffft

- coding is sweet sweet suffering
- finished the first date route!!! phew
- i'm committing to the scrolling shapes in the bg aesthetic, right now we've got:

solid dots for the intro, and a dot overlay for the quick scene after that

stars for the item selection screen

and hearts for the date segments!

Don't worry about the placeholder backgrounds, I am pretty much just throwing up whatever I've got lying around. And uh, don't worry about the default names either. I've got it all under control!! Probably.

- WRITE THOSE DATES!!
- also draw those dates >:3c
- draw items.... all 20....
- no major coding to do? I think i've got the UI and framework for some features (hint hint alternate outfits???) all in place, from here on it's art and writing and the soft coding (renpy show/play/hide/whatever statements)

I'm pretty proud of what I've managed to get done and how much I've learned, buuut I really do need to get a move on, haha..... VROOM VROOM PEDAL TO THE METAL

Day 10:

FINISHED WRITING THE GAME!! Been busy the past few days polishing up the code + writing, as well as working on the other game I'm doing for this game jam. I don't have any new pics to offer of my incredibly self-indulgent dating game (this one), but I have been uploading pics and sprites from 22 Cat to the discord chat, maybe you've seen 'em around.

Stuff to get done:

- item pictures (20)
- character designs + portraits (6 characters, 5ish expressions for each)
- background images (like, 5?? i think)
- date specific vignettes (somewhere from 10-20)

That's all the stuff I need to get done for the game. I had a few optional things:

- unlockable outfits
- achievements and achievement pics
- quick ending doodles

Well, let's see how much I get done by the end of the jam! Let's be honest, getting everything done (including the optional stuff) is gonna take a miracle hahaha HOOO BOY

Day 11:

This is just gonna be a big ol' post of character designs.

I guess the secret's out. This is a game about dating cuties who might not be human?? GASP!!

Day 14:

For the second jam in a row I've completely overestimated my work capacity and underestimated the amount of work required to finish.... bleehhh.

Good news is, the game's totally playable. I have drafts for all the art, it's just lacking in finished art assets... And that's what I'll be work on over the weekend!!

For now, have this gif of the item screen.