itch.io

Yep, many of the locations already have backgrounds that are ready to use, so you'll see some of them eventually.

As for chatting - I so rarely get time to dedicate to social media, so I'm a fairly unreliable chat partner, I'm afraid :)

Well, they all have different angles. Some feel safe - like Emerson. Some need a bit of work - like Thorne. Some seem fun - like Felix. And Bale - well, some have even been offended by his abrasive nature. But maybe there's something else there once you understand him properly?

As a developer, I'm not allowed to really have a favorite, my job is to make all of the routes rewarding to follow :) As a player of many, many VNs though, the archetype I often am interested in is the shy guys - getting to know them, earning their trust, watching them unfold and grow. In my game, that'd be Thorne.

Yes, that is the thing - every single route is a lot of work. So first I need to complete the others. If there's any juice left in me, I might add more. Several of the silhouettes are really people that haven't been shown yet, but none are romanceable as of now.

Yep, you're right. Both are candidates.

My #1 wish is to make a minigame out of it. It requires coding that is possibly beyond me and creates a layer of complexity that is hard. But it would be cool!

If I can't do that, I'll do it the other way - with you trying to make smart choices during the matches, and succeeding if you make enough good ones. And I'd try to drop hints in advance of the matches about opponent strengths to be aware of and weaknesses you could exploit - as well as making you get to know your partner so that you'd have a way of knowing how to work the best as a team with them.

Kai is super fun to write - such a sassy and sarcastic person. Several have wanted to date him, but the character belongs to someone else, so it's better for me to do romance routes with those that are my own :)

Yes, that's one way of figuring it out, so you did well with the puzzle. When Emerson tells you what locker you tried to open, you can reason yourself to what the different parts of the key tag code means - like you did!

The puzzle tag code broken up - with the solution 3B12 as example:
First figure (3): The locker segment which your locker is - start counting from the door and go counter clockwise (the arrow circle symbol is the hint)
The letter (B): The row which your locker is in - T means top row, B means bottom row
Second figure (12): Which locker in the row your locker is - start counting from right to left (this is what throws people off since it feels strange, and Emerson gives some hints about it, although I realize they can be a bit subtle)

So - the correct locker is in segment 3 (counting from door counter clockwise), bottom row all the way to the left.

And for anyone else who wonders: No, how fast you solve the puzzle does not affect what Emerson thinks of you - he will merely tease you a bit for not figuring it out and finding and opening your locker for you. Then you get to tease Emerson back which I think is fun.

Hey, friend! I made a little subcategory for questions and marked it with a spoiler warning. How about putting your questions there? :)
https://itch.io/board/4043194/questions

Hey, friend! I'm very glad you like it so far, thank you for saying so! :) I'm sadly a very slow developer, so it's not finished at all. I hope you have a few other projects you follow too so that you get your regular VN fill, and then I will drop updates when nobody expects it to add to that feed once in a while :)

Hey again, bud! I've tested the build on my own Android device. The game seems to run okay on it - I got through the whole story without it crashing, and I also got up the keyboard when prompted to type in answers. My device is a somewhat aging Samsung S8. I'm going to guess that your device has software that runs the game differently someehow. I'm sorry to say that there's not that much I can do to correct this. I'm hoping that a solution might present itself as Ren'Py, the engine the game is built in, gets new updates. Sorry, bud! :/

Hey, mister! Thank you for letting me know! I'm not sure what would cause this - I will test it on a device of mine and see if that one too has trouble with it.

Well, Kai made the building blueprint, and that one is full of his usual life tired banter in all the info descriptions. He's passionate about his profession, software, but his workplace makes it very hard to produce things . He's treated mostly as a computer literate secretary by his extremely computer illiterate boss, and he's constantly ordered to spend his time doing things that are not really his job (hence the lack of enthusiasm). He didn't make the town map, though - maybe that didn't come across very clearly. It's a regular tourist fold-out town map that he grabbed somewhere in case the protagonist would want it. And if the protagonist expresses gratitude (if he's enthusiastic about his arrival), Kai will downplay that he made a kind gesture because it's just become second nature to him to be irritable and sassy. It's how he's coped with his miserable work life. All this should come across more clearly as the story unfolds :)

Hmm. It would be possible to add some scribble on a couple of lockers, maybe one per segment. The scribble could be the last number in the tag code. That would be a hint that the lockers also need to be counted backward...

No, normally lockers would be labeled. In this case, the federation made a backwards twist just so that overly enthusiastic fans would have trouble locating the lockers of their favorite wrestlers to steal souvenirs from them. The part where having to count lockers backwards is the one that most get stuck on. I could add a hint on the key tag so that there's a better way to know. Currently, you just have to work out that since you count segments backward, that's the way to go for the lockers too, but it's not obvious. A backwards arrow along with the locker number could help, right? I'd also add an early hint before the puzzle starts saying something about "the locker solution being rather backwards".

Good job getting the arrow meaning! And yes, I kind of blindsided you there by letting it apply also to the direction for the locker counting. A low blow as we'd say in the world of wrestling... Some have felt like I want my players to fail and... I kind of do? Not to make them feel miserable, but to let them know Emerson more. I want everyone to enjoy themselves with it. In any case, congrats on getting it right! :)

All right. Well, you're not the only one who's felt like skipping the puzzle, so I'll make those brain cells work a bit and see if I can find a smooth solution where you can either skip it or just improve the hints a bit so that it doesn't feel impossible.

With good reason, that was a big developer mistake... I'm embarrassed! *sheepish grin*

Hey, Konrankemono! Thank you for your honest feedback! I have had a few players be frustrated with this. I will find a solution and implement it in my next version that hopefully adresses this.

Ah! I honestly don't know. Work is slow now, April and May are the busiest months of year for me. I will let you know in updates along the way, but it'll definitely be at least some months until I get there.

Holy Moly, dear gods, no, that is not supposed to occur! Thank you, good Sir, for letting me know. I have rolled out a quick fix so that people who download it for the first time get the entire chapter 1, not just half of it. I'll write a devlog this week for those that this error might have confounded. Many thanks, gapbadge! :)

Going public, how? Isn't this sort of public here on Itch? :) I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but if you mean "when will the full game be done", the answer is I'm not sure - it will probably take me significant amounts of time. If you mean something else, let me know! :)

I see, thank you for the input! There is a hint - although not too easy to catch. It's the direction arrow on the key tag. It indicates which direction to count from, though it doesn't tell you to go from right to left when counting lockers too. Sorry your experience wasn't a good one!

I'm very happy that you like the look of it. Kartos has done a wonderful work with the characters, and BitterStrawberries with the backgrounds. I too think they mesh nicely. As for coach being available - he's a stud for sure. I don't think he'll be available in the future, he's a cameo character after all (and even more importantly, I need to keep my scope manageable), but I'm sure more people than you would like him to be! :) Thank you very much for the generous words :)

You want to date that big hothead? Could be fun :) I'll concentrate on making the routes for the four originals to not make the project so big it becomes impossible to manage, but if I have the energy and creativity and people are interested when that day comes, expanding could be an option. Thanks for the suggestion!

Yep, that was the main twist. The tiny hint is the circle arrow symbol on the key tag, but it was not a hint that was obvious. I think most players thought like you and possibly felt that the direction was not intuitive. But hey, that's one of the thing the wrestling federation did to make them more confusing to people who have not been invited to the lockerroom. Don't want them stealing all your jocks, after all! :)

Glad you liked it! I have some fun scenes planned for chapter 2, I think they'll be entertaining! :)

Thank you, Jorgie! I'll keep chipping away on it! :)

Ahh, but it wasn't easy in my mind. I would not have gotten it myself - at least not without the hint about which direction to count from. But then again, "failing" does yield the most amusing interaction with Emerson, so it's not any kind of real loss. You awaken his nurturing nature and have some playful banter with him instead of displaying sheer locker picking brilliance. Embrace the teamwork instead! :D

I promise not to. I've been pretty productive the past days, the writing flows really well, and that feels lovely. It is - if nothing else - promising  for chapter 2! :)

Thank you for following my project - even as it's taken so long! I hope you'll like it when you give it a spin! :)

No, really? I see! Well, then I will look at reactivating it, thank you for telling me! :)

Ah, you know, at some point during development, I removed it because it was 1) creating lots of saves that risked unintentionally becoming part of my builds, and 2) I didn't see the point of them. I could probably easily switch it back on. Can you tell me what the autosave function means to you? What value does it add, how does it improve playing the game? I just can't remember ever using it myself in any of the VNs I've played, so I figured it couldn't be very important.

Noo, good Sir, you went that thoroughly to business at it? Ahh, I well understand your frustration, then. Yeah, your chapter 1 choices do not make a difference to how much Emerson likes you. I didn't want to make it depend on a puzzle. It felt wrong to punish someone for not getting it perfectly, and it also felt wrong to punish players who pride themselves in getting everything right. And besides, although Emerson will tease you if you fail a lot, he's really not a judgmental person. So, for the future, you can trust that he'll separate silly, unimportant things from those that matter.

...and trying out 101-999 influencers sounds like a torment. Sorry, you're likely the only one who knows exactly where the different dialogue points kick in now! :/

You figured it out that fast? Well done! I'm glad you thought it was an all right variation to include in the game, thanks for the feedback! :)

Then you did exactly what I hoped some will - just be a himbo and let Emerson have fun with you over it.  Besides, the protagonist manages to poke some fun back at him :) Hmm, so the rollback is somehow disabled when you select lockers? It's not supposed to be, but I too find that sometimes it seems like Ren'Py decides that you've come to a point where it doesn't roll back. Mostly, I think it's been possible for me to roll back locker selections - I did that a LOT while testing it :)

Oh, nice, I'm always looking for puzzles to add to my own D&D campaigns, so if I helped with that, I'm glad! :) Being able to skip puzzles could be a good option to go with - mostly if I add more of them. Maybe the simplest would simply to make a button that appears when there's a quiz which lets you skip it if it's really not your thing. Thanks for the tip! :)

I'm glad you liked the puzzle and the interaction with Emerson. If you managed to get it in 4 attempts, I'd say that's fairly good! I'm glad you felt that the difficulty level was about right, and that you think the VN so far is unique and interactive :)

Yep, I've read many VNs and I see that many are abandoned in development. They take a lot of time, and it's easy to underestimate how friggin much work they are. Feature creep is a real danger - I've added a lot of stuff that wasn't intended in the start. Luckily, I've also cut quite a few too that I don't feel add enough value. Galleries and such, I would not spend much time on them as a player myself, so I think people are fine without them. But yeah, I'll keep chipping away at my project :)

I'm glad you're liking it so far and that you are enjoying the art. I agree - Kartos, Dave Canine and BitterStrawberries did a kickass job with it :)

Thanks for the feedback, even though you're not a big fan of puzzles. This one I agree is can be confusing, and that's why I made the post, I wanted to know if people were getting stuck on it or if it detracted from their enjoyment of chapter one.

The thing about it is that each time you pick a wrong locker, your potential husbando Emerson will start helping more and more. And this is my opinion, but that is a fun way to do it. Not succeeding has no negative consequence - on the contrary, you get more interaction with Emerson, and despite him being on the down right now, when he gets to help out, his naturally caring disposition gets to shine through. You'll see a bit of his true self, and there's some playful banter. So, in your case my advice would be: Don't feel like it means anything to get the locker right. Enjoy receiving help from a charming dragon?

Or if you want the solution, send me a DM on FA or Twitter, and I will tell you where I don't spoil it for anyone else :)