Foreword
Since I was young, I have dreamed of developing games. After school, I even trained as a computer scientist for this reason and experimented a lot with RPG Maker XP and let off steam there. At some point I buried my plans and studied something else and changed industry, but I couldn't let the idea and the story I worked on back go.
Many years later, I have now decided to revive the whole thing and try to make my childhood dream come true.
Welcome to the world of Yukiko Kino
The Yukiko Kino Cases situated between the genres of Visual Novel and Click'n'Point Adventure. For me, big role models that significantly influence my development are the TKKG games by Tivola, which were published between 1997 and 2005 in Germany, and the Sherlock Holmes series by Frogwares. Other formats, such as Detective Conan, Professor Layton and many more, also serve as my inspiration.
As the player, you find yourself in Yukiko's world and interact with her friends, relatives and acquaintances as the main character. In several chapters per episode, you experience unique criminal cases that have to be solved. What is needed above all is a good talent for deduction, as there are not many puzzles and mini-games planned at the moment. In addition, I want to transport knowledge about the topics of the episodes and about Germany and how it is to live here, for the international players. However, I don't want to go into too much detail about the content at the moment. What I can reveal, however, is that the game will be set in the capital of Baden-Württemberg!
Characters
Yukiko Kino is a student of Japanese-German origin who has moved to Southern Germany for her graduation. She attends a high school in Stuttgart and lives with her uncle and cousins. Apart from being a 16-year-old detective against her will, Yukiko is a typical girl next door. She has a best friend named Akio, is quite good at school (even if she hates school and finds the lessons boring) and is quite direct for a Japanese girl. Unfortunately, due to these circumstances, conflict situations with the headmistress of her school occur, ending with Yukiko having to serve detention. Among her classmates, she is known for her Japanese school uniform, which she also wears to school in Germany.
Akio Gäbele is 17-and-a-half years old, attends the same class as Yukiko and, unlike her, is an outstanding student. He is also of Japanese-German descent but was born in Germany. Before he met Yukiko, he was more of a loner, but with her help he has integrated well into the class community and made friends. Since then, he has been her partner in crime, or rather, the Watson to Yukiko as Sherlock.
He is also dating the bank employee Noah Neumann, whom he met not so long ago. But that's another story! 🏳️🌈
Planned mechanics
As usual for games in the genres of Visual Novel and Click'n'Point Adventure, The Yukiko Kino Cases will be quite text-heavy. I'll be honest, I'm not going to try to reinvent the wheel. I like these kinds of games and still enjoy playing the new titles, as well as the old ones, to this day. My primary goal is to use the existing mechanics as a basic framework and tell my stories with their help.
But now let's talk about what I have planned in concrete terms:
• various click'n'point locations à la TKKG
• a dialogue system that allows the player to choose in important situations whether to approach an interrogation with a sledgehammer or rather with a little finesse
• a visual novel mode that displays dialogues in the popular anime/manga style
• character analyses, which can give the player new and valuable clues
• a clue and circumstantial system that allows the player to combine found clues and circumstantial evidence and draw conclusions from them to progress the case
• two playable characters who have access to different locations and have different relationships with the people on the ground
What I could imagine for the future:
• Controller support
• a mobile or tablet version
WIP-Screenshots
Current status
• Story-wise, the concept of the first episode is already in place. Chapters 1-3 are also coloured and typed.
• The dialogue system works flawlessly so far. In the course of programming, I also wrote my own dialogue editor with which everything can be easily managed and edited. There you can also create different language versions for each line. If an audio file with the ID of the dialogue exists in the audio folder of the game, it is played in the game. For the future, I would like to have everything set to music, so I have built in this option directly.
• I have already finished 3 of the locations from the game and only a few details are missing. The 4th location is currently in the making. Originally I wanted to draw all the backgrounds by hand, as you can see in the screenshot with the dialogue. As a solo developer, however, I don't have the time for that, especially in view of the fact that I might have to abandon an idea and start all over again. For this reason, I have meanwhile switched to modelling the backgrounds in 3D (see second screenshot) and then editing them to give them a painting look. I will show you shortly what this looks like.
• There are already several character designs. Since I'm an anime fan and I like the style, the characters will be seen in the game in this style.
• Animatics for the first cut scenes already exist and are waiting for me to model the backgrounds and animate everything. I do the animation by hand on paper in anime style.
That's all from me at this point. I have deliberately not plastered the entire post with everything I have, because I also maintain an Instagram as a devlog als well and don't want to get too far ahead of that. Over time, though, I'll keep adding things and show you my progress. :)
Of course I'm very happy about feedback! ;)
