Are you ready for an update on what we’ve been doing since last? This is an eventful one for us, so strap in!

Behind the Scenes

Real Life

Elm just got a new job working as a Junior VR/Real-time artist! While that may slow down some things on the Quiet Days team, the new position trains Elm’s skills in 3D architectural visualisation, which can only benefit our workflow for background art! Congrats, Elm!

Playtesting

We’re testing a pre-alpha version of Primrose Path’s common route outline! You can imagine it’s taken up most of our time! This test’s purpose for us is two-fold:

1.   We’re trying out Inkle Studio’s interactive narrative scripting language, Ink, to see just how well it ties into our workflow. 

2.   We wanted to create a minimum viable product just to see if it those in our target audience developed interest in further playing Primrose Path.

We call this phase our pre-alpha because this version of Primrose Path’s common route is presented as a long-form summary. It is overwhelmingly narrative—you are not reading dialogue script. And while it is interactive with a number of choices and variables coded in thanks to Ink’s magic, we only chose to create choices in the game which make the concepts we plan to have in our visual novel feasible.

That said, we’re proud to say that there’s actually a lot of opportunities to explore the setting, meet and build connections with the main cast, and have your interactions affect the way your character perceives and is perceived. At about 16,000 words or so for this entire summarized version alone, you can tell there’ll be a lot in store when it comes time for the actual script!

So far, almost all of our responses are from our target audience of heterosexual women and LGBTQ+ persons ages 20-30. And we’re delighted to hear that every single tester—target or not—was interested in playing Primrose Path further!

Playtesting majorly occurs in our Discord server. If you would like to participate in testing and give feedback, you can click this link and ask for the AlphaReader role when you join. Testing and survey submissions will close on June 17th, 11:59 PM EDT.

Lore Snippets

We can’t stress enough how vibrant the world of Primrose Path is, so now we’ll be sharing some fun facts about characters, locations, events, and culture. We hope you find it just as interesting and insightful as we do! Let’s talk about:

Lynn’s History

The above is a snapshot from our pre-alpha. Lynn comes home from work and video chats with her friend Priya, but is notified of an incoming call from a number she had blocked. She refuses to pick up, but it’s clear that there’s a reason why that number’s blocked.

Our protagonist, as customizable and renameable as she is, exists with her own history. There are people in her life who are present and gone, precious and tenuous. We think it’s exciting that you, player, will have the experience to simultaneously shape and discover who all she is while untangling the lives of the main cast.

PlantPal

PlantPal is a young and popular plant care and delivery service in Primrose Path. Lynn is a frequent customer, shopping through their online catalog of proprietary and partnered nurseries and garden centers. From shrubs to succulents, flowers to grasses, PlantPal couriers arrive with your order and spend up to 20 minutes of free consultation to help you get started caring for your plants today! 

Love these snippets? We’ll be posting more on our Twitter under the hashtag #PrimrosePathVN. Visit our devlog in the future to get detailed insight beyond 240 characters!

Artwork

A fan by the name of Hazel drew herself taking a selfie with Priya, wearing dresses from the game’s New Year’s Eve party. This photo says #NoFiter, but with how much drinking went down, of course spelling goes out the window.

If you adore Hazel’s fanart like we do and are interested in more of her work, you can follow her on Twitter @HLR_ART.

Accessibility

A carry over from our last update: Quiet Days still wants your take on what we can do to make visual novels more accessible! Your opinions, preferences, and first-hand experiences are important to us, as we all have different abilities and sensibilities—and we all deserve a chance to enjoy this game.

Main Game Progress

Common Route: 

    •   Rough Outline: 100% ✔   
    •   Revised Outline: 90%

The Artist:

   •   Rough Outline: 100% ✔  
   •   Revised Outline: —

We are almost done with the clean outline of the common route! We’re missing a scene that resolves the common route: Lynn meets with Harper after the client interviews to confirm which client she picks, which locks the player onto that character route. We didn’t have that in the playtest version as it’s not critical to the purpose of the test, but the scene will be no trouble to write.

The next things we’ll focus on will be revising the common route based on the feedback we received from those who played the playtest, and then tackling the common route script.

We’re focusing on monthly devlogs for our Tumblr, but we have to ask:

Are there other kinds of content and updates you folks would like to see here? We want to know! Shoot us a message in our Ask the Devs inbox here on Tumblr, or hit us up on Twitter, Discord, and Lemma Soft! 

Thanks for reading and hope to see you next time. Keep up!

Socials

- Micro-updates on Twitter!

   ♦ Factoids with Greyson!

- Live art development on Twitch!

- Art logging on Instagram!

- Ask us anything here!

- Continue the discussion on Discord!

- Master thread on Lemma Soft!