Hey, it’s us again—two indie devs with fresh dirt on our visual novel progress. Ready?
Behind the Scenes
Playtesting Feedback
Last month we closed the pre-alpha Ink build of Primrose Path’s common route outline. It met its purpose of proving the basic concepts of our game were viable and that it interested players in our target demographic. In fact, playtesters gave us overwhelmingly positive feedback in our post-test form about the characters and story. Here are a few quotes from their responses:
“The number of elements of the MC’s [main character’s] life added in to the story in increments helped me not only relate to the MC but also stay interested.”
“There’s a good variety of calmer moments and more outlandish/exciting/otherwise more high tension moment [sic], no issues for me.”
“[T]he clients are a rainbow of people with a few that [sic] very much stand out [to me]”
“By the end, I was definitely considering who I was going to chose as my client and was sad the pre-alpha ended even though I knew it was going to.”
“I 100% would dance [in a mini-game similar to] DDR [Dance Dance Revolution]”
As you can see, the beginnings of Primrose Path went over well and players definitely had a lot of interesting things to say about our mischievous clients! We can’t spoil them here, but you may be able to see for yourself when alpha testing comes to our server in the future!
Now, for all the good we received, it’s not to say the pre-alpha went without its criticisms:
“This might be silly, but I wish there were an option that weren’t a dress for her outfit to the party.”
It’s not silly at all, playtester! It had us thinking about the different ways our protagonist, Lynn Austen, could express herself. This concern lead to one outfit redesign and introduced a number of new ones!
“The beginning was a little slow, but I love Priya, so all of her scenes brought my attention back instantly.”
We love co-worker and bestie, Priya, too, but she can’t be an exception for pacing. We’ve since reevaluated and tweaked Part 1: Work Day. Plenty of visual changes and cutting scenes entirely were discussed in order to tighten up the overall pacing.
“Harper seems harsh but has pressure on her to make her harsh, but then you see her and shes [sic] just straight up scary.”
While all playtesters understood Harper’s role as Lynn’s no-slack boss, a few found her consequentially unapproachable. We have a lot in store for her in later routes, but acknowledge she was sparse during the common route. We’ve since taken this concern and made her more available in new scenes, adjusted her tone in some of the older ones, and had other characters—who have a very different relationship with her than Lynn does—reflect more openly on her. We think this humanizes Harper much more.
“Unfortunately [Bellarmino] feels like a snobbier, more irritating Matt. […] I personally don’t find him very likable but I’m looking forward to being proven wrong.”
In our feedback form, we asked about character impressions. We also polled if players didn’t have to play all routes at least once, which clients they’d pick. While character impression responses expressed a willingness to give our model and fashion designer, Bellarmino LaFauci, a chance, he was our least popular choice in the poll. We figured it may have been that his personality wasn’t differentiated enough against the company with whom Lynn encounters him, so we’ve made adjustments to contrast him more against his judgmental cabal.
So as we went through and addressed feedback, we had some ideas of our own to implement, which leads us to…
Updated Revised Outline
Double the wordcount! Yep, we’re just shy of 32,000 words for the revised common route outline. How could this be? Look: don’t mistake Primrose Path for a linear narrative. Your choices affect the world from day one.
Beyond changes from playtester feedback, other new content includes:
- New Characters! We work to make sure our side characters leave an impression. We’ve added a few more with the means to salvage or devastate Lynn’s career. Until you yourself can meet them, look out for future Lore snippets on our Twitter!
- New Events! Lynn has more opportunities than before, and under different states of mind, to navigate and impact the world around her. Depending on what Lynn did, where, and when can completely change an encounter within that same space and time.
- New Key Items! There are a couple of items Lynn can collect if she meets the right people and takes certain actions. These items can reveal some important information in client routes later on—and some hints for others, too!
- New Areas! A few more places have been added to the common route, including whole new scenes. What could possibly lie behind these doors?
So how’s that sound? If you said “Damn, that’s hella rad,” well you just took the words right out of our mouths. But we’re not done yet; we take feedback seriously. When we can’t decide on what our audience may want, we leave no room for speculation. There’s really only one way to settle that.
VN Protagonist Sprite Survey
We run a survey! We wanted to know how visual novel fans preferred to see a customizable MC represented as a sprite, if at all. It’s tough for us because as much as we want to make Lynn as visually present as her sense of self, we also acknowledge that “immersion” for many players also means different levels of “intrusion” from MC’s sprite—down to none at all, for folks wanting to self-insert despite taking on another character’s existing backstory. While we think we’ve come to a happy medium that serves our purposes and would appeal to a good number of players, we’ll be sharing with you all in a separate post our findings.
Two things are for certain:
- Visual novel players are an incredibly dedicated base, having turned out over 100 responses to our form! Thank you so much for helping us see your side on the matter!
- The communities we frequent overwhelmingly take issue with one specific manner of MC representation—one that seems to plague the industry. If you’re not an avid consumer of visual novels, this begrudged answer may surprise you!
But hey, we haven’t closed it yet: you can contribute your opinion too until August 5th, 11:59 PM EDT. Stay tuned for our detailed write-up on the results, next time. We’ve got another survey in the works too (sounds like we’ve got a few hard decisions, huh?) so keep tabs on our Twitter when we release that form.
Greyson’s Twitter
Greyson’s been taking a break from Twitter for a minute. Working Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday overheated him, and in that vulnerable time, he caught a virus! So now he’s on sick leave and we’ve promised him an easier schedule of one day a week when he gets better. His posting schedule will be announced soon. You can still send him some love on his Twitter account. He’ll be sure to respond when he’s feeling up to it. He’s always there for you. Will you return the favor?
Main Game Progress
Common Route:
- Rough Outline: 100% ✔
- Revised Outline: 100% ✔
- Draft Script: –%
The Artist: Matthias Barousse
- Rough Outline: 100% ✔
- Revised Outline: –%
Progress on the main game has primarily been on the common route outline. Some interesting things to note are that last time we reported our revision to be at 90%. After implementing feedback, our clean outline doubled in word count and we’ve reviewed it entirely since then. So now we’re thoroughly at 100%!
The breakdown of that is:
- We finished up the common route’s Part 3: The Interviews, in which Lynn meets all her clients whom she may or may not have stumbled upon at a legendary bash.
- We elaborated on Part 2: The Party encounters and added more variations which subsequently trickle over into alternate interactions in The Interviews.
- We added an interactive, portent dream sequence the night of The Interviews, right when Lynn hits the bed after evaluating all potential clients at work.
… and a few other additions. Also among other things, we’ve actually started work on the draft script already, but we’ve not had time to properly calculate the percentage. It’ll be updated accordingly in our next log.
What’s Next For Us
We’re going to finish up our script draft and start focusing our efforts into creating a playable, visual alpha build of Primrose Path. Yes, we want to play our game as much as you do and that’s motivation enough!
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! Keep up and remember to enjoy your Quiet Days. ♥
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