#Dating Sim

[gb-patch]

Woke up from a nap and everyone on my plane was playing the Now & Forever beta

[fairbrooke]

I just read the story from Caleb's Secret Promise card and my mind is going crazy with images from Caleb's new myth. The words MC and Caleb exchange there... it all hits me so much harder since seeing the teaser for his new myth. Here's this scene CLICK

[koa-z]

He's still getting the hang of Mortal Malls

text from a tumblr post by faeriesfang below the cut:

[punch-out-things]

Yo I wanna make a game!

I decided that it would be fun for me to make a Punch-Out!! Fangame/parody game that's a dating sim of all the characters from all the games! (Excluding any minors tho)

I have no clue how to code tho but if anyone has any suggestions or advice, say it! I really want to make this and small things like advice on how to learn to codr is amazing

[twistedflamingos]

Meet... a ghost? The landlady told you this place was haunted, which was then confirmed when the first chill ran up your spine.

Though the prospect of living with a ghost sounds creepy, he's actually been pretty nice so far! Now the only question is: How do you keep him out of your pantry?

All credit to @loojii for the ghost's sprites!

[angelswithscalywings]

This is a temporary cover I made for the game.

There are a total of 18 dragons in this image. How many do you recognize?

[otomepeachy]

Rumors for the new Princes

Rhodolite Princes Other Suitors

[xjippirambles]

🪙 What in the 2B-9S!? My jaw is on the floor (in a good way cause I loved Neir.Automata, and the world needs more content of the same theme). 🙂‍↕️

🪙 I'm suck a sucker for android/mech related designs. I just got paid, and it's only 2 days away! 🫴💸

[ffishstickks]

Just finished Lovers Trophy and it was absolutely incredible; such a pleasure- 👏👏

If you’re still answering questions about the game, then I have a few:

1. Is there a specific reason for vegan mc ending up in the pit, besides the diet clashing with his own maybe? (I’m mildly confused; if he could buy basically anything mc wanted, why not specific food they can eat?)

2. Would he ever get married if the relationship with mc lasted long enough? (How much danger of ending up in the pit or something is mc still in, if they were in a committed bond like marriage?)

3. I know he freaks out when people cry, but does he get over it afterwards if or when they stop, or do they wind up getting tossed away, cause he couldn’t deal with it in that moment?

Don’t feel any pressure to answer these; I wish you all the best in your future endeavors! ✨

1: My idea at the time was that MC was simply lying. Jak has been watching mc for a few weeks at the very least, and has gathered that MC isn't a vegan.

NOW- I realize this means I'm assuming a lot about the player. MC isn't a person, they're the player. The player can be vegan. I just didn't take that into account when making the game, because I thought the strong reaction to something so small would've been really funny on the surface. I didn't give MC the option to be a vegan considering they can confidently eat the chicken strips, or drink the terribly 100% not vegan energy drink, as well as even have a bowl of cereal. If MC was vegan, they could not technically advance in the game as it is now unless they gave up their diet.

Jak doesn't hate vegans, the idea was that if MC is going to just jump to the gun and lie out of fear of Jak, he wasn't going to entertain the thoughts of dealing with his version of "a liar."

Honestly I've just strayed away from any dietary mentions in my games after, because I don't want anyone to feel un-imersed. Like, how much added horror would it have been if MC was vegan and had been forced to give that up to appease that crazy bastard and not die? I took that fun opportunity away with the vegan pit meme.

2: If marriage is something MC wanted, and Jak had been with them for a while, I think marriage could be an option. It would be a hard persuasion though. I imagine Jak at least has some self restraint when it comes to heavily impacting financial ventures with his partner, mainly by influence from his sister June. While I could see Jak dumping thousands on making his partner happy, a legal document proving not only did Jak know this person but married them could be incredibly incriminating.

If he could marry someone with no legal bindings, he'd marry every single mc who stumbled into his hands 2 seconds after meeting them.

3: Depends on the amount of stress he's going through.

I like to imagine since he's always associated facial expressions with "deep emotions" in average people, when the player cries he views this as the worst possible outcome. It makes him incredibly reactive in the moment, and depending on how well he knows how to handle the situation, he could break. What I mean by break is, drop all of his fantasy facades and feel his real feelings about all of this. Disgust, Guilt, Fear, Embarassment... He sort of short-circuts and his reaction could be as simple as walking away, or if he's already all riled up, he could implode and figure mercy is the better option.

Honestly these were some of the most asked questions I've ever gotten, especially the vegan thing. Sorry for the lack of fun pictures, it'd be a lot of work to draw for this much information.

[zombeebunnie]

Trembling Essence Devlog 4:💙 Poll results + Analyzing the script💙

Helloooo and welcome new followers, here's how the progress of the game is going! :]

There will be spoilers if you haven't played through the [Extended Demo], specifically the MORNING route. Click here if you would like to play! :]

**A big thank you to the recent influx of interest towards Noah and the game itself! I have to catch up with a lot I missed but I am very grateful! :D

Onto the poll results!:

Thank you to everyone that played the [Extended Demo] and recently participated in some of the recent polls I've created! It's still optional but I would really appreciate any feedback on why you picked your decision to this one if you still would like to! This really helps me out moving forward with my game developing process! :,]

I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into to this: The results left me very surprised especially towards "Talk to Noah" and "Look around" being picked the most out of everything else and the "Go outside" having the lowest, which explains a few concerns I had behind the scenes given this one has the Morning route attached to it. With this information, I'll take all of it into consideration while I continue working on things behind the scenes! :D I talked about this a few months ago but the "Talk to Noah" and "Look around" choice are being revamped and updated. There's some old game development posts that showed some of the old CG's and dialog with it but extends from very old code which had major spoilers in the script before I got better at pacing the story and realizing that I was missing the other half of Day 3 during that time. :S In good news around this time I managed to have a conversation with my play tester about everything and we had a very good talk about where to go from this. I expressed a couple of ideas on how to move forward with the choices and they gave back a good amount of feedback I needed when I was struggling with writers block. :,D

Onto the game development!:

Here is a small recap:

Midway through December up until the start of March, I went through the afternoon route and made adjustments to the choices, story-building, and overall pacing of the route to make the closeness build-up feel more rewarding given that I'm aiming for more of a slow-burn. Outside of more testing and grammar checks, CG's, etc, everything is about 95% done!

Morning route progress:

Since this is still just the second half of Day 3, I'm still trying to be extra careful with balancing a meaningful slow-burn and not over-doing it. :,]

The last time I played through the Morning route was around the start of spring(?) back in 2024 before I went and fixed up the beginning of the game leading up to the cabin.

With a new and fresh perspective of what needs to be done, I went back to the script and went over how I want certain parts of the game to happen. I noticed several inconsistencies that really needed fixing which is largely due to pacing/spoilers happening way too early for my liking. :,]

When choosing the 'Go outside' and the choices after it, I updated it with better dialog between the player(Y/N) and Noah.

It's nothing too extreme but just a nice quality of life to get a better understanding how Noah responds to this. I also fixed how much HP you lose along with editing the additional visual effects that happen here. It was originally split into 2 HP loss situations but now it's only one.

I won't say which scene but there was one part of this route I was going to ultimately cut but I've spent a lot of time brainstorming and came up with an idea on how I want it to go moving forward which might include a new CG and choices being made to give it more meaning. This is all still up in the air and I want to have my play testers check everything out first before I continue with it just in case I end up over-doing it again. :,,,]

Weird bug found?:

I also found a couple of mismatched sprites and a weird bug where a CG of Noah pops up towards the end of the Morning route, I have no idea how it happened or if this can occur in the [Extended Demo]. I can only hope it's not though. :,]

CG clean up:

Around the time I had announced the [Extended Demo] back in early 2024 there were parts of the Morning route that was actually suppose to have CG's but since I was still developing my art style I couldn't do much perspective art like I wanted to.

**As far as CG clean up goes, I do have plans to update some of these in both routes but for now I will keep them as placeholders until I get just a bit more practicing in. There's also 1 or 2+(?) new ones I have planned for this but I'm not ready to share them yet. :D

I think that's about as far as I've gotten up until I couldn't work on the game for about a week and a half so I'll stop here. :[]

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi [Here]! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game. Thank you to those that optionally bought the [Extended Demo] on itch.io. :,]

Q&A / Ask box is open:

To know and understand Noah through Asks and random posts about lore, they'll be under #Get to know: Noah ! :]

**Some asks won't be answered if it contains spoilers but I do appreciate what I receive. I will most likely spend this time going through and catching up on everything I missed. :]

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask [here] or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!

Thank you everyone for the continued support! :,]

[gb-patch]

Let's set the scene: It's a rainy day, oldies are playing on the radio, and you're riding in the back of Mr. Lin's car with Qiu! Where are we headed? 🚘

[jinlai]

new sneakpeak

[aikonecrosis]

OKAY OKAY! Ya'll couldn't give Caleb a chance at ALL lmao. I'll start writing it as soon as I get halfway through this one shot fic I'm working on with some friends.

(My vote doesn't count I was just too anxious and wanted to see the results as they came in)

[okthatsgreat]

dating simulator where it starts normal but it slowly becomes clear that all of the romanceable characters are attempting to cover up an extremely specific murder they committed a year ago before you arrived

[ilovemitsuya]

how it started how it’s going

I just know he has been waiting to do that for a long time