VN Ren'Py City vs Corp [Development Thread]

[Gray Warden]

City vs Corp
(Development Thread)

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Introduction

Hey F95zoners.
I’m here to tell you a little bit about my first AVN project.

I've been involved in the online hentai scene for pretty much my entire adult life—whether it was translating/editing doujins or building sites for reading them. I’ve been on this grind since 2011.
Outside of that, I’ve always been a gamer and constantly flirted with the idea of creating my own game, but the complexity of doing it without knowing how to code or draw always scared me off.

Since writing is my strong suit, I decided to take what I know about storytelling, mix it with the little bit of Daz3D knowledge I have (very little, honestly), and fuse it all together with Ren'Py.

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The Game

Since this is my first title, I wanted to start small: something short that would allow me to deep dive into learning Ren'Py and Daz3D. Having recently played Katawa Shoujo, I planned something similar regarding the "Girl Routes."

Synopsis:

After getting fired and losing his direction, Nolan (or your custom name) moves to the quiet town looking for a fresh start. But his peaceful new life is cut short when a ruthless mega-corporation announces plans to evict the residents and strip-mine the land beneath their homes.

In this game, who you decide to pursue matters. Each romantic relationship unlocks a unique narrative path, offering a distinct solution to the conflict against the corporation. The woman you choose to love will directly determine how the story unfolds and how the city is ultimately saved.

Visual Style:
The game won't be full 3DCG scene rendering because, frankly, my GPU isn't beefy enough to render full scenes for every interaction. For that reason, I chose the classic Visual Novel dialogue system with character sprites on screen during conversations.

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The Girls

I initially planned for 5 Main Girls, but while writing the rough draft of the script, 2 more popped up. However, let's leave those two aside for now and focus on the main cast:

Spoiler: The Hacker

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Spoiler: Mia Marsh (The Mayor)

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Spoiler: Nora Shaw (The Boxer)

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Spoiler: Lena Vance (The Community Mom)

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Spoiler: Riley West (The Exec)

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The Lewd Stuff

Obviously, each Route you pick will lead to a different kind of relationship, as all the girls have their own distinct personalities and tastes.
For now, the plan is strictly individual relationships between the MC and the girl whose route you choose. However, if the game is well-received, I don't see any problem with adding threesomes or even a harem route down the line (provided it fits properly into the plot, of course).

Some genres that have already been confirmed:
[Male Protagonist] - [Femdom(who can guess which route will involve Femdom?)] - [Oral Sex] - [Handjob] - [Vaginal Sex] - [Anal]

Some genres that may appear in the future:
[Netori-Cheating(A secondary character is married, so it's entirely optional for those starting that character's route)]

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Development Status

The first route of the game has already been released. The next 2 or 3 updates will focus on Iris's route, and then I'll move on to the next route.
I will be bringing more weekly info via devlogs on my

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and through replies in this thread.

All devlogs:

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[labbu]

what is The MC Nolan cocksize can u tell us

 

[Gray Warden]

what is The MC Nolan cocksize can u tell us

Medium size, I think
I tried to make it a size that wasn't too small but also wouldn't overwhelm the girls.
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These first few devlogs are going to be pretty frequent, but after that, I plan to settle into a weekly schedule.

In the last post, I briefly went over the game and promised I’d introduce the girls in this one, so here they are.

Iris, the Hacker



Iris is a reclusive hacker. She almost never leaves the house, is super shy, and her hobby is watching softporn

Mia, the Mayor




Mia has to keep up a tough exterior since she's the town mayor. But behind closed doors, she tends to be quite dominant.

Nora, the Hothead




She owns the local gym and is itching to kick the Corporation out of town by force.

Lena, the Community Mom




Unlike Nora, she believes that to save the city, she needs to unite the community. The MILF choice ‍

Riley, the Enemy of the City



Sent to be the spokesperson for the Corporation, Riley is seen as Public Enemy No. 1 in town.

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A bit more about the gameplay:

The game is going to be a conventional AVN: the MC narrating events and his thoughts while interacting with characters in the scene. One design choice I made was not to fully show the MC's face. We'll only see parts of his face or a POV shot in certain CGs. Honestly, I find most 3D male models pretty ugly, so that was the main reason for this approach.

The game won't have choices that lead to major branching paths or anything like that. The only choices will be the ones that determine which girl's route you start. Inside those routes, there will be choices leading to either a good or bad ending.

Flow and Writing

For the writing, I went with a more direct style:

• No endless internal monologues: The MC won't be overthinking everything. One thing that really annoys me in VNs is when the MC gets too bogged down in his own head.
• Direct narration: Since the MC narrates from his POV, I chose a punchier writing style. If he says "the grass is green," that's the description. I don't need 3 paragraphs describing just how green it is.
• Pacing: Because of those two points, I believe the game's pacing will be quite fast. But that's something I can adjust based on player feedback if it feels too fast.

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That’s it for today. Since I haven't finished editing the UI yet, I don't have any in-game previews just yet.

Just a reminder that the first route release is scheduled for sometime this December.

 

[MagicMan753]

Looks good, off first impressions, Iris, haven't seen, full face really, but looks cute and I really love Mia cauae big fan of femdom. Hopefully it can get a bit intense with various kinks.

I think my one issue is saying only choices is route start and deciding good and evil. I feel that may feel a bit kinetic. Would love some other choices at times, like flavor choices, like say this or that, or do this action or this action. I just like to feel immersed and part of story, not feel like I am just reading a book. Just my thoughts.

But looks solid either way. Keep up good work.

 

[Gray Warden]

Looks good, off first impressions, Iris, haven't seen, full face really, but looks cute and I really love Mia cauae big fan of femdom. Hopefully it can get a bit intense with various kinks.

I confess that I like Mia quite a lot too.

I think my one issue is saying only choices is route start and deciding good and evil. I feel that may feel a bit kinetic. Would love some other choices at times, like flavor choices, like say this or that, or do this action or this action. I just like to feel immersed and part of story, not feel like I am just reading a book. Just my thoughts.

I'm also a big fan of "mainstream" games with choices. But let's be honest, most of the choices in those games are placebos. You can even choose to say something during a dialogue, tell someone to fuck off for example, they'll react negatively in their next line, but that's it.

I believe the best thing to do with choices is to make the characters remember them, and I believe that doing that would require more work in development. For this first project I want to keep the scope small, but in the next one I plan to give players a lot more freedom.

For this first route, which is almost ready, there are 2 "bad" endings and 1 good ending, so I believe that even with these 3 choices, it will still leave the player with the feeling that they made their own choices during the game.

Thank you for your comment.

 

[Gray Warden]

Devlog #3: Almost ready!
(

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)

Been quiet for almost a week, but for a good reason: I was getting a lot of work done on the game.

• I did a basic update to the Ren'Py UI. The biggest changes were to the menus (Main and Options). For everything else, I just tweaked the colors since I’m still not sure exactly how I want the in-game UI to look.
• I also re-rendered all the character sprites that appear during dialogue. The first batch was just placeholders for my beta testers. I tweaked the lighting on them as well.
• I’ve finished the final renders for all the backgrounds in the Intro and Route 1.
• I also edited all the book covers visible in the city library (an important location in the game). The library asset came with a bunch of AI-generated covers, so I manually edited each one to feature famous real-world books.
• I finished proofreading all the text so far (Intro + Route 1). The English translation is also done.
• As I’m writing this, I’m already working on the final renders for all the CGs.

Fun fact: While I’m rendering things like backgrounds, I usually check out other ongoing projects on F95. Today, I stumbled upon a project using the exact same pre-made environment asset as me. I gotta admit, it made me want to scrap it and rebuild the scene from scratch for originality's sake, but since it’s a key location in the first route, I’d have to redo way too many CGs. Lesson learned for future projects and routes, though: always try to build environments from scratch to avoid looking like other games.

The game is just about ready for release; I just need to finish rendering the CGs. I’m confident I can get the first route out by mid-December.

I’m posting some images below so you can see how the backgrounds + character sprites look on screen. I had some blur on the backgrounds in the first version, but I decided to remove it for the final release.





That's all for now. Maybe there won't be a next devlog, but rather a post announcing the launch of the game's first route. But we'll see!

 

[Gray Warden]

First Release: Route 1 (Iris)

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I promised in previous devlogs that I’d release the game around mid-December, and I sort of kept that promise.

The first route is finally here. It covers the game’s intro along with Iris's full route. I hope you guys enjoy it.

The next 2 or 3 updates will focus on:

• Bug fixes;
• Adjustments based on player feedback;

Only after these 2 or 3 updates will I start working on the next route. It took me about 2 months to get this first route out, so I reckon I can get the next one done in a month and a half (assuming I don't get too bogged down fixing stuff in this first route).

About Iris's Route

As I’ve mentioned before, this route focuses on Iris: the hacker. Her story involves her, the MC, and a side character, Emilia. Just like the others, this route will have a unique take on the City vs. Evil Corp conflict.

Just a reminder that this is meant to be a short game: it’s my first project, so the plan is to do several short routes. I think this first route has about an hour or so of content. The upcoming ones should be around the same length, so for anyone wanting to complete every single route, it should take around 10 hours in total.

A Few Notes

• Each route plays out individually, so for now, if you want to try different routes, you’ll need to start a new save file. You can’t do more than one route in a single playthrough. And yes, if the game is well-received, I might add a harem route at the end.
• I chose a pretty fast pace for the game: no unnecessary walls of text or excessive internal monologue from the MC. The narration (first-person) is also meant to be very direct.
• You rarely see the MC's face. In the CGs, I designed them so something is always obscuring his face. He’s not exactly an empty shell, but he’s not bursting with personality either—I tried to find a middle ground.
• This first route is being released for free for everyone, but future ones won't be. Honestly, I’m not worried about piracy. Quite the opposite, actually—if you want to play but can’t afford to support me here on Patreon, you’ll probably find download links online. I believe everyone should have access to games, movies, and music. I trust that those who really enjoy the game will support the Patreon.

The Future

After focusing on updates for this first version, I’ll start producing the next route, which will be released exclusively for Patrons. I’ll be focusing on the updates for now, so I’m looking forward to your feedback.

Also, remember we have a Patron-only Discord. Once you join the Patreon, you’ll get an invite to the server.

The next route I work on will be chosen by my Patrons, so let’s play, everyone!