VN Ren'Py Abandoned Complex Relations [Demo] [Amai Works]

[JayneDoe]

UPDATE #16
September 2022 Update

I've gotten some scene writing done this month that I'm quite happy with, but I'm afraid this is another update where I have to report less progress than I'd hoped, although for different reasons than before. ArcticFox's health has still been suffering, so I've been looking around for candidates to split up some of her workload with in order to keep the art side of the game's development running smoothly.

On the bright side, at least I can offer some reassurance that this isn't going to threaten the game's budget or our ability to deliver the game in a complete state. As much as I'd prefer to be able to have the game out by its original projected release date (although the content added by the stretch goals extends out those projections somewhat,) I also wanted to make sure before launch that the project would be resilient against unplanned obstacles like this. The fact that nobody on the team is working on Complex Relations as a full time job or primary source of income means that delays like this don't sap the budget and compound themselves over time.



Over the next month, I'll be looking forward to working on a lot more lighthearted slice-of-life stuff. A lot of my focus lately has been on sexual content, and while I'd like Complex Relations to be able to stand out in its handling of those elements of the story, writing variable sex scenes viewable from three different character perspectives is, in fact, pretty taxing. There's a reason most game developers don't do that, but once the game is out, I hope players are satisfied that it was worth doing.

 

[JayneDoe]

October 2022 Update

The weather's finally turning again, and it no longer looks like summer out, which is a shame, since it means I'm not being reminded of the game every time I step outdoors. But this also means we're getting back to the time of year in which I originally wrote the game's demo, and focusing on the game's script gives me a bit of that taste of summer even when it's cold out.

The game's art development has still been somewhat delayed over the last month, but thankfully "delayed" doesn't mean "halted," and we have some nice new artwork for the game, including a piece based on content contributed by the game's high-tier backers. Normally, I don't like going back to scenes occupied by placeholders to fill out content I've already moved past (I like maintaining a sense of constant forward motion on the game's development,) but I enjoyed writing this one, and I'm happy with how the backers' contributed content meshes with the mood of the setting.



Being past the game's route branching point means that overall progression of the plot is slower now, but content development is still moving along nicely. As much as the overall structure of Complex Relations was planned out in advance, there are a whole lot of scenes I've been looking forward to writing since well before launch. But after tackling some major and long-anticipated part of the story, it's refreshing being able to shift back to focusing on the random character interactions which connect those major story beats. A lot of the actual character arc development comes through these scenes, but I'm still coming up with most of the contents more or less impromptu, so it makes a nice break from working on stuff I've already been sitting on for ages.

But, by the time I get to the next major plot beats, I'll probably be glad for the break from those impromptu scenes. Complex Relations is far from a short game, so I'm thankful that the work process gives me space to switch things up now and then.

 

[JayneDoe]

November 2022 Update

This last month, I did something I've never done before while working on the script of Complex Relations. This update marks the first time that I've gone backwards and written new scenes in the middle of the existing script, rather than keeping up a constant forwards chronological progression. Lots of writers write scenes out of order, but I almost never do, because my style of writing is too dependent on context for me to be comfortable skipping ahead and writing scenes where I don't know exactly what the characters were just doing. But this time, I've broken my usual strict chronological ordering, and gone back to write some new content which I think better paces out the upcoming developments.

Going backwards doesn't mean less progress though. From an audience perspective, it's all new content moving forward from where things stood at the end of the demo. This means things are better set up for some of the most impactful scenes of all three routes, which I'm working on currently. It's been a while since the last one, but we've added a new track just recently, specifically for those scenes, and I'm really happy with it.




Usually, I think of Complex Relations as being optimized for three playthroughs. You can select different character perspectives in multiple playthroughs to get a fresh look at scenes you've already played before, while pursuing different routes to see different overall narrative paths and endings, but if you tried to play every variation and every perspective of every scene in every route, I think a lot of the content would outstay its welcome. But, there are some scenes within the routes which I think are really worth playing from multiple perspectives, and the ones I'm working on now are somewhere around the top of the list.

Even if I don't expect most players to do it, I honestly hope some players do check out every single perspective of these scenes. It'd be nice to get that justification for the sheer amount of time it takes to write all of them.

 

[JayneDoe2]

December 2022 update

Happy Holidays everyone! We've reached the final progress update of 2022. While I usually have pretty much all the work for the month ready to comment on before the day of the update, there are some significant developments this time which I've only just now put aside for the day.

This month has seen the addition of a bunch of new background art and musical tracks. But some of that new background content has pushed me to add in a new visual feature which wasn't practical when I first started working on the game.



At the beginning of development, Complex Relations' extensive use of image layering for its sprite art made it extremely difficult to apply recolors which would adjust the tint and brightness of the character sprites to match the scenery. More recent versions of Ren'Py though, offer mechanisms which make it much more practical. In order to make use of that, I've had to switch over to the newest version, which has meant a bunch of fussing around checking to make sure it hasn't broken anything in the existing coding, but the upshot is that I can now make use of those color adjustments which I previously had to write off as too difficult to make work with the game's sprite art.

This is one of a small number of adjustments to the game which I intend to actually go back and apply to the demo content, so in the final release, you're going to see some differences in the sprite graphics of some of the scenes you've seen already, to better match the lighting of the scenes. It'll take some fine-tuning to get right, but hopefully it should feel like a meaningful improvement once it's done.

Apart from those sorts of retroactive graphical changes, development of the game's common route is fully complete now, and all three branch routes are currently in-progress. Alexa's route is currently in the lead in terms of developed content, although that's likely to change with future updates.

Switching over to the newest version of Ren'Py has also forced me to switch editing software to keep up, which is taking some adjusting to, but the newer one is supposed to have a lot of features to improve developer workflow. Hopefully by next year I'll have gotten used to actually using them. I'll look forward to updating you on that in 2023.

 

[JayneDoe2]

January 2023 update

I was torn about whether to give this update a different title, since apart from being a regular monthly update, today also marks a full year since Complex Relations was first funded on Kickstarter. It's also the first update I've ever written up from outside the United States. This update will go out at a different time from usual because I'm sending it from the opposite side of the world, but I'm still keeping up work on the game in the meantime.

So, how much of Complex Relations has been completed over the last year? A lot, although it's not as close to completion as I'd hoped it would be by this point. The pace of writing progress has been about as fast as I'd hoped, although there are some things which have taken longer than I expected (especially writing the most complicated VN sex scene ever created.) But the game's final volume is also going to be greater than I originally projected, because more of the full game is playable from the perspectives of any of the protagonists than in the demo, and I underestimated how much content that would add.

Still, there's been a whole lot of progress, and the vast majority of the game as it now exists consists of content past the end of the demo. The biggest time-limiting factor currently is not the writing, but the development of the game's CG art. All the artists who were involved at the time of launch are still on board, but a series of health issues has left the work pace of one of our key members dramatically reduced. As things stand, there's no risk of the budget running out without the game being completed (an advantage of the fact that nobody is drawing a full-time salary from the game's funding,) and the game is still on track to completion. But I'd prefer to keep the development process from being dragged out if I can avoid it, so in the meantime, I'm also looking for artists who can potentially join the team and help distribute the workload. There are a couple promising candidates lined up currently, and if things work out with either of them, it'll be a great boost to the game as it enters its second year of development.

Here's hoping everyone else is having a good new year as well, and this update gives you a little bit to look forward to.

 

[JayneDoe2]

February 2023 update
This month's is a slightly melancholy update. Although I posted about this previously, so it's no longer news that CR isn't on track to meet its original March 2023 release date, there's still a wistful feeling in coming so close to the date listed on the Kickstarter and knowing the game won't be ready by then.


That's not to say there hasn't been steady progress since the last update. So far, I've been keeping the three routes at a pretty even pace with each other. Since they all follow a similar chronological progression, this has meant a lot of sunset scenery lately. This means we're getting a lot of use out of the image framework for recoloring sprites according to ambient lighting. It's pretty handy!

Recent developments in the script also include the revelation of Vani's full first name; Vani is short for something, and the specifics are a part of her character backstory which I've been looking forward to writing for a long time.

Of the game's three routes, Vani's is the one I've always considered the trickiest to plot out, but now that we're reaching some of those key developments, I feel good about how it's coming together. I'm sure a lot of players will pick their favorite route and stick with it, but I hope that everyone who chooses to play all of them will consider all three routes worthwhile.

 

[JayneDoe2]

March 2023 update
We've finally reached the month of Complex Relations' projected release date! Past the point of this update, Complex Relations is officially "overdue." It's hard for me not to feel at least a bit abashed, since I pitched this project as one with a constrained, manageable vision which should be deliverable without excessive delays. But as much as I'd like to be able to wrap the whole project up on schedule, looking over the game as it stands so far, there's a lot in there that I'm proud of. I only rarely take a step back and do committed replays of the existing material (otherwise I become so familiar with the contents that I stop being able to judge the quality, like how a word starts feeling meaningless if you read it too many times in a row.) But I've made a point of running through the game again leading up to this update, and while I've made a few tweaks here and there, for the most part I'm really happy with it. Right now, not only does most of the game's content come after the demo cutoff, in my opinion most of the best content comes past the demo. Certainly most of the content with real emotional impact.




So, how close are we to release currently? It's honestly hard to say. I'd like to be able to at least guarantee a 2023 release, but at the present rate that's unlikely, although not impossible. The overall script is definitely turning out longer than I'd estimated (although not excessively so,) even accounting for the stretch goals we reached during the campaign. It's likely that with a concerted push, I could finish the full script this year, but since writing isn't the limiting factor in development right now, accelerating the pace of the writing wouldn't result in the game coming out sooner.

That being the case, I actually have another much smaller scale project in the works on the side with some of my own downtime, which I plan to share more on in the next update. I wanted to make sure before I announced it that it wouldn't interfere with the development of Complex Relations, but now I'm satisfied that that's the case, andI'm looking forward to sharing it.

But for Complex Relations, it's hard to offer hard delivery dates currently, because there's still so much room for the pace of art development to change over time. I'm still looking into ways to speed up the bottleneck, and the rate of development is going to hinge a lot on how much those efforts pan out. Right now, I think it's highly unlikely that the game will slip into years-long delays which leave the whole status of the project in question. If the pace of art development slows down that much, I'll have to make some hard decisions about how much I'm willing to compromise on the cohesiveness of the artwork in order to get the game out in a reasonable time frame. I'd definitely rather avoid that, but if it does come to that, at least it still wouldn't jeopardize the game's actual release.

The last few months have mostly been focused on the development of some impactful emotional scenes. Next up- a whole bunch of sexual content. It can honestly be a bit draining to work on too much of this in a row without any breaks, but thankfully none of it should be anywhere near as difficult to finish as the Most Complicated Sex Scene Ever a while back. Looking over the 18+ scenes already in the game so far, I'm quite happy with them. I've been trying hard to keep them fresh and engaging, and make sure the scene writing never ends up as fluff to pad out the time you spend looking at the pictures. Hopefully, players will appreciate the effort.

 

[JayneDoe2]

April 2023 update
I usually accompany these updates with a screenshot of something close to the point I've been working on lately, but as I predicted in the last update, most of my work over the last month has been focused on sexual content. I don't think I'm allowed to share anything 18+ in a Kickstarter post, even when it's backer-exclusive, and the graphics for these scenes don't exist yet anyway, so I'll let you guys use your imaginations on what they actually involve.


I know some players are used to not paying a whole lot of attention to the actual text during VN sex scenes. I've played through a lot of sex scenes myself, and in my opinion they do tend to be pretty samey. But I'm trying to keep the scenes in Complex Relations fresh and engaging to read, not just relative to other visual novels, but within the context of the game itself. It might be my contrarian streak at work, but I care quite a lot about the quality of the game's sexual content, and I want to make sure it lives up to my standards.

On that note, I'd like to introduce a side project I brought up in the last update, one with more emphasis on sexual content than Complex Relations.


This is a scene from Comfort and Warmth, a project I've had on the backburner for a pretty long time now, since before Complex Relations' Kickstarter launch. I wanted to make sure that it would be practical to work on it on the side without delaying Complex Relations, but it's been in development for a while now, and it's about ready to start sharing a bit about it publicly.

Everything I work on is intended to appeal to both male and female players, but not necessarily to an equal extent with each game. C&W leans a bit more towards female audiences, with a female viewpoint protagonist. But it also leans more heavily on sexual contents as a proportion of its play time (although the sex is actually technically skippable, I'll talk more about why some other time.) It's a short game, one that's meant to be playable within a single sitting, but there are still several different ways to play through it. It's its own separate thing, and definitely not something I intend to let hold up work on CR, but I hope people who're looking forward to CR will also find it worth checking out.

 

[JayneDoe2]

May 2023 Update

Like last month's, a lot of this month's work has been focused on sexual content. But different.

In my experience, a lot of the sex scenes which people praise most for their artfulness and writing quality are ones which focus on other goals apart from titillating the reader. I think that part of this comes down to a shortage of good models of actually sexy writing for authors to learn from, and part of it is due to a prejudice against porn as a worthwhile application of good writing. Personally, I consider content which arouses the reader to be a perfectly legitimate expression of good writing, but that doesn't mean this is the only thing I want to do with the sex scenes in Complex Relations. Some of the last month's content was particularly tricky to write, but I hope players will find it particularly memorable.




Surprisingly, Vani's route has pulled ahead in the last month with the most content written post-branching. Maybe that's not especially surprising to anyone else, but it's surprising to me, since I almost always write the game's content in the same order (Jesse-Alexa-Vani) that their perspectives appear at the very start of the game. Vani's route has always been the one which I anticipated being the most difficult to write well, but consequently, I've spent the most time thinking about how to navigate those difficulties, and I've tried to write it while those ideas are still fresh in my head.

I can't help being a bit biased in favor of the threesome route, because it's the one that most sets Complex Relations apart from most other romance-focused VNs. But I want all of the game's routes to be worthwhile in their own rights. Vani's route is particularly difficult to do justice to, but that being the case, it deserves that extra effort to get right.

 

[JayneDoe2]

June 2023 update
This month marks a first in the development of Complex Relations. Not in anything players are going to see directly in the game itself, but in the behind-the-scenes work that goes into it. While most of the game takes place in undetermined locations somewhere in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, there are a couple of events later in the game which take place in locations distinct enough that they can be narrowed down to specific places in real life. So, in order to convey a realistic sense of the characters' experience, I resorted to actually calling up the people who run that location in real life, and asking them what it would have been like to visit it back in 2007. I wasn't expecting too much from this approach, but they were surprisingly forthcoming, and offered a lot of information which will be making it into that part of the game.


This last month's work has also covered the contents of a specific CG I've been planning since way back, well before the Kickstarter launch. While some of the game's contents were contingent on the results of the Kickstarter, this scene was never not going to make the cut.

Unfortunately, there's still a significant backlog of CG artwork in the script which is yet to be created. I'm still in the process of looking for other artists who could potentially expedite the process, so it's hard to say how quickly that backlog can be filled in the long run. I want to maintain consistency in the game's overall visual style, but I don't want it to come at the cost of the game coming out within a reasonable time frame.

Apart from CGs though, the route content contains a whole bunch of new background work. Some of them only appear briefly, but the real life locations are too varied and colorful to sell short. Thankfully, the development of new background work is continuing at a much quicker pace. Each new piece has been really satisfying for me to work with, and I'm looking forward to showcasing all of them.

 

[JayneDoe2]

July 2023 update

I have a bad news/good news update this month. Thankfully, I think the good news outweighs the bad news, although the fact that they're coming right at the same time to offset each other is mostly a matter of luck.

The bad news is that ArcticFox, who's been handling key elements of the artwork since the kickstarter launch, has left the project. I've been reporting for a long time now that the creation of scene artwork has been the bottleneck in development. ArcticFox suffered some serious health setbacks since launch, and has finally withdrawn since she no longer feels able to continue working on the project. Her work has been a huge asset thus far, but considering how much her health has limited her ability to continue participating, her decision to step back is not entirely unexpected.

That being the case, I've been searching for some time for candidates who could share the art workload. Although it was never my intention to outright replace ArcticFox, her departure coincides with my finally finding a suitable candidate to carry on the artwork in her place. So, as of this update, I'd like to announce the addition of a new character artist, Sosukichan, to the team.


I'll be sharing the full version of this image on the game's Discord server.
The pace of new development won't be quite as fast as if I'd been able to divide the workload between the two of them as I'd hoped, but it should be significantly faster than it has been since ArcticFox's downturn in health. I've been really impressed by the quality of Sosukichan's work so far, and her ability to maintain consistency with the game's existing style, and I'm looking forward to seeing her renditions of the rest of the scenes to come.

 

[JayneDoe2]

August 2023 update

This update marks the first month with Sosukichan fully in charge of the game's CG development. Progress has been... still slower than I'd personally prefer, honestly, since there's quite a bit of backlog of script ahead of where the CG art is up to. But definitely faster than it was before, which I'm thankful for. It was a huge relief for me to see a positive reception for her artwork in the last update, and I'm looking forward to seeing her renditions of more of the game's scenes to come.

In the meantime, I've been doing a fiddling around with sprite instructions. I don't know how many players are as fascinated as I am with good use of character sprite interactions, but for Complex Relations, I consider this a really important feature.



It's not just a matter of how well they carry off the flow and atmosphere of the scenes, it's also a question of practical tradeoffs. What events do you give CG illustration, and what do you have play out entirely in sprite actions? Sprites can be lively in ways that become more difficult with a CG which occupies the whole screen, but generally, you can illustrate anything with a CG which you could with sprite interactions, while the reverse isn't true. But when CG development is the most demanding factor in your release schedule, everything you can figure out how to do in a compelling and effective way with sprites comes with a significant value in saved time. So, I've been putting a lot of thoughts into where to make the tradeoffs on that.

On the opposite end from that, Comfort and Warmth, the side project I mentioned a few months back in the April 2023 update, is done entirely in CG. This is the main reason that its development moves slow enough that I'm able to juggle it without slowing down development of Complex Relations.



It's still making steady progress though, and I'm looking forward to seeing what players will think of that approach as well.

 

[JayneDoe2]

September 2023 update

Another month of relatively steady progress. As of last update, a couple of routes were sitting at points right before the start of sex scenes, so a lot of last month has been focused on sexual content. Thankfully, work on them has been much quicker than the Most Complicated Sex Scene Ever earlier in the game, and it's been a relief not getting bogged down on them the way I did with that one.



Every sex scene in this game is playable from the perspectives of all the participants, but in some cases that means two perspectives rather than three, and that saves quite a lot of time in the writing process. Scenes only playable from one perspective would be easier still, but writing Complex Relations doesn't offer such an exotic luxury. Even two-character scenes are rarer than three, because even when all the characters aren't involved at once, they're usually all there and making their presence felt. I don't think I'm ever likely to write anything else again after this with so many perspectives per sex scene, but for this game at least, I want to make it worth the effort.

 

[JayneDoe2]

October 2023 Update

Weather's finally starting to get colder over here, and going outdoors no longer offers the same sort of inspiration for working on the game, but development still continues. Despite the game's summer theme, the entire demo was written in winter, so I'm not planning to let this slow me down.

CG art continues to be the slowest moving part of the game's development, but there's a new batch of background work coming up. This isn't something I planned out in earlier stages of development, but each of the game's routes features scenes from some specific real world location. None of the specific places will be named in-game, but it should be possible for players to narrow them down with a bit of searching. So, I've been doing a bunch of digging recently for suitable references to reflect those locations.



I can't actually promise that all the locations are close enough to each other to narrow the lake house down to specific area from which it would be practical to drive to all of them. There definitely isn't a particular address players could visit to see the lake house where the characters spend their trip. But if you take the time to visit, you could see a lot of the same sights that they do.

 

[JayneDoe2]

November 2023 update

We're approaching the end of 2023 now, with one of the last updates of this year. This update actually marks the first month where I've deliberately shifted focus away from work on the game's script.

I didn't want to put out yet another update saying that work on the script is still moving steadily ahead, but the gap between it and the artwork is still growing. Originally, when health issues slowed ArcticFox's pace of work, I went looking for another artist to split the workload with her. The fact that she withdrew from the project around the same time that I brought Sosukichan on board was a coincidence which has kept the pace of art development from reaching the level I'd hoped for. So, for the last month, I've made searching for another artist able to divide the workload with Sosukichan while maintaining the game's art style my main priority.

Last time, it took a considerable amount of time for me to single out a suitable candidate. This time though, things have been going much quicker. Partly, this is a result of my making the search my primary focus for the month. But, the time I've spent building contacts through work on the Complex Relations artbook is also feeding into the process. Apart from just finding artist who could contribute to it as a backer tier reward, that's always served as a way for me to make contact for artists who're worth keeping in touch with for larger scale project work. Most of the pieces in it aren't done in Complex Relations' characteristic art style, but the truth is that even for Hoshiineko, the game's original character artist, Complex Relations was a step outside her usual style, and some of the artists I've reached out to are quite versatile.


Here's a teaser of one of the pieces that's gone into the artbook so far, credit to Mirin Sauce.


All that said, this doesn't mean that there hasn't been other progress on Complex Relations this month. Asset work has been moving forward on all fronts, with new scene art, new backgrounds, and another new audio track. It's not quite there yet, but the game's soundtrack is finally approaching completion, or at least, completion of all the planned-for content. There's still room to add a bit more if I decide that any of the upcoming content really calls for it.

By next month, I hope I'll be able to make the announcement of a new artist involved with Complex Relations. I'm in touch with some strong candidates now, any of whom I think could be great additions to the team.

 

[JayneDoe2]

December 2023 update

Happy holidays, everyone!

I don't write these updates out in advance, but for this one, I figured I'd write something about the holiday season and the ending of the year, and the outlook for Complex Relations' development over the coming year. Then I got sick and forgot most of it.



Fortunately, this is the kind of sick that lasts somewhere from a few days to a couple weeks, not the sort that derails long-term plans. But I'm taking some time to recover, since I'm not turning out my best work at the moment.

Unfortunately, while I was hoping to be able to make an announcement about bringing another artists on board to speed up the development schedule at this point, one of the candidates also got sick, which has postponed my decision on that. There should still be someone joining the team soon who'll be able to increase the pace of art development, but I can't say who quite yet.

Over the last few days, I've been doing another run through the game, reviewing existing content. I ended up spending a while completing alternate versions to a sex scene which I'd forgotten didn't already have them. That was a while spent on work I'd thought I'd already completed, but rather than being demoralizing, it helped drive home just how much variability those scenes already have.

Looking back over the last year, this game has grown a lot, and it's full of content I'm really proud of. I'm looking forward to bringing that to you guys. I hope everyone has a great end of the year, and a bright outlook for the next.

 

[JayneDoe2]

January 2024 update


Happy 2024! With the onset of the new year, we're back to the maximum calendar distance from when Complex Relations takes place, and I'm writing this with thick snow outside my window, but work on the game is still ongoing.

Progress over the last month has mostly focused on Vani's route, which has finally gotten to some content which I've been planning for a long time, since well before the KS launch. Some elements of the game have been set in stone since an early stage of development, while others are adaptable based on considerations like backer input, expense changes, or just coming up with different (and hopefully better) ways to express the ideas which have always formed the core of the game. While there are plenty of scenes in the game now which weren't planned out in detail at the time of launch which I'm very happy with, it's particularly satisfying seeing them link up to those long-awaited keystone scenes.


Later in this route, you can also expect a phone call scene in which Amber expounds on Plato's allegory of The Cave, so look forward to that.


On the art development front, there have been further delays in the test work for one of the candidates, but this doesn't mean that the inclusion of additional team members is in question. Moving forward, I expect to add at least one new artist to the team in order to bring up the speed of art development. Depending on how cohesive they're able to keep their work with the style of the game, I may be adding more than one, so I'll be looking forward to giving a more definitive announcement on that later.

It's hard to say at this point whether Complex Relations is headed for a 2024 release. That'll depend a lot on the new artist(s) coming on board. But at the very least, I'm looking forward to a lot of great new content over the year to come.

 

[JayneDoe2]

February 2024 update

I normally never write up these updates in advance, but today's would be a good one to have done that with, because I only have a bit of time free for it. Hopefully, it's enough time to give a decent picture, because there's been some good progress this month.

Earlier on in development, I couldn't say for sure what the order of completion was going to be for the game's various routes. I've jumped around between them over the course of the project, trying to keep myself fresh when I spend too much time focusing on one type of content or another. But at this point, I can decisively say that Vani's route is going to be the first to be completed, followed by Alexa's route, with the threesome route coming last. I couldn't have guaranteed that earlier, but it's not surprising, because Vani's route has always been the hardest to plan out, and I prefer to get the hardest parts out of the way first.



There's a fair amount more food writing in this route, which is something I wasn't expecting readers to be as enthusiastic about as they have been. I don't know how much is going to appear in the final game, but some of these scenes were planned out way in advance, including the most recent ones. Anything that makes it into the game that I haven't planned for already, I'll be trying to meet the standard those ones set, or top it.

CG development is coming along somewhat faster now, with multiple artists splitting up the workload. At this point, none of the newly illustrated material is newly written material, but there are plenty of fun scenes in the lineup. You guys can look forward to a scene that's a reprise of the hiking trail with Jesse and Vani, and Alexa's night campground scene.

On my end, some of the biggest and most dramatic scenes of Vani's route are coming up soon. I've had a long time to set the stage for these, and I'll be doing my best to make sure the payoff measures up.

 

[JayneDoe2]

March 2024 update

Normally, I put a fair amount of space between working on the game and sending out these updates, but today they're pretty much back to back. I have a bit of catching up to do, so I wanted to make sure I hit today's quota, even if it meant rushing this update a bit.

There's been a bit less progress on the script this month than I'd hoped, partly for personal reasons, but partly because I did something I very rarely do. I discarded a chunk of content I'd already written in order to redo a scene from the outline up. Normally, I'm very resistant to throwing out work I've already done, so I'm careful to make sure everything is on the right track before moving ahead with it. But the content I'm working on right now is the most pivotal part of Vani's route, and I wanted to make sure that the player would have an appropriate amount of input to avoid feeling railroaded through the scene, while still making sure it came to the desired conclusion. This time around, I have an outline which I'm much more confident in, and I've been making good progress on a version of the scene which I think will do justice to the route. Vani's route has always been the most complicated of the three to write, and this is the trickiest part, but I'm confident that it's on track now.



Although progress on the script was slower than usual this month, that hasn't been the case for the game's art development. There's some new CG development I'm quite pleased with, and while it's not at all lined up with the most recent content in the script, I'm happy to be able to finally get it into the game.


Does Complex Relations turn into a horror game? You'll have to wait and find out.

There are a lot of fun scenes to be illustrated still, and I'm looking forward to sharing more of it with you as the project goes on.

 

[JayneDoe2]

April 2024 Update

I sometimes regret the timing of these monthly updates. Right now, I have warm sunny weather out to motivate me, but it's a shame missing out on the license to completely make shit up which I'd have had if the update went out a couple weeks ago.


The image in-game actually extends *slightly* lower than this.

Sticking to actually true information about the game's development though, the major scene I was working on as of the last update has been completed, in much better fashion than it was headed for the first time around. It's another long scene with several choices in succession, like the drinking game scene at the end of the demo, and it introduces some important character developments, while setting up a major turning point in Vani's route, and this time around I feel like it properly lives up to its place in the story.

Now, I'm working on the most important sex scene of Vani's route. Yes, some of the sex scenes in this game are more important than others. All of them play directly into the development of the plot and character relationships, but some of them are more load-bearing than others, and this one is among the load-bearing-est. That said, thankfully, important doesn't equal difficult, and this one isn't nearly as demanding to complete as the most complicated sex scene ever was.




There's also been some good progress on the art front. This is one of the newest CGs by Snipetto, one of the two artists currently working on the game's character art. This is my first time sharing his artwork in an update, but he's been a great asset to the project since he came on board.

This is another of those points where I'm narrowing in on scene work I've been planning since the very beginning of the project. This is going to be one of the most dramatic scenes in the game, and I want to make sure the final execution lives up to those plans. I might some new sprite art to carry it off properly, we'll see how that goes.

Spoiler: Larger image from discord

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