I am working on this and hope to have some news in the coming weeks.
I'm really quite impressed with what you've got here.
May I just say, my one request, please don't leave Meredith's storyline (or other incest characters) on the shelf for too long. Just be aware that's your hook (from this demo anyway). You can never add too many scenes for these characters, but you can can neglect them. Seen that happen too many times.
Thank you for the kind words! I completely agree with your assessment of the characters. From feedback, Meredith is clearly a hit. I am currently focusing on the sister's route at the moment (and we'll see how well she is received), but Meredith should get at least one scene for the next update and then back to her route after that.
The side characters (if they ever get content) will be short little routes, similar to Lucy (the ghost). There will NOT be an entire content update focused on, say Jasmine, for example.
Is there a way to transfer saves from previous updates to new updates - short of starting over every time. It's fairly simple to do in a Renpy game.
While on that subject, what are the advantages of using Unity over Renpy? From what I have seen, developing with Renpy seems straight forward.
Transferring saves should be something that should happen automatically, unless I break some aspect of the underlying story. It's something that needs to be handled delicately on the developer side and I still don't fully understand which actions risk breaking saves. I will try my best not to yank the rug out from under existing saved games.
I'm not an expert on Ren'Py, but the deciding factor for me was Adventure Creator (Unity add-on). It took about 5 minutes playing around with AC before I was sold. Once I was working in Unity, I took advantage of features to achieve some of the effects in the game:
- Shaders: Day/night cycle without needing day/night versions of every BG or every sprite that goes on them; Lucy's vanish effect
- Bone Animation: The animated "reward" scenes are only as smooth as they are because I stuck raster pieces onto bones and moved them around.
- Parallax Scrolling:
- Particle System: MC's "ropes," floating hearts, rain, etc.
It could be that Ren'Py does all these things and I'm just not aware.