Ren'Py Like to here opinions on my wip idea

[Hikutory]

As I am a no name creator who would like to get into the field of game development. I would like to hear opinions on this idea I am working on. As I don't have 3 post I wont link my patreon at this moment but here is a rip from my patreon explaining my idea so that I don't need to retype the same thing.

First of all this story takes place in the future on earth. Aliens, who look close to elves or more so half-elves, have made refuge on our planet. They say that they had been attacked by a hostile alien race and made a run for safety thus happened upon earth... But are they too be trusted? As they assimilate, they share some of their technology with the government in hopes of formulating a plan to train new solders (in the use of highly advanced weaponry), in hopes of preparing an army who will be able to defend earth from these hostile creatures *FROM SPACE*.

The story is about you and your two friends becoming part of the first class of students to join a collage funded by the government/military to prepare a new army in the use of these alien weaponry and space crafts.

- this game will be from first person

- character stat/skill based creation (I like dnd and you can tell with the stat/skill setup)

- a more cartoony style (vibe I'm going for is "monster a week" cartoon but in game format)

- combat in some form ( have some ideas on paper but nothing official yet, but likely will be a something a kin to fire emblem/advance wars/war groove) THOUGH I AM NOT MAKING THIS GAMEPLAY REQUIRED! There will be a option to remove combat for those seeking a pure life/date sim visual novel.

- jobs (it is a life sim after all) will probably be something like how persona 5 did it.

- dating, I want to keep it simple but avoid the whole 'run the player through a set of questions to determine if the date went okay' (see to many date sims do this and you may not even have the answers because specific events have yet to trigger). Why simple? Well to allow players to get to the good stuff, of course... but keep in mind simple doesn't mean little work, but more so that it is easy to increase affection just by spending time with, rather than knowing every last thing about a character.

- 30 datable characters? I do want to have the first class to be a full class of students... so I know I want to make a lot of characters, but not only that it is a life sim, meaning you'll meet others outside your class too. Seems like a lot of work, so probably not that many unless we end up getting a lot of help. We will see, but I also want to have a variety of fetishes represented and don't want to pile them onto a single character.

- purchasable houses/furniture/cloths/food/... you will be making money, so you'll need to be able to spend it somehow. though there is already a lot of work that needs to be done so this probably will be basic.

- genetic mods/nano tech/robotic replacements!!! This will be the main use for the money you make. These mods will have an affect on the story (as they will improve your body in some fashion, thus making you a super human (MILITARY LIKES THIS)). These will also give you new skills in combat. Just be carful as some may start to reject you (not want to be friends/date) as you become less you/ less human.

- hand drawn art ( I have been told that I am pretty good at it... though I am fairly new to digital)

Hopefully this all sounds exciting. But I have been told by someone that I may be trying to jam to much into one game... I could cut the rpg combat entirely but feel it would be silly to have my life sim have rpg/dnd like stats and skills to determine outcomes in a war story and not have it... I could just make 5 to 10 datable characters and make the rest just background characters that are undatable... I'll have fun making it ether way, but feel doing so may cut the integrity of what the game is (but maybe I'm being stubborn).

I should be fair as the person who told me I am doing to much also knows I am also working on a music player that allows the player to add their own mp3s to the game so that they can listen to something while exploring the life sim parts of the game (I figure this would be best, rather then a looping track that I made "which may or may not be good" for hours... I would get sick of that). But I know the player can just mute the game and use another app for listening to music, but I don't want people to miss out on THEME SONGS OF THE CHARACTERS. And I am also putting together a way of making it simple for people to add characters to the game themselves, I like playing videogames too and would like to see what sort of dateable characters others come up with in such a story as this.

This is probably a bit long and probably boring without images, but as I am working on programing all of this, I only have some placeholder art in the game at the moment to help me test some of what I got. However I did a quick drawing of what I want the female Elf/Alien race to look like. Now this is done on my phone without pressure sensors so a small screen with line work that looks all the same but nonetheless enjoy. And let me know what you think about the style of the character (the background was ai generated so not done by me).

Lastly, I know I say we a lot when explaining the game... I have another friend who has expressed interest in helping out in making this but at the moment I am the only one who has any work into this. I don't blame him though as I get needing to make a living and having little time. But I do plan on working on this! As I have stated, I have an interest in pursuing this field of work (doesn't mean I to also need to make a living atm, so I don't have a lot of time to work on this but I am dedicating as much of my free time as I can).

Also, don't worry, there isn't much going on over at patreon as I don't feel right asking for money without having any gameplay to show. And thanks in advance to anyone sharing their opinion!

 

[MissFortune]

It's a good idea, but the scope creep is real here. 30 datable students, plus any other relations outside of the classrooms? So, basically, upwards of 50 or so? Keep in mind, not only do you have to draw all of them, but also draw them in sexual positions. Then there's the environments, and any other unique elements your game offers. That's not even going into the technical side of things with the massive amounts of variables and other code related to it. Even a smaller team of five or so would struggle with a project like this. Is it possible? Sure, but the problem is that it'll be months before it's even somewhat playable, likely years for a nice amount of content. It's ambitious, but the scale is likely a bit too large, especially for a newer developer.

The other problem I see is this overarching space opera theme in a life simulator. Could it work? I guess, but again, with all the variables of datable characters involved, it could get messy. I'm not saying don't do it, what I'm saying is you'll be much better of toning it down. You'll be happier and far less vulnerable to burnout.

 

[xj47]

30 dateable characters sounds insane to me unless they are all super basic or somehow procedurally generated.

For comparison HuniePop is a well-received game that focused on the dating idea, and that game only has 12 dateable characters (including the 4 bonus ones).

As a rule of thumb, everything is going to take way more work than you expect it to, so scale things back a bit.
Also from a design perspective, the more systems and stuff you add to your game, the harder it's going to be to keep everything relevant and coherent.

I also agree that the themes of space opera and life simulator clash a bit. It could work, for example you could play into the comedic angle of having some epic space conflict going on as the backdrop to an PC that just wants to get laid, but the two don't naturally go together.

The ideas you list here aren't bad by themselves, but it's a very ambitious project to try fitting it all into one game.
I think you should just focus on one or two ideas and discard everything else that doesn't clearly complement those core ideas.

You can always incorporate the discarded ideas in a future project.

 

[KiaAzad]

I have one piece of advice for all those whom are creating their first game:
Start as small as possible, maybe one character or less...
creating a game is 10 times harder than it looks, if you start with too many characters, the development time will become infinitely long and you'll eventually have to cut your losses by abandoning the project.

 

[Hikutory]

Alright cool! Who knew that my game would drastically change over a course of one day... but I guess I had the mindset of a AAA developer where I should be thinking more on what I can do independently.
This idea started off as me wanting to make a life/date sim so I'll stick with that. I'm also a huge nerd for anything space related, however I wanted the game to take place on earth to keep things simple (so I asked myself how can I bring space to the player... thus came up with this idea). I guess I could drop the story for something else more fitting. However I do like the idea of having the protagonist kind of stumbling about with no idea what they are going to do with his/her life and getting talked into by some friends to join them in going to this new school when all they want to do is get laid.

Totally down for comedy! Could maybe go for a (probably going to age myself) Tenchi Muyo vibe. This could have three possible endings: you stupidly agree to help invaders for sex, you end up power hungry and spend way to much on becoming a super weapon cyborg for the military thus saving the day and never getting what you truly wanted, and the make love not war ending where you somehow become earths greatest asset and save the day through showing the invaders that we can just all love one another and live in peace and harmony (dope more than likely included).

I have 7 characters I truly want to make... so I will limit myself to just that. And wont bother with combat.

Well the two main things my friend mentioned was the shear number a characters I wanted and the fact that I wanted to make it so other players could add characters of their own creation to the game... they made it sound like nobody would be interested in doing that... though maybe now that I'll just be cutting it out I shouldn't care, so maybe this is better left as a poll when I decide to add it to another game whether or not this is a good idea. However the music player is already done now, besides I would of wanted to do it anyways with the life sim still being apart of this.

 

[osanaiko]

I have one piece of advice for all those whom are creating their first game:
Start as small as possible, maybe one character or less...
creating a game is 10 times harder than it looks, if you start with too many characters, the development time will become infinitely long and you'll eventually have to cut your losses by abandoning the project.

Less than one dateable character? like.... a masturbation simulator? Or is this an amputee fetish thing?

 

[KiaAzad]

Less than one dateable character? like.... a masturbation simulator? Or is this an amputee fetish thing?

I know how it sounds, I'm just using that expression to highlight the importance of starting as small as possible. often first timers don't have a good grasp on the scale of their project and start projects that are absurdly big.