Greetings, dear players! Here is another devlog entry to keep you guys updated on the state of the game.

Trailer: As you can see, the trailer for Just Your Ordinary School Life Simulator is up and running! We tried to make it so that it reflects the light-hearted comedic sense of not taking itself too seriously. It was almost as much fun to make as the game itself, and we hope it reflects that.

Character Asset Corrections: ChiefZika has worked his magic and has completed revisions and touch-ups for all of the Character assets for the game! You’ll notice anything from subtle color changes to full redraws of some parts of the characters, which we believe are for the better. Please feel free to enjoy our beautiful new updated art!

Character Theme Songs: Unfortunately, Violet’s Theme requires a delay, since we had a bit of trouble adding bossa nova elements to her song. We’re experimenting with different sounds so that the theme has the right amount of dissonance and assonance, as well as the telltale uniqueness of the rest of the School Life soundtrack.

Title Sequence: It’s up! My god if it isn’t goddamn beautiful. :’)

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Future of the Game:

Since we have reached a considerable milestone for our project, and the Chief and I are both starting our second year of college, there will be no foreseeable expected release date for the next big update of the game, although I will be working on small corrections and additional content and adding them through patches. However, we will be pitching the game to our school’s game design club, and hopefully we can add interested students to our game developer group like we did last year.

I will still be the main writer and ChiefZika the main character artist (and musician), but we are hoping to find potential background artists, writers, musicians, and especially coders. Depending on how much talent we can add to our team, we will accordingly shoot towards completing the game goals below. But regardless of that, we will still work on adding more character interactions, story beats, choices, and in-game features overall.

After receiving valuable feedback from some of our players, we’ve created list of ideas for potential new in-game features that we are considering adding:

Stat-Based Updates:

• Button mashing mini-game for athletics-based events or athleticism stat-raising.
  • This could also work for the chase sequence.
• “Simon says” style memory game for intelligence stat-raising.
• Combining the “call a friend” feature and charisma stat-raising into one option.
  • Trivia mini-game based on facts for each character like their favorite color. Getting the right answer increases charisma and the corresponding friend level.
    • This would require disabling rollback (as well as an auto-save feature) to prevent cheating.

Battle-Based Updates:

• More frequent battles.
• Battle UI Overhaul
  • New battle character/background assets, UI, and unique animations for attacking/receiving damage.
• Unique ultimate ability for each main friend character.
• Persistent friend HP’s and permanent friend deaths (from battles).
  • Consumables that you or other friend characters A) have the opportunity to buy each day and B) consume at any point.
• Point and click mini game sequences when the robots are attacking the Protagonist and friends.

Story-Based Updates:

• Better inventory UI
• Expanding on conversation “buds”.
  • Ex. Anne Lu “water is wet” conversation.
• Expanding on skipped mornings, afternoons, evenings and nights in the story.
  • Gives players more interactions with characters and openings for story beats.
• More dialogue choices
  • Turns the Protagonist into more of a vessel for player expression as opposed to a character in their own right.
• More impactful story choices

Maybe:

• Dialogue choices that can increase/decrease friend levels.
  • Mean dialogue choices (aka roasts)
  • Consequences for having some characters hate you (negative friend levels?)
• Ability to befriend side characters like the Buff Guy, Hype Man, etc.
  • Benefit to doing so in story or battling sequences.

Although many of these ideas are ones that we are excited about implementing in our game, not only does it complicate balancing stats and friend levels within both the story and battling sequences, but it also would imply creating storylines that branch further which might be harder to keep track of without an organized workflow on my end.

So in order to make our game more complex while keeping it balanced, I will turn back to Twine and map the game out visually, keeping track of story-influencing variables and spots in the game where stats and friendship levels matter (either in raising them or using them on a stat-based roll to determine the success/failure of that choice). By having a fully mapped out “bare bones” version of the game, my workflow will improve considerably and help keep everything organized while the game gets more complicated. I’ve already started to map the game out, as you can see below.

As the school year goes on, I will very much be invested in making School Life bigger and better. But I will also aim my efforts at further increasing player exposure to our game. I don’t wish to make money from it since it is a project of passion, but I would like it to reach the right hands for players to enjoy. The Chief and I have put in more than enough effort into this thing to warrant that. So, I will be promoting the game by increasing our presence in social media and game-related forums, so expect to see us in many more websites and platforms!

If you liked the game, please consider recommending it to a friend, loved one, or even an acquaintance who you think could be interested. As always, any and all support of our game is heartfelt and much appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time, and stay posted for updates. They may come sooner than you’d expect!