Milestone Get!

...So clearly I'm completely incapable of updating this blog more than once every few months. :B Now that I'm working on Lucky Rabbit Reflex full time, however, I've been making far more progress than ever before, so huzzah! I've even managed to meet a couple of major milestones this month, so my dream of possibly maybe getting the game sort of release-able before Christmas might possibly come true. Maybe.

Firstly, the clothing system is now totally complete - above we have our heroine modelling a few of the items available in the game (though unfortunately, you won't be able to wear all of them at the same time - rest assured, though, the beach hat + rollerblades look is definitely possible :B), which come in at over 150 items of clothing and accessories spread over three different shops...


...like La Dauphine here, which sells cute dresses and sensible outfits (writing some of the boys' responses to the cuter outfits ended up being pretty fun, actually - suffice it to say some of the guys don't really appreciate the heroine dressing like a twelve-year old. But hey!). I won't spoil the other shops (though to be honest, all of the other clothes menu screenshots I've been posting are from one of them, but eh :B), but they each have their individual shopkeepers who may or may not be familiar with the main cast.


There are also a few new styles, bringing the grand total to seven. Some of these can be created by combining two different styles. If only real life fashion were so simple, hur hur :B

Finally, and most importantly, all of the date events with the boys are now complete! Though I'd only planned on spending a few weeks writing them, as usual I completely underestimated the amount of writing a dating sim actually needs and the dates ended up taking up around half of the 109,000 word count, aughh. But hey, what's done is done! I'd say at this point, around 80% or so of the game is totally complete and playable, so it really is getting there.

Choose from one of the five date spots...

Dress to impress...

...and hope your date's as passionate about Pac-Man as you are.

...So yeah, mucho progress. Of course, now that I no longer have drawing endless items of clothing to distract myself, I'll actually have to get cracking on the writing I've been putting off... :B writing some of the more story-ish events has been pretty fun, though, so we'll see how it goes!

Also, thank you guys so much for the positive responses to the previous post - it's been really amazing getting feedback from everyone. I really want to make Lucky Rabbit Reflex as polished as I possibly can, so if anyone has any comments or critique, feel free to tear this thing apart! (...which will hopefully be easier once I actually post a demo, hoho).

(...Sometime in the next couple of months, maybe? :3)

Brushing Away the Cobwebs

I like how after all this talk of inordinate amounts of free time, I abandon the blog for like, four months. Oops! I honestly apologise to anyone watching this place for the complete and utter lack of updates, but rest assured, I've actually been working far more on the game than ever before, and progress is going very smoothly. With the current word count in the vicinity of 90,000 words (and counting!) this is shaping up to be a pretty long game! I've also been reading up on my fashion mags, and have added a ton of new clothes and accessories to the game, along with new events, CGs and dates. Huzzah!

The down side to this, of course, is that working on Lucky Rabbit Reflex takes up most of my time, to the point where I can't really justify spending so much time on the game without charging for the finished product. I honestly do feel guilty and apprehensive about charging money for the game, which I had originally intended to be a free English alternative to the Tokimeki Memorial games, and for anyone following this blog in the hopes of getting a free game at the end of it all, I truly am sorry. That said, charging for the game would allow me to pay for music and fonts and all those other slick, professional things (and also food! Graduate life is hard D:), so I'd really appreciate comments from anyone reading this blog - would you be prepared to spend $20 or thereabouts on a Tokimeki-style dating sim? What do you expect from a $20 indie game, in terms of length, polish, extras and so on? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Image Time!


New clothes menu! ...Again. Fashions change from season to season, so you might have to hurry if you want that dress you've had your eye on...


...Don't hate the player, hate the game.


Let's all go to the movies... to buy ourselves some snacks!~

...So yeah. Hopefully I'll be able to release a demo with all of this new content at some point in the near future, so watch this space!

...Hopefully.

Here Comes the Sun

...And just in time for the end of my exams! Woo~ Have a Marius to celebrate actual blue skies over Edinburgh, and blossoms, which I can't draw but you get the idea, really.

Now that I have an inordinate amount of free time (for the next couple of weeks, at least - here's hoping I actually graduate, hoho) I'm trying to get back into the swing of working on LRR! as quickly as possible - since the last update, I've got a handful of CGs and a fair few new events written, though I've had a complete hiatus for about three weeks and I'm trying to figure out what I should be doing next besides drawing completely unrelated ice-cream pictures. But eh, I'm sure inspiration'll strike eventually. :B

I've also been reworking some of the characters' clothing and whatnot.

I've only actually edited one or two of the outfits, as each sprite has around two poses and drawing clothes seems to take forever for some reason, but hopefully they look okay. I broke out my Scott Pilgrims for research purposes (srsly though, those characters are snappy dressers - the author's a guy, too. I am ashamed ;_;) but as I have no fashion sense whatsoever it's pretty hard to design decent clothing, tbh. It's especially difficult with characters who are meant to be fashionable - I went through about three fully-drawn sprites for Lamb (top left) whose sprites I'd already completely overhauled once before that before setting on her current outfit.

I should probably get back to writing the script now, huh. *cough*

Still Alive!

...Wow. Where did February and March go, eh? I apologise for the blog hiatus - I've got about a week's breather and then it's right back into exam revision, but after that I'll hopefully graduate and have to go out into the real world have ample time to work on this baby, so yeah. Here's hoping!

I've actually made a fair bit of progress since January, though - the script so far comes in at slightly under 60,000 words, which isn't half bad, though as the game's a simulation you'll be seeing a fair bit less than that on a single playthrough. Still, replay value is always a good thing, right? I've also begun properly fleshing out all of the winnable boys, writing paths, working likes and dislikes into events, and all that good stuff. Rhett in particular seems like a far more well-rounded character than he was originally, so hopefully people will find him interesting!

Oh, and I completely redesigned Beck's sprites. He didn't look a great deal like a male model before - maybe he's a little closer now?

...I guess he filled out a little. :B

Not much else to report - playing through the game so far, I realise I'm going to have to do a lot of stat-balancing once the events are all complete and coded in; at the moment, I've pretty much been making things up as I've gone along, but I'll have to actually sit down with a calculator and work things out by the time the game is nearing completion. TV Tropes was right. And here I thought I'd never need to use maths again...

*Obligatory 'sorry for linking TV Tropes, hope you enjoy the next five hours' comment*

I've also been vaguely thinking about character accents, and how to get those across in text. At the moment, I just haven't bothered - pretty much all of LRR!'s cast has some kind of non-RP English / British accent (while the game's setting is fictional, it's meant to be somewhere vaguely in the north of England, as that's where I'm from and it excuses any Northernisms I may slip into the text accidentally, hurhur), but unless I want everyone sounding like Hagrid I don't think I'm going to be able to get their accents across in writing. Which is a shame, really, as Shuppin is meant to have a sexy Scottish twang, but you'd never know unless ah decided tae have him speakin' like this, mah wee bairnies. Oh, aye.

...Yeah, it's probably for the best.

Image time!

Just a Quickie~

Another day wasted, ho hum. :/ I do have some snazzy new gameplay videos showing off some of the new features I mentioned last time, though, so that's something. It's pretty encouraging how far these videos have come since the last one I uploaded, too! (Though that was around nine months ago... how time flies~)

So, without further ado...

Clothing System


Look familiar? Hurhur :B I'm hoping to have some more clothes in there before the game is done, but there are quite a few different combinations to be getting on with already, and the game only lasts a year, so there aren't going to be a huge number of chances to go shopping anyway (unless the player forfeits going on dates... which is slightly besides the point, really).

Dating Marius


Once your relationship values with him are high enough, Marius will finally stop being so damn lazy and date the player someplace other than the arcade where he works. Each boy has a place they dislike, though, so be careful! Films the player can watch at the cinema are randomised. (I remember these events taking forever to write - the video cuts off early, but the responses to each of the nine possible films are pretty long, actually. Bloody dialogue, eh).

Dating Per


Little Per's grown on me a fair bit since I created him, to be honest. It takes a fair while before you can actually date him, but to make up for it, he pretty much already likes you and will follow you practically anywhere. He'll still lose relationship points if you drag him to places he doesn't like, though.

So there you have it - not insanely interesting, but I didn't want to spoil any CGs/ special events, so it's dates or bust, I'm afraid! Sound effects are also left out, as apparently my PC has issues actually recording sound and video at the same time...

Back to not working I go!~

Busy, Busy, Busy~

Happy New Year!!~ Can't believe it's 2010 already, gawd. To celebrate, have a Shuppin new year wallpaper I drew up when I should've been working, hurhur.

[800x600 ~ 1024 x 768 ~ 1280 x 800]

In other news, I've managed to actually get a decent amount done for once, mainly things I wasn't actually planning on putting into the game in the first place, but hey. It's generally feeling far more like a 'game' than a cut-down visual novel now, so that's something.

New features:

• New shopping / clothing system - you can now actually earn money from each of the four in-game jobs (though not very much - life is hard in the Lucky Rabbit universe, it seems. Balanced gameplay is hard!), go shopping on weekends and put together outfits in four different styles.
• To go with this, Nkem, manager of the fashion boutique Tide, posts an online blog once a month showing which types of clothing and colours are in style at the moment. Boys will now comment on these things before each date, and each boy has a specific style they particularly like. So... yeah.
• New email system - characters can now send the player emails after various events. Isn't really very useful, but I liked that feature in other dating sims, and it saves me having to make an uninteresting event for every little bit of information I want to give the player, so it works out.

So yeah. Actually got a huge amount done for once! Unfortunately, I'll be out of commission for at least the next month or so - I'll be forcing myself to take a hiatus from development, as I have a crazy amount of work I should be doing for uni (translations and dissertations, oh god), and should probably, y'know, actually do some of it. Wish me luck~!

Image spaaaaam~ (sorry about that! I'll figure out how to post these things properly one of these days...)