Fanart Contest!

Want a shot at winning a free copy of Lucky Rabbit Reflex? I'll be holding a fanart contest between now and the 19th of August, with all entrants receiving a 15% discount and the winner(s) getting some free game goodness. If you're up for it, please send your entries to admin at luckyrabbitreflex dot com or send me a note to your entry over at deviantart. Be sure to check out the demo available over at the official site for references! Thank you~!

Lucky Rabbit Reflex - Now on Sale!

It's been just shy of three years, but we got there eventually, eh? Please click the banner below to visit the website and check it out! I'll be posting hints and whatnot over at the forums if people need them, so feel free to sign up.

Also, trailer!

Thanks so much for the support you guys have given me over the past few years, and to my wonderful beta testers. I hope you enjoy the game!

And I'm spent.

After two and a half years, Lucky Rabbit Reflex is finally complete! ...It's about bloody time, to be honest. ;) Having spent the last week or so adding extras and ironing out the code, the game should hopefully be ready for beta testing at some point next week (signups below!).

Full game features:

• 19 endings
• 5+ romanceable gentlemen
• 75 unique CGs
• 150+ unique items of clothing and accessories
• CG / endings gallery
  
• 178,861 words

If you'd be interested in beta testing Lucky Rabbit Reflex, please apply using the following form. Testers will be included in the credits section of the game; thanks in advance to anyone applying (and to everyone who has expressed an interest so far)!

Please include any information you think might be relevant in the 'message' section (e.g. specific operating system, aspects of beta testing you think you might be good at (such as proofreading), experience with similar games, etc. (though no experience is actually necessary!)). Thank you!

Edit: You guys, thank you so much for all of the responses! Apparently the last form reached its quota, but you can still apply for the beta using the following form (this one's pretty unlikely to fill up, but if it does stop working for any reason feel free to comment below with the same information needed for the form).

Edit2: Thanks for the overwhelming response, guys! Applications for the beta are now closed, and I'll be sending out e-mails shortly. I should be holding round two of beta testing in a couple of weeks, so if anyone who applied this time around and didn't make it into the beta would still be willing to help out later in the month, that would be great. Watch this space~!

Obligatory image spam:

I honestly don't know how this game ended up so pink.

Still Alive - Valentine's Edition

...So I've decided I should probably stop mentioning every time I post that 'the game is almost complete!' and that 'it should be done within the next couple of months!', as I seem to have totally and completely missed the Christmas demo deadline I set for myself. Whoops!

As of yesterday, however, nearly 100% of the game minus endings, birthday events and a few CGs is now complete. The end is in sight. Honest! The game is still unlikely to see release for a few months yet, but it's nice to know it's getting there.

What I've been up to since the last update (like five years ago, sorry about that!):

• Tweaking the dating system: Originally you could only call up the male characters on Saturdays, but you can now call up your lady friends for (platonic) weekend hijinks. Befriending some of the female characters can lead to extra events with the guys, so it might be worth giving up a few dates to hang out with the girls...
• Adding holiday / seasonal events: I added the Christmas events a while back, but now we've got Halloween, Bonfire Night and Valentine's, too. So many backgrounds, aughh~ As Valentine's Day falls on a Saturday in-game, it's up to the heroine to pick a guy who likes her enough to give her a gift at the end of the date, one of which is that kitschy little bear / mug up there. Who could that be from...?
  
• Finishing up Shuppin's and Beck's paths: I have never drawn so many violins in my life.
• Possibly adding secret events: ...But you didn't hear it from me.
• Testing and testing and testing and...: Continually tweaking the difficulty - I don't want to make things too difficult and un-intuitive, though at the moment the game is pretty easy. Of course, I know all of the right responses and clothing choices to make, so I'm not exactly the best person to test these things out! If anyone has any opinions on dating sim / visual novel difficulty I'd love to hear them; I personally prefer slightly easier games over more difficult ones, but I do like some degree of challenge.

And that's about it! Hopefully it won't take me too long to finish up the remaining events, though the endings may take a while as they'll probably end up being pretty graphics-intensive. To be honest, though, it's the writing that takes the most time (once I code the most recent events into the game, the word count should be approaching 150,000), so I'm relieved the brunt of that's out of the way, at least!

Oh, and I also made an Indie DB account for the game, though there isn't a huge amount there at the moment. There may be a couple of screenshots I haven't posted here, though, so please check it out!

Image spam:



Happy Valentine's Day~!

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*