This is a quick update log of my progress in my visual novel concept ‘My Dear Yumesora’. Go here to see my previous post, and here to visit the game.
It has been a little over 2 months since my previous update log, which was exactly what I was hoping didn’t happen. Made worse however, I have had minimal progress on the game, unfortunately.
But, to not bring too much negativity down, I have revamped the storyline of the game. I had a time period of maybe a month where I didn’t touch the story at all, but I recently got into a routine of working on the game story during school and at home, balancing time between work and free-time to do the story.
Section 1
Revamping the story included reading over the entire script, adjusting what needed to happen, and writing more lines and actions which are needed. For the first episode, I also rewrote the first contact and initial dialogue and connection with the female protagonist, Yumesora.
Initially, I had written the first contact with Yumesora to represent the symbolic linking of the romance chain between the MC (player) and Yumesora. I also had Yumesora develop an attraction for the player quite fast, making a friendship on their first day of contact, for which I planned for the character development to progress from thereon. But, after rereading the whole script of the story, I just came to the realization that the progression of the relationship was far too unrealistic. So, I decided to extend the development, and a friendship will be formed after three episodes.
On the design of Yumesora, I almost feel like redesigning her character sprite a third time. It’s something I didn’t want to do, nor expected to do, but as my drawing ability continues to improve and change in style every month as it seems, I feel like I could make her sprite better. Now, I do also intend to remake this game on either Ren’Py or Unity once I finish the Roblox version (which probably won’t be for a long time), so I could just wait for a redesign once I move the game onto an application which isn’t Roblox. Of course, this is assuming my game idea actually gains traction, and/ or if I have more motivation to do that.
(of course, the ‘remastered’ version would include different scenes, story, dialogue, and visual aspects which aren’t viable on Roblox Studio and the Roblox platform, either from the lack of the capabilities of Studio, or just restrictions on what I can add to the game)
Section 2
Now, besides all that, I realized that I haven’t released any example of the actual story. Now, I primarily haven’t done so because the story was never complete, but I can give some reference to what to expect in each story.
Episode 1: The Introduction
- This episode gives the initial glimpses into the living conditions of the player’s perspective in the game, the basic layout of the school and classes, and the first introduction and dialogue with Yumesora. This of course undermines a lot of small details, but that can be shown elsewhere.
(I’ll likely make development update logs on either my primary or secondary YouTube channel, so if those are ever made, I’ll be sure to show them here.)
To give an example of how long episode 1 will be, the script itself contains over 11,000 words, with a read time of around 45 minutes. For reference, some smaller visual novels may be around the length of this singular episode. And, I intend for this story to span 3 arcs, and at the very least, 14 episodes just to get the whole story wrapped up (it may very well extend much longer).
Episode two hasn’t been written yet, since I’ve been putting my focus on the first episode. Despite this game project initially just being a testing platform, it’s turned into my own passion project, and I hope for its story to be on point. Now, it worries me since if I consider an average of 11k words per episode, and at least 14 episodes total, I could be seeing a total of 154k words for this ‘small’ visual novel project with a read time of around 8.5 hours, and on the extreme spectrum, likely over 300k words with a read time of around 23 hours.
Why this worries me is mainly for two reasons. One, I’ll need to keep the story interesting and engaging, and somehow add enough new content in the storyline without it getting too repetitive. And two, I’m gonna have to add the whole script into my really time-inefficient game system on Roblox Studio (which basically acts like google slides, switching to a new ‘slide’, or in this case, GUI frame for each sentence).
Of course, I could just make the story shorter. But, though that is the logical reasoning, I just can’t make myself able to resist the urge to keep writing. Luckily, I have plenty of free time, so the only thing that is hurting is the time it takes for this game to get released.
The game program thing is what worries me the most. Since I now realized how long these stories may be, I’d likely get rid of my current series of scripts and UI for a brand new, simplified version. This would be good, but I’d have to familiarize myself with a new system, though firstly just make it in the first place, which may be difficult for a newbie in scripting like myself.
To keep the story interesting, I separated it into three arcs. It may be four or five if I want to add some smaller arcs, but for now there are just three big ones to notice. I forgot if I told the arcs in my previous dev logs, but there is the High School Arc, College Arc, and War Arc. The high school and college arc makes sense without any context, but the war arc may be a bit confusing for what I advertised as a romance visual novel. To explain simply, the story tells the tale of you, the player, developing a relationship with the character Yumesora, and building it into your college years, going through your own struggles and joys, and exploring real landmarks and places where the story takes place in, being the US state of Minnesota, centered around the state’s Twin Cities area. The war arc is to add more drama into the story, and shift the whole mindset of which the game had been following. I won’t explain much in this arc since I’d be here another hour typing, but this is the last planned arc in the main story. It shifts from focusing on the romance and daily life between the player and Yumesora, to telling the tale and truth of how war and conflict really is like, and how it can/ will damage people physically and mentally. The game shifts from being mostly normal ‘people’ stuff to gruesome and violent action (which might be censored for Roblox since it’ll be illustrated, not with Roblox avatars), while still telling a (hopefully) fictional but plausible future conflict.
The story begins in the year 2026, and ends around 2030, so that can give a bit of reference to the timeline of which the lore takes place in.
Now, with all that blabbering out the window, I think I’ll shift the expected release date of the game even further out. If I start developing the game again after I finish the first arc, it may be until 2025 that the game may be out as either an early release or demo. If I develop it after I finish the whole story, the middle or end of 2026 is likely to be the place where the game is released (of course, this is assuming that my work schedule stays the same, and I continue taking long breaks, which I hope I don’t).
For me, a multi-year project seems really crazy to think to do, but considering I’ve already spent four months here with all the progress I got, it seems I’ve really taken my first steps into making a serious game, which just so happened to be on Roblox. Luckily, I can expect my story writing and artistic abilities to continue improving every month, so I hope I don’t give up on this project.
That’s about everything I wanted to say, so now I’ll end the update here. And indeed, I thank you for reading my update log, and I wish you a great day/ night.
