Steam page finally live! Welcome everyone!
It's great to finally get visibility on Steam! I'm super happy, excited but, at the same time, also a bit terrified. I think those are emotions of every developer who's game is nearing its release date. I wanted to start off with a rather quick status report: how much of the game is done, what are the near term plans and what to expect in the future.
The story so far
Bonding, Now has been in the works for quite a long while already. Even though this is basically an RPG Maker visual-novel type game, creating content always takes time - especially with dialogue and choices. Especially here since I needed to add a lot of custom code for the purpose of various stories! In the end, I get a feeling that it can take up to 2 hours to create meaningful 5-10 minutes of gameplay. And considering the fact that Bonding, Now is only a side project worked on after-hours, progress is slower than one would expect.
That being said, there is already a lot of fun content ready! As a reminder, Bonding, Now is composed of multiple Stories usually independent of each other. You, the players, select which story to play and switch between them freely. So it's easy to track progress of the project by looking at the completion of each story. Let's take a look at that in detail:
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Story 1: Ronin Camp
Story is fully complete and ready to play! -
Story 2: The Room
Also complete, although this story is a bit shorter than the others. -
Story 3: Eclipse
This one is still in progress, and will probably be finalized after release in following updates. -
Story 4: Game Master
This one is nearing completion, I'd say it's 90% there. Still needs some content and artworks drawn, but it's close. -
Story 5: Summer Bonds
This one is still in progress as well, but the idea here is to continuously work and improve. This story is a bit different than the others, as it's my experiment of making an old-school dating simulator, where the player is given more freedom on what to do and with who. For release, I expect only limited playability here.
Upcoming plans
Top three priorities in the next weeks are:
- Finalizing Story #4
- Making day 1 from Story #5 fully playable
- Constructing a demo for the upcoming Next Fest on Steam!
As mentioned, Story #5 is a bit special. Since it is more of a dating simulator than the usual visual novel 'linear' gameplay, there is time flow and various events taking place at different times of day. I expect to have day 1 fully finalized by the time of Next Fest. But before official release I'd like Story #5 to have at least a week of ingame play ready - but we'll see how it goes.
Then I would finally like to spend more time on Story #3. It's also a 'special' case, different than others, as there will be no sexually explicit scenes in that one. It's more of a classic, old-school detective story, where the player will be gathering clues, talking to suspects. A mix of detective, mystery, noir and occult. The amount of artwork needed there is lower, but I want to spend some uninterrupted time to make the experience proper.
The future
As mentioned on both the steam page and the game website, Bonding, Now is like a medium for visualizing my (and my partner's) fantasies. Because of that, the plan is to constantly add new stories throughout the life of the game. In my mind I already have at least 3-4 additional stories prepared. Some of those finally depict non-heterosexual couples, something I would like to put much more emphasis on in the game. And one of these stories is played from the point-of-view of a female protagonist too!
Throughout the years, I drew a lot of artwork, manga and even created such short game stories like visible in this game - and all of those were exclusively only for me, my partner and closest friends. It is something I was doing since I learned how to draw. Now I wish to continue that, but opening up to others as well! And I hope you'll all enjoy those.
I'd like to write a bit more about my motivations, about the whole concept. But I think that's enough for today. Let me follow up with a separate post with just that.
Nice to meet you and hope you enjoy the game soon! Please join the community and wishlist the game - if you're interested of course! Cheers!