Hello fellow structures, sorry for the silence! I've been real busy working on the rest of the game and wanted to take this quick moment to update y'all on how things are going :)
Earlier this year, I got a lot of encouraging words from fellow devs and it's been helping me push towards the finish line. Progress is steady (just storyboarded the ending cutscene, now working on programming the final minigame), though I've still got a bunchhhh of side-content left to do. Overall, I'm pretty positive we'll still launch this year!
Again, I can't share tooooo much about what I've been working on, but wanted to take the time to talk a little bit about my ✨ process ✨
The Process: Writing
So Building Relationships is the first game I've ever written! Before this, most of my practice has
been through personal journaling, free-form poetry, emails, and a lot of texts on Grindr... which just about sums up the vibe of the whole game, if I'm being honest.
Here’s what the plan roughly looks like. I started with a plot graph and slotted in what could be the climax, what could make be the rising action. And as you can imagine… it’s changed a lot. But this simple beat sheet helped me understand the pacing, especially early in the project.
(a lot of spoiler-y stuff marked out)
A lot of my time writing is actually spent on cutting and simplifying stuff. Generally, I give myself days, weeks, or even months between drafts -- just to give space to reset and fairly evaluate what I've written. It’s really helpful, especially for comedy, just to see if I can actually get the joke that I'm aiming for.
The Emotional Arcs
This may come as a surprise to some... but there's quite a bit of story in Building Relationships. The narrative is very personal to me, and it's taken a lot of time for me to process all of it -- from figuring out how to tell a story that's true to who I am and true to what the game wants to be.
Just to be clear, the game only has 1 ending, and it's still a rather short game (nothing too wordy). But I hope that you'll be able to resonate with the narrative journey when it launches later this year :)
Here's Some Sketches & Storyboards
You may already know this, but most of the visuals in the game actually started from free asset packs. Initially, I never did concept art or sketches for any of the characters, I just imported a bunch of models onto the project and started grouping the pieces that played nicely with each other.
It reminded me a lot of my childhood, rummaging through a box of hand-me-down toys. Physically, nothing went together. But I ended up tapping into this child-like logic that made me go, “Of course, yes and the cars will be fish”.
(here you can see that the fishing rod is actually a chopstick + popsicle stick + paprika slice)
I did start sketching later on, mostly just rough ones (because that’s all I can do). Despite being just scribbles, they helped me better grasp my own ideas. Especially for important moments like this cutscene later in the game, which I thought would be funny to share mainly because it looks unintelligible to anyone but me.
Also here are some windows I was sketching, just to find a style that could work for the shots & angles I’m trying to achieve.
And finally, Optimization!!
I've been working with a team to port Building Relationships to consoles, and we've just recently hit a stable framerate, yipee!! This also means that the game will run more smoothly for folks with older machines (because who can afford the price of RAM these days).
These changes are not in the demo yet, but I'm aiming to update the demo more closely towards release (just to make sure that you have a good idea of what to expect, performance-wise).
Events!
Gamescom Asia & Thailand Game Show
I'll be around for Gamescom Asia & Thailand Game Show! I'm not expoing the game (gotta actually finish it), but feel free to reach out if you're attending and want to say hi!
Game Devs of Color Expo
I also have a developer interview coming to Game Devs of Color Expo, where I will be talking about a bunch of stuff, including yaoi and my approach to spicy content.
One last thing!
It's currently September which is also Suicide Prevention Awareness month, and I just wanted to say thank you to each and everyone of you for patiently following this game's development thus far. Being able to work on Building Relationships is a huge part of why I'm alive today. At the time, this game started as sort of a way out from all the bad stuff that was going on. And turns out, it has given me wayyyy more than just an exit plan. I'm much much happier these days and I'm just glad & grateful to be able to do what I do today :))
Okay, that's it for now!