The Lost Delinquents of Rollings High - DEMO
Huge updates!
Hello to everyone who is following the development of Rollings High! Thanks for caring :)
So yeah, major major updates to the demo, added in about roughly half of the content needed to progress through the first day of the demo.
To be clear for you all, I want the demo to be spanning an entire day of school, all of Monday, I want the full final game to span an entire week, Monday to Sunday!
THE EVOLUTION OF ROLLINGS
At it's heart Rollings is a classic anime style VN dating sim, inspired by such titles as "True Love 95" and "Clannad", but my main frustration with Japanese titles was the lost in translation culture shift element of being in a Japanese high school instead of a western one.
I try to address this in Rollings, by hopefully making the characters feel more "western" as well as the school and town.
But Rollings isn't only a dating sim, it's also a point and click choose your own adventure mystery game, that element is hopefully becoming clearer in this most recent demo release.
Your environments are interactive, you can turn on TVs, change the channels, switch through radio stations, hire VHS tapes, pick outfits, find objects, collect money, carry a backpack of belongings etc.
The places you visit around town are explore-able, the school has many areas that you will be able to walk around and explore at your pace, often exploration is the only way you will meet certain characters and unlock certain routes in the game. You will find yourself able to explore every area in the township, from the school, to peoples homes, to the town and shops, even the woods around town!
Another game mechanic that will become more apparent as the game develops is a time tracking system that introduces passage of time based on your choices and also time based events (you can only meet a certain character at a certain shop at 3pm for example).
MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS
The Cast:
The cast of characters has been MASSIVELY expanded!
We have like 13 main girls now, all of which will be fully fleshed out characters with unique personalities and backstories.
There's also a healthy cast of male characters who are all very important to the game's story!
The Animations:
I continue to improve the depth of the character animations, when dealing with such a large cast of characters this becomes quite time consuming. The improvements in sprite structuring, layered image code and ATL are so major that they deserve their own DevLog post in the future!
The Town:
While the background art of the demo is mainly still placeholder imagery, the actual mechanics of exploring the township has been seriously built upon. Marty's house connects to the streets, which connect to the town, woods and school. The town has shops you can browse in, the school has dozens of rooms and areas you can explore. This work has mainly been invisible background coding work to achieve the desired functions within RenPy of connecting all these explore-able areas through the game.
The Game Mechanics:
As previously mentioned, a whole bunch of new game mechanics have been added to aid in the player immersion and allow for the more mystery, choose your own adventure elements of the game to exist.
Things that are currently functioning in the game are:
- TV with switching channels
- radio with switching stations
- clothing / wardrobe system
- interactive objects within rooms
- $$$ system
- Time of day clock
Things planned for the future:
- A full drag and drop inventory system
- Day tracking for weather systems, character clothing changes, route tracking etc
The Music:
The relationship with music has been ongoing as the game evolved, Jago Compositions creates the final tracks to go into the game, in the short term stock music placeholder tracks are often used to create a vibe for a scene until a final track is made.
The approach for the final score will be to have a lot of variations of themes for each character and scenario, so you will not get stuck listening to the same music track on loop for hours and grow bored of it!
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
Big plans planned!
- Full voice acting
- Replacement of all temporary art assets with finals
- Final round of game mechanics added
- Eventually finish the 1-day demo with all final assets and launch a kickstarter campaign!
HOW YOU CAN HELP ME MAKE THIS GAME :-)
Download the free demo, play it, give me feedback!
Share the link to my ITCH page around on social media!
https://jagogames.itch.io/the-lost-delinquents-of-rollings-high
Follow my twitter account and share posts!
Pay a small donation amount to me here on ITCH (even just $1 helps!)
Sign up to be a Patron, this helps more than anything else! Knowing you have supporters and a certain amount of money coming in each month is amazing!
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