Future Plans for Forbidden Pursuit

First off, I want to thank everyone for the support the game has gotten so far! 30+ downloads is already more than I was expecting, and I'm grateful for every single one of you.

Currently I'm participating in Artfight, needed a small break after 2 months straight of development. I want to talk about future plans for the game and give a general roadmap for what's to come after I'm free again in August. First off..

Graphical Update for Current Content

There's many placeholder backgrounds and CGs in the current project, stuff I didn't have time to replace before the jam's submission deadline. I would like to take the time to go back and get the backgrounds and CGs up to the same level as the character sprites. I'd also like to add a sprite for Priest Cobalt and make backgrounds for the various map activities you can do. I think that doing this now will be beneficial, as all of the backgrounds will be reused multiple times throughout the game's story. Once the graphics are up to snuff (or moreso, while I'm working on that), I can move onto the other important stuff...

Planning the Rest of the Game

This is a multi-step process that will take a while. The plan is:

Outline the Whole Story

I'll work on outlining the entire rest of the story, to make sure the branching paths flow and interconnect logically. This will probably take some of the most time as I double and triple check that I haven't accidentally left any plot holes or forgotten about player actions that would break a sequence. I'm sure I'll still somehow miss something and only realize it while coding, but we can be hopeful.

Write the Script

Straightforward, I write the script for the story based on the outline. I want to completely finish the script before I go onto coding the rest of the game, to ensure a satisfying story with consistent characters and overarching plot. I want the player to feel good once they've finished their playthrough and be intrigued enough to try other routes.

Code the Rest of the Game

Once the script is finished, I'll go onto coding the rest of the game. I plan to release a new build once every new week in the game is completed. The current plan is that the game goes on for at most 20 weeks before a forced cut-off happens, resulting in an ending. This would give the player some time to get the right stats needed to complete a route, with some padding in case they took a wrong stat and need some time to catch up. I also want to research and play around with some coding/visual tricks. I know that I want to implement a small pop-up to the side whenever a player passes or fails a skill check, to make it easier to know what stats you need raised for a specific event. I also thought putting some animations for fight sequences could make them more visually interesting.

Conclusion

That's where we're at currently with development of Forbidden Pursuit. It's quite ambitious for me, I will fully admit so. But, all of my greatest improvements have come from being ambitious as hell, and I'm not stopping now. I once again thank all of you for the support you have given thus far, it means so much to me. I'm really glad you've all been enjoying the characters and the story I've made, and I hope to continue developing this into a fun romance game.

Much love, Rosie Rabbit