Rorasuketo Dev Blog

I'm happy to say I'm getting somewhere after fighting through the fog! Stats are aligning with some of the minigame mechanics in what will hopefully be a semi-balanced way. Gifts and Affection points are on the up-and-up. Previously, with one particular skater, a $5 gift gave 2 Affection points and a $15 gift garnered 3. Huh?! I think I know what I was trying  to do with that, but it's just tedious for a game of this (short) length. You can expect a dollar value and an Affection bonus to be at a fairly solid ratio in  Rorasuketo . I won't try to bamboozle or irritate anybody. I'm also inserting a Hunger mechanic. HP drains a little during the story and a lot during derby bouts. Similar to the Confidence mechanic, the game will contain certain checkpoints. You can let things slide sometimes, but if your statistics aren't taken care of at certain critical moments, the story suffers. This is my answer to lacking a classic JRPG system but still wanting food around. ...

I did a cool thing this weekend, which was to drop $100 USD on a Steamworks account. This means I can soon start developing a Steam page for Rorasuketo , and maybe this will light a little bit of a fire under my ass to get this thing done. Not sure when I'll actually publish the page - and whether it will exist as "coming soon" or only after it's ready for purchase - but I've at least put in an investment that goads me into putting something out there. Homework hasn't piled up yet, but I am still feeling a little worn out from the winter break work blitz, so I am meeting in the middle by doing what I'll call "nuts and bolts." You could also call it quasi-procrastination. Deciding where Achievements are going to go, making checklists to ensure I don't miss anything before exporting the final product, writing the walkthrough, deciding price points, that kind of thing. Dare I even say I networked a little bit with a Let's Player with about 5...

I played through  Rorasuketo 's linear story so far, recording commentary along the way, and it was about 2 hours. (I'm not ready to release the video to the world... yet.) I'm feeling at once proud and insecure, exhausted and energized. I've put in some long - and manic - days the last few weeks, and I'm starting a new semester. This means that progress will likely grind to a crawl until about May. A few things I noticed on this playthrough. I was extremely happy to earn some teammates' phone numbers. Affection mechanics are working nicely! However, I may have to bump up the challenge a little. Do I want the game to be crafted in a way that's it's possible "max out" affection with everyone by the end? I'm not sure. It always feels like a fun accomplishment, but there's also something hollow about it. I think being able to be besties with absolutely everyone sort of cheapens the friendships you forged first, and prioritized, and actuall...

  Just some little guys. I realized that, for several reasons, purple kingpins and green dampers were not going to be good minigame fodder. So now we have these macguffins.

I had my adoring husband Jerry do a playthrough of the approximately hour and a half of linear, uninterrupted gameplay, and one of the great compliments he gave me was that the dialogue wasn't "cookie cutter."   This pleased me. I'm working to make sure Rora  feels lived-in and fresh. I want the world to be something you  want  to explore and interact with (and a world that rewards you for doing so).  I feel a bit sheepish describing an hour and a half of gameplay. That's it? That's all I have to show right now? But I stress to myself that it is the linear component. It doesn't count minigames, dates, towns, and other elements that come down the pipeline later. See, I've just been working in chunks, building certain portions when they tickle my fancy. Maybe altogether it's more like 2 hours. The game itself will be probably about 3-4 hours, now that I take a cold, hard look at things. I read somewhere recently that approximately 100 hours of RPG Ma...