WEEKLY POST - August 3rd 2025 - Every time I speak with a girl is a QTE

Hey guys! Again, sorry for the wait. I'm gonna try to not make it a habit to post these weekly posts later than expected in the future!

New QTE mechanic:

So as I was making more changes to conversations, I realized what was annoying me the most was how dialogue is still not interactive enough, even with the Topic system.
There were moments where I couldn't decide how Alex would react, and the existing Choice menu was neat, but maybe not adequate enough.

So I've spent a bit of time this week adding a new minigame that I'll sprinkle here and there during conversations. You'll have to press the "TALK" button to continue dialogue, but if you don't do it when the little moving cursor is in the green 'safe-zone', Alex will be a little awkward. Of course if you press the button while in the green zone, Alex will be smoother.

Of course, on a case-by-case, I have control over where the safe-zone is, how big it is and how fast the cursor is moving, which will give me some ways to customize each challenge depending on if I think the situation is relatively chill or stressing.

I'm still going to look into improving the UI for that bit, this is just the prototype I developped yesterday and managed to have working in the night, so it's a bit too early to show, but eh.

For example the 'dice' symbol doesn't make sense since it's not a game of chance, so I still need to replace it with something more fitting.
That symbol is a remnant from when I wanted to add a DnD-like Charisma roll. I thought that, although leaving the outcome of a dialogue to chance was compelling, but ultimately, the gameplay is about choice, which is the opposite of leaving things to chance.

With this design, you can choose to succeed the test based on your reflexes, but you can CHOOSE to fail on purpose to see what Alex will say. Maybe you want to do a playthrough where Alex is awkward all the time?

I think that's more compelling.

Of course, I won't abuse that system, but y'know, once in a while, it could be funny.

Almost there:

With that, I've done a ton of progress on dialogue, as I'm making sure that Alex and Elena talk about her recently moving into her new apartment, her job, going to the gym, Morgane, her passion for travelling, her parents, herself...

I know progress is slow. It sucks because I feel like I was able to sprint through the writing portion of the initial release, while I'm struggling in this version.

It's like that because of two factors:

• I have too many things to do every week to be able to pay the bills, and it's impossible for me to tell in advance exactly how much time I'll have to work on the game. Add to that how I'm now making ¼ of the money I was making per month last year, so I have to do with struggle-meals every day. It's harder to sprint when you're not at your best.

• i'm trying to be more thoughtful in my writing, whereas the initial release was a lot of jokes aiming only at pursuing the goal for Alex to have sex with Elena. Heck, I even made a joke out of Alex asking about her day and phasing out during her answer, or Alex being able to randomly ask to for sex in a dozen different ways... Plus, writing new dialogue is one thing, but going back to existing dialogue and rewriting it is harder.

But progress is happening!

Now, on to the NSFW animation for this week:

You'll remember this static sprite:

And here's how it looks in-game once animated:

This sprite will get a bonus 'flourish' animation with little yellow stars emanating from Elena to show how happy she is. Think Alex Louis Armstrong.

It's quite the long process. Here you can see how it looks for me in Live2D:

Alright, that's it for this week. Please let me know what you think of the new QTE I showcased above, or this new animation!

Gobbo tired. Gobbo sleep now.
Have a nice Sunday, and cheers!