Pink Pro - [Pink]y [Pro]mise - is the union of "the pink-colored game" and "the sweets-themed game" that I've wanted to make for ages. All with a smattering of yuri and monster girls to garnish.
The demo covers the first ten or twenty minutes. It depends on how much and what you want to read.
«Chantal and Janet are the two best bakers in Rhodopolis. Once rivals, they are now engaged, but they continue to have separate and competing businesses.
Accompany Chantal, meet customers' tastes, search for the right ingredients to create customized sweets and defeat Janet!
... At least until Janet is kidnapped by one of her clients.»
You can find it at these coordinates:
🍰 Available on Itch.io (Click me! Click me!)
🍰 In English and Italian
🍰 Features an all-female cast, a lot of sweets and a lot of pink
🍰 Major warnings are sort of body horror and, for the full version, abduction, attempted choking, hatred for "the different one" that can be interpreted as racism or homophobia
🍰 4.000+ words (Flavour texts and NPCs included)
🍰 About twenty minutes of reading, walking simulator and cooking minigame
The Yuri Game Jam is over, and it still feels strange to me to have submitted well in advance (Then I remembered that the deadline was pushed back by like a week, so I would have submitted just in time, but details-). Deciding to post a demo rather than the whole game turned out to be a good choice for my peace of mind.
Now, I should make a pretty and tidy (One of the two adjectives might be wrong) update, but first I want to present you a flashback from a few days ago:
---Flashback---
*Soe enters
*Soe sees real money
*Soe implodes
*Soe waits a couple of days to see if it was a misclick - Yes, even the confirmation one
*Soe realizes
*Soe implodes again
*Soe's mass is not enough to generate a gravitational collapse, so there's no black hole but just an amazed fish
Person who decided to offer me a hot chocolate, thank you. I still find it hard to believe, but I thank you very much! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
---Flashback End---
So, it was said. Pink Pro. The update, yes.
Changes and additions
Since I have more time and can do things more slowly, I decided to fix a few things that I wasn't sure about.
For example, Sus's house. You can't visit it in the demo, and in a second time I'll show you a "before-after", but trust me when I say that the first version was absolutely plain and uninspiring - It's even more comical when you consider that it's reiterated how rich Sus is and how her house is ridiculously big. Now I am much more satisfied! It's certainly not the most beautiful map I've ever made, but I find it does its honest job much better than the previous one.
Among other differently useful things I decided to add there is the change of NPCs inside the Pink Jewel and the Magnolia Jane after some time.
Given that time is actually passing (I mean, something is likely to happen in the evening, right?), it seemed silly to me for the customers to be walking around the shops for 12 hours.
It doesn't impact the plot at all, but I think it gives the setting a bit more three-dimensionality.
(Yes, I also entertained the idea of changing customers with each finished order, but my imagination for NPC dialogue is very poor, I don't want to suffer).
Characters' expressions
When I made the expressions, I got a bit carried away, so now Chantal has many more than I had planned. However, this means that I didn't do some expressions that I should have done and that I came up with others-
According to my fantastic to-do list, the expressions that are missing are: 4 for Chantal, 2 for Janet (Yes, Janet has more than two expressions!), 1 for Margrit, 3 for Kenicea and Silsdia, 2 for Saster, Byma and Nicopte (Yes, she also has expressions!), 4 for Sus, Zora and Deilela. The last three might have one less, depending on how they look best.
My relationship with doing expressions is: sometimes, I get on and do them all in less than an hour, without any problem. Other times, for reasons unknown, I spend an hour doing one, which also turns out ugly.
In this case, however, it is not a matter of procrastination - I often literally just forget to do them. (๑꒪▿꒪)*
Other ideas
Since I have more time, I was thinking about adding another, simpler CG - Just coloured lineart on a unicolour background.
On the other hand, I decided to scrap a small idea I had planned to do if I had more time / for a possible update: Chantal's sweets designs.
I would like to show off her "eye-catching" style more concretely, but when I tried to draw them, I realized that was definitely not the case (Let's say, like, no one in the world would have realized that the Île flottante was an Île flottante and not an ugly sponge).
The options, then, are three:
One day I'll be able to draw better and I'll put pretty pictures for all the recipes;
One day I'll go begging for people who can draw pretty food;
Imagination is a wonderful gift, imagine these beautiful recipes in your mind ♡♡♡
Cutscenes
As for the cutscenes, however, I am exactly halfway through, at the third order. I therefore have to finish the third order, do the fourth and fifth, the final climax and the epilogue.
To reassure you, as already mentioned, in the midst of all this there are also Important Scenes, and those have all been done.
And that's it for Pink Pro!
Yes, of course, it's because I'm also working on something else - I can't concentrate on the same thing for more than two days in a row if I don't have at least one side project.
I'll talk about that, though, in the next few days - The devlog on Candy Apple has become the devlog on Candy Apple and Red Riding Hood and the Little Bad Wolf, just as the projects on Three Yellow Quartzes will need a separate devlog.
You have to cook, okay, but how do you have to cook? With Venka's Crafting Script!
I loved this script from the first time I saw it - I even replay the demo from time to time as if it were an actual game. So I promised myself that I would use it, sooner or later, and here it is!
The only thing, is it seems like I can't change the green of the button and it looks terrible but-
Obviously, there aren't just three recipes, it's that I made the screenshot when I started implementing them in the script. After a moment of panic due to the amount of instructions and add-ons, it's actually not a difficult script. (… At least for now.)
Obviously part 2, the text of the English version will be in English. Except for the names of the recipes, which will remain in French - "Chantal" is a French name, so her recipes also have French names. *Logic!*
(From the ingredient icons you can already imagine that these are not the recipes you already know. But, given the population, does this surprise you?)
🍰 "Chantal" was the default name I gave to the main character of my essays in elementary school. She has finally found her own identity!
🍰 As already mentioned, she may seem human, but she isn't. This obviously affects her.
🍰 I've always wanted to make a character with a decora kei aesthetic and I took the opportunity! Did I say that it would be difficult to exactly replicate every single accessory between the title screen, busts and CGs? Well, there's no problem, because only once I finished the bust I realize that it already has different accessories compared to the title screen!!!11oneone Oh, well, basically the decora kei stands out for its multitude of accessories, right?
And here's her sprite:
I waited until now to do it because I had no idea about the typology.
Since I felt like it, I decided to gather all the "pink" sprites I had, between the VX Ace RTP style ones and the Mack style ones, but I wanted the important characters to stand out (Also to, like, visually direct the player-). I had an idea of making them in a 100% customized version, but the style gap was quite ugly to see.
(Separated they are beautiful, together a little less.)
Then on itch.io I found Them: Guildmaker7 by Despair Party
It's gorgeous. They're all gorgeous.
Something different from Mack and Looseleaf (Although deeply loved, huh!), in various sizes! I couldn't resist and here's the result. I like it and it blends well with the NPCs and graphics.
/Good, now I have to do it with people who have four legs and/or tails.
