BlueSwallow
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One Year!
🕑 Added 2024-04-10 01:00:02 +0000 UTC# One Year!
Holy shit. We're at a year of development. That's crazy.
Given the monumental milestone (how many of these type of games last a year?), we wanted to do a little retrospective. Where have we been, where are we going?
Why did this project start?
I was sick and tired of good ideas going to waste either because of abandonment, milking, or just lack of project management. I’d tried to get involved with other projects as a writer, but was always kicked aside due to lack of leaderships and PM-ing skills.
I also wanted to see a story that had lots and lots of choices, variations and things that mattered. I hated sandboxes where you were constantly clicking around trying to advance story and so, so many of the games out there that just should have been VNs – essentially single path forward, so don’t make your players do work for it.
I enjoyed corruption stories and female protagonist MCs (all of my writing is essentially female-first) and grew up on CYOAs (those white-backed books are so nostalgic for me). So, after trying to get a team together to do an adult version of “Growing Up” to no avail, I decided to take a pass at the concept that I’ve seen so many times that just never goes anywhere: secret agent girl…who never wanted or expected to be a honeytrap. Yet, she needs to be.
And so, Blue Swallow was born. A little twist on the Red Sparrow idea, begin with a character creation prologue (because I always enjoyed deciding who my MC was), and utilizing Twine because of its facility and ease of use [for a non-programmer like me]. And as it grew, so did the team.
And what about our team? What are their perspectives on the past year?
From LewdPirate-
I joined because I thought there was somewhere I could add a lot of value, getting in from the get go and build a good foundation was really appealing to me.
I did play three separate versions of FA, and never understood why it warranted being rewritten (at such a late stage) so many times!
I have played a lot of interactive fiction smut, and I’m trying to write my own, so working with someone who actually writes was also immensely interesting to me, as most other projects I worked on, the story was a second thought.
The last year for me has been fun, I’ve enjoyed extending the wardrobe, and getting to know Goof, who I send smut to once in a while.
I’m hoping to find time to actually play the game in its current state, since it has been ages since I played.
Personally I got very overwhelmed by the many different options, but I do have to give it a go again soon.
Finally it’s exciting to get animations in, despite the initial technical difficulties.
And speaking of Goof-
My journey in this world began as I played so many games in this erotic arena where the story, characters, and dialogue was either disjointed, off, or didn't make sense so I thought I'd volunteer my time and limited expertise in helping developers make their games better.
Enter Blue Swallow.
Well, this game already had a stellar writer so I have just done my best to support the writer and build my skills while supplying any other help or hindrance I can.
Now a year later, this project from a spark that Cass wanted to make has turned into a game. It's deep in writing, building to a full on art filled spy thriller.
The game has grown leaps and bounds thanks to the community and the team as it's been so fulfilling.
In the next year, I hope the game reaches larger audiences and we can just keep expanding endlessly with different areas of the world needing a good/bad spy to save the day or not.
One day if we get big enough perhaps we do a contest to insert a player as a stable character for a certain Act.
—-----------------------------------
We've just finished the Final release of 0.5. With that, Claire, our protagonist:
* Can experience a full Prologue of character creation.
⋅⋅* Physical Identity (what does she look like? how does she identify herself?)
⋅⋅* Growing Up (where is she from, what is her family life, what does she enjoy?)
⋅⋅* High School (what clique does she join? who does she take to Prom? how does she experience her sexual awakening?)
⋅⋅* An optional Gap Year (African volunteer? Backpacking in Europe? Swiss Finishing School?)
⋅⋅* College (Does she get in? Does she rush? What does she study?)
* Engage in 73 (yep, nearly 100) sex scenes, each with their variations, alternative text and options based on the Claire you’ve built
..* Innumerable options, playthrough paths and choices with meaningful, content and character-altering effects
* Can get to and experience places around the globe!
⋅⋅* Bangkok!
⋅⋅* Tallinn
⋅⋅* Manila
* Can begin her experience as a Secret Agent, where her mission means saving her missing mother and hopefully saving the world.
And from a technical standpoint:
* 20 content-expanding releases
* Customized Paper Doll and dozens of outfits
* Three animations
* Passage and background art
* Implementation of more than 8 integrated systems:
⋅⋅* Semi-Open World Exploration
⋅⋅* Stats and level-up mechanic
⋅⋅* Dossier
⋅⋅* Wardrobe, Clothing Purchasing, and Outfit selection
⋅⋅* Relationships
⋅⋅* Corruption and Bad Ends
⋅⋅* Arousal, Tired, Hungover States
⋅⋅* Fertility and Impregnation
* 311 Individual Passages, each with multiple arcs and variations
* Nearly 50,000 lines of code
What does the next year look like?
We'll be expanding the existing content:
* More Prologue content!
⋅⋅* Fleshed out Cliques!
⋅⋅* Fleshed out Vignettes!
⋅⋅* HS Pregnancy Arc!
⋅⋅* Fleshed out College Arcs!
⋅⋅* Additional Gap Year Arc(s?)!
* More Main Game Arcs!
⋅⋅* Make friends/boyfriends/get training!
* Continuation of Existing Main Game Arcs!
⋅⋅* Investigating the Club!
⋅⋅* Infiltrating Manila Underworld!
* HD Art toggle!
* More animations, clothes, and art!
What am I most excited about? All that’s coming. The past year was a proof-of-concept to myself and the community that the game can exist, can be developed as I envisioned it. Now it’s taking that PoC and expanding it, seeing where we can take Claire!
Comments
DityaChan
Congratulations
bos
congrats
