Devlog #18 - New Year, New Update

Hey everyone!
It's been a while since our last post in this devlog. We didn't mean to stay silent for so long but we've been so busy with work that we barely even noticed how fast these last two months have passed.

Unfortunately we hardly found the time to work on //TODO: today, but because we don't want to leave you in the dark about the status of the project we'll give you a brief rundown of what happened since our last update in November and what our current plans for the near future are.

The short version is: PECTIN and I have been busy with our Bachelor project and thesis, as well as an additional research paper connected to our graduation. Since our bachelor project will actually be the second big Boys Laugh + game we thought we could keep posting regular updates as we work on it but the last three months have been filled with so much story development and planning that there simply wasn't enough concrete development progress that we could have shared. As such we also weren't able to announce this next project but we'll sort of change that with this devlog!


There will be a proper announcement once we have some more visual material to properly show what you can expect from it but for now we'll at least tell you the title and what this project will be about.
But more on that later! First some more info about the near future...

Our bachelor semester passed in what felt like an instant and in just a little more than a month it will be over completely. Right now we are in the process of writing research papers about video games and LGBT representation before we'll move on to producing a vertical slice of our next project. This will be due in mid February after which we won't be bound to university deadlines anymore (yay :'D).

What happens after that isn't 100% clear yet but we'd like to see how far we can take this endeavor. We'll finally finish up the second half of //TODO: today and release it so all of you can finally see the conclusion and the different endings you'll be able to reach!

Once we've figured out how to financially sustain ourselves, we'll work on finishing our next project: Defaction.



(Final designs might vary)

Defaction is a narrative game about (gender) roles, societal expectations, and how many people probably can't completely conform to them. It takes place at a private university in the near future where students are part of one of two factions with fairly different ideals.
Faction memberships are mandatory and with this clear divide between students, conflicts are almost inevitable.

As the player you'll be able to side with any of of the factions, find out whose ideals you can sympathize with most and try to keep the friction between the students from escalating.

Between the factions there are a dozen characters that you'll get to know on all the different routes and while it's not a dating sim, there will be some romancing possible but not with all main characters and not in the same way as in //TODO: today.

But more on all that when we'll announce it properly!

We're quite excited about this project and can't wait to share more of it with you but first of all we'll have to finish our bachelor (hopefully graduate) and finish //TODO: today.

Well, and that is pretty much it. If you don't want to miss the proper announcement of Defaction you can keep an eye on our Twitter or this blog and we'll be back with some more news hopefully soon!

eZombo

Writer/Narrative Designer/Programmer at Boys Laugh +

todo-today, devlog, defaction