tl;dr
FE High is paused. I'm really sorry.
I'm considering gamifying it as a Pixel Eroge instead of a Visual Novel, but I want to focus on The Coven's Aide right now.
The Coven's Aide development has officially begun!
It's my Pixel Eroge.
Play as the Aide and help the Coven Witches, build trust, and unlock H-Scenes.
No more deadlines.
I'm really terrible with deadlines so I won't set any, but I will try my best to post more frequent progress reports.
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FE High Pause
Long story short, I got really frustrated since I couldn't meet my February deadline so I took a break from the project. Writing took so much time and energy.
I'm not giving up on FE High, but the bad news is that my head space right now just doesn't want to do Visual Novels. I enjoy writing dialogue and interactions, but connecting them into one big, continuous flowing script seems impossible. I chalk it up to skill issue :P
Anyway, in my pixel art craze, I tried converting FEHigh to pixel art. Here's an attempt, and even in this rough form I feel 10x more motivated to work on this than write the VN.
I'm really sorry for letting you down if you were looking forward to the update.
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The Coven's Aide
Plot: You play as the Aide, the unwilling male servant of the elitist Coven Witches. Serve them, earn their trust, and unlock their hearts (and bodies!)
The game is in very, very early development so I can't share concrete details just yet. But as you might expect from the title and the post I made on January, it's a Pixel art eroge with a focus on pixel art H-animations and light, one-handed gameplay.
I originally wanted to do isometric pixel art like in the pic below, but I found that the smaller the resolution, the harder it is for me to draw and animate.
The solution is actually straightforward: draw in Clip Studio first and then trace it in Aseprite. Here's a basic walk cycle using that method.
And here's a basic video showcase of everything put together in Godot:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MVes3tudbfeYXJhOTtKyW5W60ZUG97Hd/view?usp=sharing
I think I have a good handle on the art style, or at the very least, it's doable for me and it's such a huge confidence boost considering it's the biggest draw for an eroge ^^ Next, I'll focus on the meat of the game next: heroine interactions and the gameplay loop.
I won't promise any deadlines or dates, but just know that I'm working really hard on my game.
Thank you for your support and I'll talk to you guys soon! ^^