[ANN] Do YOU understand the way women think?

[papillon]

Can you figure out the secrets these five girls are hiding? Will you be best friends forever, or will you be left alone?

Summer Schoolgirls is a digital novel/adventure game where you play a girl who has just graduated from high school. In the summer before university, you have chosen to attend a special program where you can visit the campus and get to know your classmates.

Depending on your choices, one of five characters will be assigned as your roommate. You begin as complete strangers, but before the program is over, you might learn her darkest secrets and form a special bond - or you might never learn to understand her. The outcome of the story depends on you!

For more information and a free demo, visit http://www.hanakogames.com/summer.shtml


(Note - *grin* This was a short silly project that was supposed to take a month. Well, it WOULD have, except for extreme delays in the art department. .. After FINALLY getting an important piece of art, the last two days have been frantically throwing the build together and straining it through testers. Let me know if you spot something I missed. I don't expect most of the board has much familiarity with the genre, so comments of "But... it's not a game!" will be cheerfully accepted (and ignored). :) )

[terin]

Ok maybe my wife would be upset about "LOVING" papillon, but I really respect her willingness to attack a genre that is totally outside the norm, targetting young females with interactive fiction! If only someone were doing that when you were growing up, right pap? I can plainly see these games are not created to make huge sums of money but to create things that you wished you had... IE: Your target audience is yourself.

Anyway, this story based game is phenominal! If I had some way to help you get it out and about I would... sadly my experience selling to underage girls is a little short.

My only feedback is I would like to see you get this ported to Flash ASAP! I think young girls are more likely to frequent places like Grab and Miniclip, and the no download method would really be nice for a game like this.

Anyway, continued kudos to Pap for relentless pursuit of a target market and high marks for creativity. My only other idea is contact Mousechief Software and discuss bundling or partnering to sell both Witches Yarn and Summer Schoolgirls. I suspect they are similar audiences.

-Joe

[Bad Sector]

It looks very good, i like the screenshots and how the dialogs seem to be implemented. Given the fact that i like manga/anime-style art, i'll probably like this one (even if i'm not a woman :-P - i suppose that it is not targetted to woman-only audience).

Unfortunatelly i'm running Linux right now and i can't even use Wine since i'm in 64bit :-P. I downloaded and saved the demo to try it later. I'll post my comments on the game then :-).

[jankoM]

I am not here long enougth to love anybody - but I like papillon also :) . Maybe I can help a little, but I am not sure. Before anything I would have to know how old girls should be. And maybe how hard would it be to translate game to another language. The thing is I have some website and almost all users are underage girls (300 to 1000 girls). And they are more story reading/writing oriented type, but frankly I don't know how got is their english.

LSM, Janko

[papillon]

This particular game is not one for the littluns - as mentioned on the game webpage, it's about 18 year olds going off to university and is going to touch on things that teenagers encounter and worry about. While the general message is still fairly "friendly" (Bad activities are shown having bad consquences, and this isn't a porn game or anything) it's meant for teens and up, not for kids.

[soniCron]

The thing is I have some website and almost all users are underage girls (300 to 1000 girls). That sounds so... sinister! :eek:

[jankoM]

believe me there is nothing like that in this.

[dima]

I think I understand the way women think ... Very paranoid, very self concious and aware, driven mostly by emotions, and sometimes very coniving.

Having said that, some men arent any different, so it all comes down to chemical balances. Now, as a man, I mostly prefer looking/touching as oposed to trying to figure out what they are thinking. :) I am a little drunk, lol.

I think Michelle is the cutest, but Molly isn't too bad either.

[Robert Cummings]

I think you don't have a clue how women think.

[redito]

Neither does Dima obviously! :p

[drastik]

Ah, the inevitable discussion of the 'hotness' of the characters hehe.

I must say, it was refreshing to see something like this coming out in English, and tackling different 'themes'.

I'll admit, I'm not your target audience and this isn't the sort of game I generally play, but I was definitely intrigued by the end of the demo.

You may not be winning any awards for the graphics, but I also get the impression that they function exactly as intended in presenting a consistent image which suits the game, which is worth alot more than any award to the success of a game.

Sound was fairly sparse, but again, fit well and livened things up at the right moments.

The one thing I think really sets this off is the writing. Outside of the interactive fiction genre, i'll admit that we don't see alot of quality writing in indie games and you've obviously put some effort into this aspect. Which is fitting, I suppose, because it's the primary focus of the game.

Good luck with this project, and future endeavors.

[Musenik]

The timing of this [ANN] is surreal, Pap. About two weeks ago I had an 'epiphany' about a game involving teen girls. My idea has almost nothing to do with story. It's more like a board game. There are certainly no conversations between characters, just some 'flavor text'.

In the crowded field of game developers trying to fit various genres into their games, duplication is inevitable. I'm just floored by a couple of similarities. The school grounds screenshot in particular looks kinda like a board game layout.

One ironic difference is, I decided a few days ago to try a style of artwork that would be the Anti-Anime look. That's actually taken me into some interesting territory, visually.

I think though, Anime style is an terrific choice. It should serve your game well and speak perfectly to your customers. I would love to hear about how well it performs in the marketplace. I look forward to playing your Demo, the next time I fire up the PC.

Of course, the cherry on top of this trippy bowl of coolness, is Joe suggesting we get in touch!

[papillon]

Ideally someday I will be able to get someone much better than me to do my art. :) Yes, I came here out of the Interactive Fiction community in the first place. Story-based adventure/rpg is mostly where I want to be working, it's just .... a lot to get there on my own. :) Here's to stubbornness!

(And I admit to being curious about your board game idea. But if you've just come up with it, I guess it'll be a while before I get to play. :) )

[terin]

Does anyone remember the game Mall Madness? Girl boardgames can and have exited :)

Lets go shopping!
-Joe

[papillon]

*shudders in horrified memory*

Not that I ever played it, I just remember ads. Dimly.

Was it the same game as the one that came with phones so you could get calls from your game boyfriend, or was that a different one? :)

[Bad Sector]

Ideally someday I will be able to get someone much better than me to do my art. :) Yes, I came here out of the Interactive Fiction community in the first place. Story-based adventure/rpg is mostly where I want to be working, it's just .... a lot to get there on my own. :) Here's to stubbornness!

I understand that. The last 7-8 months i have an idea about a graphical adventure game in my head (which fits in the "goth anime" style, btw - yes i love anime too). Unfortunatelly my art (http://badsector.demoscene.gr/outimages/endcout.png) is still a bit bad (http://badsector.demoscene.gr/outimages/yag.png), so i can't do much myself. I try though, but then again i'm still far from doing decent art (http://www26.brinkster.com/gothicotaku/) -- also i can't do everything (programming, sound, art, etc) myself and i since i really like the idea (and since it's loosely based on the experiences of a person i love), i don't want to end with something mediocre. So i prefer to leave it aside until i feel good enough to work on it :-)

[stan]

I spotted a BIG BUG: the right mouse button doesn't hide the GUI ;). Also when it is hidden, there's no way to get it back with the mouse. Nor to exit the game (can't click on the small cross...).

It would be nice to have tooltips for the tiny icons.

Do they really put shy people with shy people in dorms?

[Musenik]

Oh, and here's an obligatory answer to this tread's question.

I understand women. They go to the bathroom more often than men, and they use all the toilet paper. They're also the ones who keep the room clean!

fair enough?

[papillon]

For all I know, in the real world they take your answers, completely ignore them, and throw your application into a big turning-thing, bingo style, and pair them up by who pops out. :)

My freshman roommate was a very nice girl who'd been living in Togo, which I'd never even heard of. (Yeah, yeah, typical american, crap at geography.) She was nice, but we didn't really have much in common and never bonded. She went on to write poetry ( http://www.louderarts.com/poets/jebsen/ ) Probably more successful at her art than I am. :)

[Pyabo]

Does anyone remember the game Mall Madness? Girl boardgames can and have exited :)

Lets go shopping!
-Joe

I don't recall that one, but my sister and I had "Bargain Hunter" when we were kids... the game that teaches you how to use a credit card! If I recall correctly, it was more or less random what your limit was, and you never had to actually pay off your card. That was just how you bought things in the game.

[impossible]

I remember playing a very, very early demo of this game months ago and it has come a long way. It will be interesting to see how a visual novel does sales wise. I'm looking forward to your Princess Maker clone, any idea when that will be finished?

[Bad Sector]

I finally managed to see this game :-)

Well, seems good... at least it gave me a little less than an hour of entertainment. However there are some issues i had:

1. There wasn't an option to switch in 640x480 fullscreen mode (i don't mean stretching the window to fit the desktop's resolution - mean changing to 640x480 mode :-P). It could be nice.

2. The load (?) time for every screen was way too much for a 3200 CPU. This is bad because these delays were not letting me get into the story, which is something essential for an adventure game.

3. When there was more than one "screen" in what someone said, there wasn't any delay between the sayings and the interface locked for a few seconds after the last one. For example when i first went to the room and met Sophie, what she said was splitted in two "dialog screens". I saw only the second - and for a small fraction of a second the first :-). I had to use pageup to see what she said. That happens everytime someone says something that is more than a "dialog screen" long, like -for example- the Jen-Jen's introduction which i had to be Johnny-Five in order to read it :-P.

This was annoying because everytime something went on the screen i had to wait until being able to use the GUI again and press pageup some times in order to read what the characters were saying.


However the game was interesting, i managed -somehow- to finish the demo. :-).

[Raptisoft]

Okay, I finally got the time to give this a go.

I have to say, whoever wrote this game doesn't know much about college bound women. Though I played almost an hour, there was not a single topless pillowfight, nor any explorations of nontraditional sexuality. I have seen a lot of movies with women in them, and frankly, this isn't much like them.

...

Just kidding. Papillion, when I run this, it gives me the loading screen, then immediately quits. Any ideas?

[papillon]

Badsector - Are you sure you don't have a key stuck down, or leaning on the mouse button, or clicked the fast-forward button by accident? That's the only way I can explain the behavior you're mentioning. (Did you, perhaps, think that you needed to click those arrows to progress, rather than using one of the several methods that is actually intended for progressing through the text?) That would be a vote in favor of tooltips, then. :)

Adding a setting for automatically switching resolution was intended and completely forgotten, it's on my list of things to do for an update.

Raptisoft - I'm not sure, but I would suggest disabling sound in the ini file. (Sound Off = 1) I have heard rumors that some sound drivers have issues with the engine being used. Let me know if that helps.



As far as sales go - let's just say that if every 24 hours went like this 24 hours, I'd be very happy. :)

[Bad Sector]

Did you, perhaps, think that you needed to click those arrows to progress, rather than using one of the several methods that is actually intended for progressing through the text?

Ok... now... i feel very dumb :(


But there is something else too... what is this? (www.slashstone.com/gimme/whatisthis.jpg) It happens the second time i tried to run the demo. And it happens to every screen.

Also why it takes so much time to switch screens?

[papillon]

What graphics card do you have?

I've never seen anything quite like that before... but if you've got one of the infamous ProSavage cards, anything could happen. Whatever's going on it looks like your graphics setup isn't very happy with the GM engine - which could explain your load-lag if you are having more delay than just the fade-effect that switches from one picture to another.

(Ah, the perils of using someone else's development tools!)

[Bad Sector]

I have a GeForceFX 5950 Ultra card... and 256MB VRAM are enough i suppose :-P
I also have DirectX 8 or something similar... the version that cames with WinXP...

And no, the delay is not (only) in the fading effect. It's between screen changes and it's about 3-4 seconds.

[papillon]

I have no idea, then. Unfortunately this is probably a bug I can't fix, only vaguely mention to the guy who actually writes the underlying software. (Whose usual response is, of course, 'Update your drivers!') Compatibility issues that I can't do anything about are my main reason for constantly muttering that I'm going to switch systems eventually - probably right after finishing this RPG. (How's Torque2D coming along? Anyone building with it yet?)

[digriz]

Hi Papillon,

This probably isn't much help at the moment; but have you looked at the popcap framework?

Just a thought.