Update 9/4

Hey hey, that was better than keeping you all in the dark for a month! Thanks to having my mom able to help us watch the baby, I've finally been able to start working half-days at the office. It's already done wonders for my productivity, as if I've been in hibernation since starting WFH in February last year! I'm feeling GOOD about what's to come, and that means GOOD things for Aria! Let's go through a couple...

Rethinking Aria as a Character:

As I said in the previous update, I've come to realize that writing Aria as a blank slate player character insert, while sound on paper, hasn't been working for me. While players enjoyed guiding Alex's actions in Forks, they also universally liked her having her own personality and voice. Alex is the protagonist, but is nearly always on-screen, and an on-screen character that exclusively speaks via menu boxes (like Aria) increasingly felt both boring and restrictive. It's been bugging me for weeks, my best writing is when characters can just speak to one another, and giving Aria more personality will in turn let me flex my strengths.

Because of this, I've been taking some additional time to flesh out the dialogue in the opening (and future first demo) scenes. It's something I'd originally wished to avoid, but I've found it takes less time than I imagined; put some fun characters together and they tend to write themselves! I've attached an example of what this looks like, please bear in mind that I'll be editing this again before release.

While it will take more time, it already feels like it was the right thing to do, and I'll rest a little easier for it once you guys get to play it. Toro, our artist, actually had me rewrite the entirely of Forks when he first read it! It's an earlier version nobody's ever played, with Alex going through high school graduation, summer with her parents, and then FINALLY going to Red Glen. I enjoy a slow build, but that version of Forks was a SLOW build, and I'm glad I rewrote it. Thankfully, Aria won't have to be rewritten, just retooled a bit. There will be fewer, but more impactful choices, and the "tell me about" system will also help keep things fresh. I'll preview that later!

Dragon Rena Preview:

Moving on, I've attached a preview sequence of Dragon Rena's first three stages. I don't plan to show many full sequences like this in order to avoid spoilers, but Rena can act as the example of what we're trying to accomplish. She's also the earliest canon TF, so you'd be seeing her Stage 2 fairly soon anyway. 

Our Approach to TFs:

It would've been so easy to just copy and paste ideas from the Monster Girl Wiki, but that's not what you guys are paying for and we can do better anyway! Instead, Toro and I have been treating each portrait as an individual, exploring changes organically without trying to tie them to a greater sequence. When it's time to start the next step, we build off the previous while also considering where the character is in their story arc. We don't even have strict "endings" in mind, we develop each character as far as we feel they need to go.

For Rena, we didn't want to just go girl -> dragon girl -> moar dragon girl. We're trying to keep in mind who Rena is and how these changes might adapt to her, rather than strictly the other way around. In Rena's case, these TF steps reflect her personal growth as a character, going from a wildfire adept to a more experienced and mature mage. Like how weight gain was a byproduct of character development in Forks, so to are TFs in Aria.

Narratively speaking however, these TFs don't happen by themselves. You'll be able to guide events such that Rena may never accidentally transform at all, and instead stay as she is, or follow a different path. Aria's modularity allows for wildly different routes to the same result, and so far Rena has two: dragon girl, and a more conventional, fitter human Rena. They both explore Rena learning patience and restraint, but do so in their own ways.

I hope that made sense, it's 1:13am and I need to go to bed! Be back with the next update soon (at least next week, but hopefully sometime over the work week!)