2headedboy - Blog Posts

Made a few hoodie sprite versions of sweet baby Kage for 2-Headed Boy. It's not much, I'm still trying to kind of piece parts of my life together, so I appreciate everyone's patience. And as some of you have said, progress is still progress!

Do you have plans to release a demo? Or are you going to wait and release the full game?

I'm going to release it in chapters, one rival at a time, starting with the Yurei route :) so I guess 3 chapters total is the current plan

I could lose fucking everything,

But not you,

Oh God, not you...

The very next day after my last post here I got some bad news. A person close to me who has been a friend and mentor for the last 8 years passed away from an intentional overdose on their prescription pain medication. A pretty long suicide note was found in her home, so we know it wasn't an accident.

In any case, April was not a good month in my life. It seemed like it was one thing after another. I'm still trying with the game, but progress has really slowed down. I know you are all very understanding about these things and I'm mostly beating myself up about that. I just wanted to update everyone.

I decided now is as good a time as ever to add the hospital map to the game.

Hi everyone who's still here following this game development...really sorry that I fell off the radar for a while there. I'm not even sure how long it's been. I've been dealing with a pretty heavy family crisis/loss/grief lately and didn't have it in me for a while to do much else. I think I'm ready to start working on the game a bit.

I've added a zoo map here, including a version for spring (shown), summer, and autumn (zoo is closed in winter). I'm also working on a little lottery scratch off thing in the game. Sorry again to go so silent. Things were pretty dark for a while but I'm starting to feel better.

Hope everyone here is doing well

Relieved to say the character creator is nearly finished. I still need to make a few versions of the character portrait clothing that align with the "medium" sized neck, but I think that's about it. All clothing has corresponding portrait clothing now (where it would apply; swim shorts with no shirt or off-shoulder clothing of course don't show up in the character portrait).

I've fixed a couple of the hair colors, so red hair looks like a natural red hair, and brown hair now has a dark and light version. And the animal ears and tails now have hue shifters so you can choose the color of your ears and tail (if you choose to have them).

Oh, and I still have to add human ears too. A lot of the hairstyles will hide human ears anyway, so I have to figure out how to layer those with the hair; not sure if I can have them in the "beast ears" section or if they will have to have a separate section.

Will we be able to make bad choices with the cats? Like have one hate us? Or do we have the choice for one of the romances to be attacked by our cats?

Tbh I hadn't really considered that sort of thing, the cats are kind of a plot stepping stone to the overall story involving Yurei and their main function for story purposes so far kind of ends at the ability to adopt one, so I haven't done much with what happens after the cat lives with you except that you can change their accessories around.

Probably won't have them attacking any love interests. But I could do an ongoing point system with them of attachment level similar to what I have with the guy characters, that persists and can grow after being adopted. I could see how that could become story relevant.

As far as the inverse, making the cats dislike the player if you don't do well taking care of them could also be a thing and could also be story relevant.

My main goal right now is to keep features story relevant unless it's something very easy to implement, otherwise I'm risking a lot feature creep that just requires a ton of time to put in and perpetually pushes the release out you know? (which is why I'm not planning on housing customization right now if you saw the other question about that.)

So I guess the answer is the cats won't have an opinion on the love interests (except they like and remember Yurei because he basically raised them from kittens) but they certainly could grow to dislike the player if you don't act right :p

Just a brief check in here since I realize it's been almost a week since I posted any updates here; I took a couple of days off for some personal business but I am still working on the game. Unfortunately I don't have much to show for it at this time because it's story writing. I have written it into the game, arranged the chibi sprite movement routes and all that, but I haven't drawn any art for a while, so posting screenshots would be kind of boring, and I don't want to post a video sequence because I'm not trying to do too many spoilers here...

But please trust I'm still working! I've also added options for the player to do their own keybinds since RPG Maker defaults to arrow keys and z/x for select and cancel. I don't know if I mentioned that already on here, but I remember playing Omori and how awkward it felt to not be able to do the traditional WASD keyboard movement, so players can set things up that way if they want to from the options menu.

Also I got it set up so that you can type things into the game when prompted for things like naming your player or putting in a word or numbers rather than having to use arrow keys to scroll through an on-screen alphabet, because that's also annoying as hell imo. But mostly it's been writing I'm working on.

I hope to have something interesting to show you guys soon though, like actual screenshots or something, I just have to get back into drawing.

Will there be an option to buy furniture for the house?

I've considered this one but no plans to implement that at this time. It would take a ton of scripting to do something like that in RPG Maker MV and further extend the release time, and I'm already having to kind of slow down production because of the time of the year.

Edit: what I could do with this, is write the script setup for it into the release though, so that the bones for it is there on release and then on a succedent update I could do the longer process of adding in all the items, putting them in shops and as mission rewards etc. I'll have to think about it but it's not a priority right now

Made hoodie and tank top versions of Kage's chibi sprites. The face set next to that is for Koyomi, childhood friend of the MC. She'll be introducing the player to the various "love interests" (aka Kage rivals)

Finishing up the Yurei intro today too. Will try to work on a few other things, maybe some sprite art or something

Just a small update. Tuesday was minimal progress, just configured a few more plugins and set up an in-game credits page that's accessible from the start menu (setting it up now so I can more easily track everyone I need to give credit to; I've also hyperlinked back to contributor websites when one is provided).

There's one newly added plugin I'm particularly looking forward to, as it will allow the game to use the player's custom character portrait to make different facial expressions depending on the choices you make during conversations.

Also set up text macros for every time I have to use a pronoun in a sentence while writing to save some time. Since the player picks that at the beginning, I had to assign "he" "she" or "they" to a variable, and then write an evaluation that would assign the appropriate pronoun *and form of it* (she, her, hers, his, him, them, their, etc.) within the context of any sentence I wrote that included it...every time it would come up in writing. The macros are already saving me a ton of time with writing, so that's been pretty nice.

I'm not gonna show the whole intro scene for meeting Yurei, but I got the bulk of that written last night too. Although I still have to draw his sprites for it, so even if I showed the whole scene here it would just be chibis talking to each other. And set up a way to "sit" at the bench seats in the cat café, since I wanted that for a cutscene, and unfortunately customizable player characters mean I won't be able to have player sprites make unique poses like actually sitting.

Oohhh weird question but will we occasionally catch a glimpse of Kage while moving around the map? Like when we go out to the shops does he follow us?

I'm very excited for this game 💕👑

There's always some evidence of him being not too far from the player, though I'm still looking at different ways to portray that, and it probably won't be just one thing or way of knowing.

I'm hoping to make some neat moments like that too though, where you can "spot him in the wild" :)

I wrote this poem for Kage:

I don't even know you. I don't know what you've been through.

What is it that you really feel? Why is it my heart you want to steal?

Please don't be so brash. All of your actions are so rash.

If you really love me, give me space, or I will flee.

No more stalking, or I'm done talking.

Do you understand? I'm being as nice as I can.

We can take things one day at a time. But, hold me captive, and you won't be mine.

Dang I love this :') Kage would probably

find it terrifying to be called out but he's not going to say that part out loud

Deny he's a stalker

Keep this poem forever

If you'd call my name out loud,

Do you suppose that I would come running?

Do you suppose I'd come at all...?

(You know I would...I'd come running)

Working on more maps for 2-Headed Boy, testing player collision and currency checks etc. Since there are no ushers yet I can just walk up to the concert without paying, but that will change soon™

Also started writing the first meeting with Yurei into the game.

New date spot and maps incoming, stay tuned please

I said I wasn't gonna do this, but after all the trouble of adding a bunch of outfit options into the character creation, it seemed like a waste to not be able to change your outfit after creating your character.

So now you can! Honestly, the bulk of the work is just getting all the outfits in; making it so you can change them turned out to be easier than I had thought. This applies to accessories and glasses too. Since making this video I've added all the items you can equip into the game, though I still have to make character portrait assets for several of them, which should be pretty easy since the clothes are just shoulder-up shots, and then some simple accessories.

So you can collect clothes and change them throughout the game. And I added more hairstyle options too, like a single braid (besides the double braids that were already there), wavy hair, and some other options.

I'm still debating whether or not to make the clothes mechanically significant in some way or just leave them as cosmetic only. Like should they provide some kind of stat boost while wearing them? The stats are supposed to represent your character's personality, so I'm not sure. But then, clothing choices can also be a reflection of one's personality, so maybe that should be a thing...? The personality traits are "the big 5" though, and I'm not sure what clothes read as "agreeable" vs "openness" or "extroversion" etc.

If anyone has any thoughts on that lmk

Edit: also not sure how Kage's birthday got messed up in this video but he's not a Capricorn, he's a Sagitterrorist ;p so I'll have to go in and fix that

Sorry about the weird creepy silence for the last couple of days, I had a pretty gross head cold so my head felt about 50% larger than normal for a few days there, and I've been kind of busy expelling all kind of unspeakable evil from my face holes.

Mostly over it now, but all I really did during that time was work on the character creator a bit more, work on some menu organization for the game and other backend things (trying to future-proof the game for installment release and other stuff), and also this thing in the video.

I was thinking about the seasonal produce ingredients for cooking, and how players might end up making something they don't actually want/have a use for, and then not only being stuck with that dish, but also having lost their seasonal produce they used to make it. If they ran out of that seasonal ingredient, they're kind of screwed until the next time that produce is available/in-season, as far as making any other dishes goes.

So besides adding the option to discard unwanted items from your inventory, I've also set up an item called the "Unmaker" that can be used to break down creations back into their base ingredients. The Unmaker is a consumable item, meaning you can only use it once per dish then it disappears from your inventory. In this video demo I have 5 of them, so you'll see that amount go down with each use.

Right now I have the percentage chances of successfully getting your ingredients back set pretty high (100% for the seasonal ingredients and 60% for all other ingredients) but I'm sure I'll end up adjusting these after doing some playtesting.

Wow this it a very ambitious project for one person. Have you made a game before or is this your first one?

Yeah it is definitely ambitious, but thankfully there are a lot of plugins and community support (if I get stuck and have a question) to help streamline a lot of it. And I'm not drawing my own map assets, those are purchased. Music is a mix of assets I donated for and someone I know making it.

So you'll see in the credits more people than me, I guess technically I'm not doing it all alone! I just don't have a team of people, so I do all the programming and scripting for the actual gameplay, map design, writing, character design/art and piecing it all together.

I have made one much smaller game before just to learn the basics of game logic and my software, which it turns out is mostly super intuitive, at least with RPG Maker. I've never released anything though.

Back to working on the customization options for the character creator at the start of the game. Working on getting more clothing options and accessories in (getting rid of the ugly placeholder hats etc.). See this post and this older one for more info on that.

Also got rid of the weird giant red flowers that were locked to the twin tail hair before. Kind of made it hard to accessorize that hairstyle when those were already "built-in."

And obviously you can be a variety of colors in terms of skin/hair/eyes, these are just "base values" shown that hues can be shifted from in the generator.

I've added more in than this but I didn't feel like making samples of all the new stuff.

Also made the Save menu a little more user-friendly, like showing information on each unique save file (like the in-game location you saved at, amount of $ on that save, in-game date and time and which characters you've met, in case anyone wants multiple save files and needs to keep track of them without having to load a save just to see where they are). RPG Maker also doesn't come built-in with an option to delete a save file from the save menu for some reason, so that's been added too.

EDIT Also, none of the clothing or hair options are locked to the body types, but some of the outfits might not layer properly on certain types (mainly the largest body type with broader shoulders will clip through a lot of the smaller-framed clothes). Unfortunate but that's a limitation of working with 2-D pixel art

Can we put cat ears on them (for reasons) ((catboys)) 🐱

On the the guys or your player character?

Player character is a definite yes, the guys... Maybe 🤔 from a technical standpoint it's easy, but I would have to fit it into the story somehow as an option.

Hey I dreamt about Kage. He got punched by some girl and then mc was almost yandere for him and defended him with a baseball bat. But in reality he passed out from the punch and just imagined mc there

I lol'ed, also interesting he's already invading dreams

Not much preference on spoon, he is ecstatic just to touch you

Would love if you wore his clothes but will "borrow" yours without asking (prefers if they are not washed). Not to wear, just as a comfort object for sleeping

Would use a pet name if you asked him but feels very awkward about it

Is not "introverted" in the sense of stereotypical "quiet, shy homebody" but being around everyone but Y/N drains him, needs downtime to recharge.

Not "extroverted" in the sense he is energized from being around people, but very outspoken and mouthy

Does not generally like killing anything, and if non-human especially doesn't like it (except for food). He will capture bugs and release outside, unless it's a mosquito, those are kill on sight

Reckless driver, prob should never give him your keys

Added another small QoL feature for 2-Headed Boy. Now you can press a hotkey to access a message backlog and review the last 20 40 messages you've read in the game. Just in case you miss some dialogue, or want to review what was said, see what dialogue choices you chose, etc.

I might need to increase the backlog to more than 20 messages though. I did end up increasing this to 40, will see if that's a good amount when playtesting.

Also wrote more dialogue for the White Day scene that triggers with Kage if you got a White Day gift from Yurei (which only happens if you gave Yurei something on Valentine's Day, of course).

He wishes you would :/

I spent most of my project time yesterday researching some specific things about the game's engine, like whether a certain mechanic would be possible etc. It all came back as good news, though I can't say what all of it was since it would kind of spoil some of the fun in playing to know ahead of time.

But what I can say is that I think I'll be able to release the game in installments and people should be able to carry their save files over between each of them, which is one thing I wasn't sure would be possible. It will just require a little bit of planning ahead of time on my part, since adding certain things to a new installment would break old save files (mainly plugins or certain types of scripts requiring data initialization at startup).

So as long as I make sure all the plugins I want to use for the game are already implemented at the first launch, there shouldn't be any problems with people playing the whole thing across one save file through multiple releases/"expansions" or whatever. And of course, I can't delete anything from the new installments that already existed in the former ones.

So that's exciting, because it means I can release a playable game sooner, though I still don't have a release timeframe set yet. What I would like to do is release 1 love interest route at a time, starting with Yurei. And obviously Kage will be in that first release and all subsequent ones because he just won't fucking leave you alone

I just wanna break you down so badly,

Well, I trip over everything you say

I just wanna break you down so badly,

In the worst way

Small demonstration of cooking in 2-Headed Boy. Before you can unlock cooking, you have to get the recipe books for the things you want to cook. You can't just buy them; you'll have to find them playing through the story.

Moreover, produce ingredients are seasonal so some ingredients will only be available for certain times of the year. Ingredients don't expire/decay/"go bad" though, so you can stock up on whatever produce is in season for cooking later!

Recipes are greyed out in the menu if you don't have enough of all the ingredients to cook that thing. If you haven't cooked the recipe before, it will have a weird vague name. After cooking it for the first time it will display the real recipe name.

There are 25 recipes, as shown in the top right of the cooking menu. The top number (here showing 25/25, or 100%) is how many recipes you've collected (in my demo here, I have all of them). The bottom number (starting here at 0/25 or 0%) shows how many unique recipes you have cooked.

I've also entered the favorite and least favorite foods for each of the love interests into the social media menu. These are hidden from the player until you learn what they are while playing the game (you can learn these from various methods, it might be during a conversation, by giving a gift, by cooking something for a love interest, or maybe some other way).

I don't want to limit crafting to just cooking though, I would maybe like to add some other crafty category, something else the player could make for the guys that would be cute, but I'm not sure what yet?

And as I'm looking at this video I'm realizing I need to adjust the lighting for late afternoon/early evening as well. Still a bit too red...

Also added an option to the options menu for changing message speed in the game, in case you want the dialogue/on-screen text to display faster (or slower??) or even instantly (rather than it "scrolling" across the message window). A very basic feature, so basic it should be a given, but it didn't occur to me to add it until now. So...yep

Started routing Yurei into the game last night. It's quite a process, because I have to create a schedule or routine for each of the love interests, since they won't always be in the same place; it will of course depend on the time of day, and they also can't be in 2 places at once.

So for example, Yurei will be at home between certain hours of the day, and at his work for other hours (but only on certain days of the week). I also had to set it up so that if you're at his work while his shift is changing, he will realize that his shift is over and leave for the day.

Or if it's a holiday and he's supposed to be at the mall or something, I can't have him also sitting at home in his apartment or at his work etc.

Also, you can't go into the guys' apartments if you haven't met them yet, or if they aren't home. There are just a lot of little things like that to work in. I'm avoiding working on Yugen and Shinkiro, and focusing on Yurei for now, because if I try to work on them all simultaneously, I'll go insane.

Well, except I'm working on Kage at the same time as Yurei, because he's interwoven into all of the love interest routes, so I can't avoid him. Kind of like how the player can't avoid him

Didn't get a whole lot done for 2-Headed Boy yesterday besides the 2 Kage sprites I posted last night and making adjustments to the game lighting for different times of the day/night. I hadn't really messed with it since implementing the "sun" into the game, but the base values weren't great. Night was too dark, sunrise/sunset were too red, etc.

It's looking better now and more subtle but still noticeable. 7pm at night in the game is shown. I will not be making days longer in the summer or nights longer in the winter, that would take me too long and I just don't want to spend more time on this part lol

Also started working on the crafting system, added more items into the game, assigned the ingredient items as ingredients so the game will recognize them for crafting etc. Will work on that more tonight and have something to show for it soon.

I'll try to draw another sprite or 2 as well

Free to play?! Et tu God?! my broke ass is crying happiness

Hell yeah F2P! I honestly didn't even want to go through the trouble of trying to navigate the logistics of selling a game. It didn't seem worth it for how niche my target audience is, especially as a no name dev.

Indie games are very rarely profitable, and I'm more interested in the game reaching more people. So of course F2P will accomplish that better