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Hello all,

I had a thought for a romance story, but since I do not have friends to run the idea past, you all get the honor!

I had some other ideas that were either boring, or based on a story I really am only interested in having one path. That may change, but for my next story after my current project I was thinking of going with something else. Here are the details, I would appreciate any feedback/suggestions:

The plot is that you are a lonely single person a month before valentines day (if that is too cheesy the story can just be over a random month). The introduction will be a short scenario where you meet four very different girls in passing. These four girls will be the focal point of the story, and you will get each of their numbers.

After that the story will take place over four weeks, where you randomly run into one girl each week (at the store, at work, etc.) and have an encounter. Your reactions and choices determine if she likes you more, less, or the same. Each weekend you can call two girls (one Friday night and one Saturday night) and take them on a unique date. You could go one four dates with one girl, or none, based on what two you select each week. Again you can earn or lose points for them liking you. The dates will also have significance if you choose to do them before your encounter with the girl randomly. This is because you can learn the answers to the encounter questions on the dates.

After four weeks any girls that you have enough points that they like you will message you. If none like you automatically get the "forever alone" ending. Assuming a few do, you pick which one you want to call and ask out for valentines day. You have one more unique date with that girl, then get an ending based on the total number of points you scored with her. I am thinking of having three ending for each girl:

• The date goes terrible on valentines day and you mess everything up immediately.
• You date briefly, but it doesn't work out.
• You fall in love and get married, with a life that is different based on the girl you choose.

This is a rough idea right now, so any thoughts or ideas are appreciated! It is going to be based off points, variables, and conditional links in the advanced editor. It will be similar to a "dating simulator game" I suppose.

Well that wasn’t in the original plan, but perhaps that one strange kinky girl would be an interesting challenge... would that be in a good ending or a bad one? Perhaps that can even be worked into the forever alone one... hmm.

Thank you! This is an excellent point.

My story will start with character design in this case. The plan is to have different things the girls like and dislike, and the points will basically be if you pick their interest or not (1, 0, and maybe a -1 for doing something they hate). To do this I will need a detailed description of the girls before I build any options or design any dates. I also don’t want to get to complex with like a 1 point option, a 3 point option, and a 7 point option. It is a you nailed it, or you didn’t type choice in my mind.

I will try to avoid making it too mechanical, and to make sure the choices all make sense when you take the characters personality into account.

I would probably spend the most time working out the personalities, speech patterns, nonverbals, and so forth of the romantic interests in question.  What kills a game like this is feeling like you are playing "match the interest" so you know every time you mention candy, Girl A likes you better, but Girl B likes puppies, and Girl C likes larvae. 

The two best ways I know to do this is a) to make the personalities feel as real as possible to create human interest (this is hard) or b) make the choices have difficult tradeoffs (if you do thing 1, someone will like you better, but others will be angry at you, while if you do thing 2, everyone will like you worse, but you'll have more money which might help you court C or D later on.  Et cetera.)

I can work on that the most. I haven’t thought of that, but I don’t want it to turn into memory match. I will work on how to make it immersive so it feels real, or how to make every choice legitimate with a positive and a negative that can come from it.

The idea is that if you really focus on one girl, and pay attention to everything about her, you can make choices that result in points. The flip side is if you aren’t paying attention, or haven’t spent time with a girl, the choices will be really hard to choose between correctly. 

I had not considered doing something that would make one girl like you and all of the others dislike you, that could make things more interesting really fast. Something like an appearance change, or if multiple girls show up at once and you have to choose between them directly (sit by girl A or girl B; or you can buy a larvae or a puppy as a pet).