December Update: Messenger System

Welcome! This is technically our first devlog since setting up our itch.io page properly.  Give our dev team a round of applause~ Hype hype hype!

1. Heroines who text you throughout the day

Day or night - Isekano plays out in real-time. If you've played games such as Mystic Messenger or Love Plus, you may be familiar with this concept. How does this work? This means that the heroines will send you occasional texts throughout the day according to your local time. If you choose to respond to her text, you can begin a chat with her. 

This month, we made considerable progress on configuring the messenger system to work with our dialogue engine. This covers a lot of edge cases that can occur. For example, what if you were chatting with Kaida and decide to close the game? It would feel unnatural for Kaida to continue talking into blank air even if you don't respond. She isn't a yandere after all.

What makes this a fun feature? Some interesting scenarios that can play out:

• The heroines feel real:  You get to learn more about the heroines during their daily lives. She might text you about an embarrassing incident that happened in class, or ask you to keep her entertained while she's in the bath :)
• Exciting story moments: Kaida is messaging you at midnight since she heard mysterious sounds in the house. Do you help her or ignore her?
• Short, addicting dialogues: It's a mobile game! We want to make enjoyable and quick gaming sessions. Plus, our heroines always text back diligently, so you have something to look forward to throughout the day.

Some of the 'edge cases' that we have addressed:

2. Creating our internal script preview tool

QA is important! Unlike what we're used to with traditional VN formats, a lot of our chats are written in the form of texts.

One issue that we've noticed is that our texts should both read and feel natural. In other words, texts can't be too long (most of us type short texts), and texts need to feel natural (everyone has their own nuances). This can vary between the heroines, of course. Generally speaking, writing out the messenger dialogues on a document sometimes distracts from this.

The solution?  We created our own internal preview tool for our scripts. We can visualize how the dialogue will look like quick and dirty.

This also made us realize that our choice options are sometimes too long! Time to abbreviate or rewrite a few things.

And that's the bell for our December devlog! We hope you enjoyed our first entry. Stayed tuned for our next one!

Most of all, we wish everyone happy holidays! Stay warm, snuggle in your bed, and catch up on some of your favourite games!

- The Isekano Team