Premise:

This is a dev blog for my Pokémon H-game (Pokémon Love Link), I'm going to update this every week. it is in the genres: RPG, Dating Sim, sandbox, H-game. Think games like summertime saga/summer memories/Daily Lives of My Countryside etc. mixed with a Pokémon game.

I'm creating a Pokémon fan game with hentai elements using Pokémon Essentials. The game will focus mainly on human characters like Cynthia, Skyla, Hex Maniac, and some originals. While there may eventually be some "poképhilia" content with Pokémon like Gardevoir, and other Pokémon but right now, the main focus is human x human interactions.

The game will follow the traditional Pokémon format with 8 gyms, the player will be able to complete them nonlinearly. The starter town is at the very center of the region, and the plan is for trainers to levels scale with badge count (wild Pokémon do not). This system is inspired by a Pokémon Crystal ROM hack that I played (it was very fun).

I want the region to be pretty small, but with lots of activities and places for trainers to hang out, train, and have story events happen. This also means you can go back and forth between towns and points of interest easily without having to slog through routes and wild encounters.

I do want to create a game that is good even on its own, like if you removed all the porn the games story, writing, balancing etc. would still be worth engaging. If you have any questions or need more details, feel free to ask. There's a chance Nintendo or TPC might take this down, but I'll keep a low profile to avoid issues.

Table of Contents:

- Week 1 - Getting Started
- Week 2 - Intro Story and Characters
- Week 3 - Programming Romance
- Week 4 - Character Art
- Week 5 - Early Trust Events
- Week 6 - 2nd town and some game design talk
- Week 7 - First Gym/Dungeon
- Week 8 - Routes plus some more random stuff
- Week 9 - Sidequests and stuff
- Week 10 - I got sick
- Week 11 - Shops and BP
- Week 12 - stuff idk
- week 13 - art and nearing coding completion
- week 14 - Taking a break
- week 15 - Cancelation

Week 1 (7/13/2024):

Although this is technically Week 3 due to some restarts, I'm finally confident in this direction. I began with boring setup tasks like tileset configuration and plugin installation etc. Then, I mapped the hometown, aiming for a warm, cozy fall vibe. Let me know if I succeeded on that front.

So far, the town includes a café, a general supermarket, and an undecided third store. Suggestions are welcome! This town is the region's center, so I want it to be full of useful spots and utility and I'm honestly not super sold on the cafe and supermarket idea so if you have better suggestions, I want to hear them.

In terms of gameplay, the town's gym will be the final one, accessible only after earning the first 7 badges, I know I said you would be able to complete the gyms in any order, but I want the last gym specifically to be special, similar to Giovanni's gym in RBGY for story reasons. There's also a park with tall grass for wild encounters, as the region will have fewer routes.

I also created a dummy UI for a girl's affection display and placeholder choices for the romance system, though the button is non-functional for now. This week involved a lot of map remaking and setup, but I now have a clearer vision for the game. So hopefully I get more done next week.

Pictures:

Week 2 (7/19/2024):

This week, I focused on the intro story and character creation. While the game will feature many cameos from Pokémon characters, I also want to introduce some original characters to enhance the story, they won’t make up the majority of the cast but a few will be there, and some will take HEAVY inspiration from characters you may recognize so that character is basically making a cameo in spirit. I believe that having a defined main character (MC) adds more relatability and is just easier to write for (imo).

Here's a very short rundown of the characters introduced so far:

- Player Character: The MC.

- Your mom: Your character's mom.

- Willow: Childhood friend and friendly rival.

- Lara: Mean rival.

- Willow's Mom: Brief appearance.

- Professor Ivy: From the Orange Islands arc of the anime.

Spoilers Ahead - If you wanna go in the game blind, don’t read:

(Note: I typed it kinda boring going scene by scene skipping a lot since I'm pretty proud of the writing and want people to experience it). The intro starts with the player moving back into their childhood home. After a night’s rest, the MC's mom mentions that Willow, an old friend, was looking for them. You meet Willow and her mom, and after an awkward reunion, you both go outside after hearing a girl struggling to deal with some troublesome Pokémon to help out.

You meet Lara, Professor Ivy's assistant, she’s pretty cold and dismissive. Professor Ivy soon comes into the scene, having observed the teamwork, and invites you all to her lab. There, you choose a starter Pokémon (Fennekin, Popplio, or Sprigatito, I choose these all because their final evolutions have A LOT of rule 34 of them.). Willow picks the weaker one to your type, and Lara picks the stronger one. You battle both rivals. Lara will walk out after the battle and say something snarky regardless of whether you win or lose, professor Ivy will apologize on her behalf since Lara is her assistant with some implication that Lara has some kind of a rough past that makes her a bit of a dick.

Spoilers Over. Besides that I've worked on some of the interiors of the towns in the town I'm naming "Lyra Town" I want to name each area after a constellation, I'm not sure if people have noticed but each town in Pokémon games have a theme, in Kanto the theme is colors, in Johto it's plants, in Unova it's cloud types etc.

The week ended with these developments, so not much to show visually due to the focus on story elements and I’m obviously not showing a lot of that since I don’t want to spoil the story. Here are some of the interiors though (not the sprites for the npc's are placeholders and will be changed probobly).

Pictures:

Week 3 (7/27/2024):

This week I focused on coding and scripting the romance system using RPG Maker XP built in scripting system plus some tweaks here and there that aren't really worth mentioning, the bulk of this week was just trying to figure out how to get a system like this working in Pokémon essentials. Here’s a breakdown of how that works:

Affection Bar: Each character has an affection bar. As you increase this bar, you unlock more scenes. In the first version, you can max out the bar quickly, but more content will be added later.

Ways to Increase Affection:

- Story Progression: Some characters affection increases through story cutscenes. This one’s pretty limiting since most characters probably won’t have access to it.

- Chatting: Characters have a mood that is randomly chosen at the start of a day. You need to guess what the characters mood is based on their portrait and greeting, Where you're given 3 random choices on what to say. I coded it so there will always be a best, neutral and negative option for you to pick from.

- Gifts: Gifts are mostly universal and apply the same amount of points to every character, with some preferences. Worst reaction you can get is neutral with it only going up from there, the idea is that everyone likes getting gifts even if the gift itself isn't great, it's the thought that counts, plus from a gameplay perspective it would be annoying to spend a resource and get 0 points from that.

- Invite (Not sure about this): Unlock date locations as you explore and get closer to characters. These dates net a lot of points but take up the entire day. I’m not sure if i’ll actually keep this feature in, I at least know it won’t be in the first build since there isn’t a lot of progress to be made affection wise anyways but I dunno about after that.

I also changed the starter town trees to fall trees instead of pine trees and would appreciate feedback on this decision. Next week, I'll work on actual art so you can see what some of the characters look like! I also want to ask the following: Do you prefer the pine trees or the fall trees? How do you feel about the affection/romance system, are there any changes you would like to see? Do you feel any particular way about the "Invite" option?

Pictures:

Week 4 (8/3/2024):

(scroll to the bottom for art) For this week I made the art sprites for some of the characters, Pokémon essentials is locked at a small resolution so I decided to go the pixel art route, also I decided to limit my color pallet for the most part, I think it looks better this way, here’s a rundown of what I have done so far and why I made them look the way they do in order of when I made them:

Player Character:

- I started with the MC, for my game, the main character will be locked to male for obvious reasons. For his design I decided to look at past male protagonist designs, they all seem to be either red-ish or blue-ish and their female counterpart takes the other color. For mine I made him red, I just thought it looked better. Now for the rest of his design, I guess I should state first as the developer for this h-game, I kinda made the MC a self-insert visually, I'm skinny, I'm South-Asian, I got brown skin, so the character reflects that, which is why he looks the way he does. The only thing that isn't the same is his size, he's quite short, while I'm tall IRL, that's just a fetish of mine, it’s my game so I’m going to put my fetishes in the game, hopefully, other people like it as well, I personally really like shota hentai, self-inserting into those characters is great, the idea of being kinda submissive to a woman, the size difference, the power difference, older woman being gentle with you, it's lovely and also has a nice adolescent vibe for the world which fits well with a pokemon protagonists anyways. Lastly, I was originally going to leave him without a hat but ended up giving him a Pokémon-style hat as all Pokémon protagonists to my knowledge have a hat with some kind of a Pokéball design on it.

Player’s Step-mom:

- Next, I made the mom! Now for some lore, I decided to make the mom for the player's step-mom, it's not for any prudish reasons, I’m not opposed to incest in a fully fictional game, but I think it'll make a more interesting story for the arc I have planned between the player and the mother. For her I made her different looking from the son enough for it to be noticeable and just tried to make her look "MILF-like", I was vaguely inspired by the mom from Pokémon S/V since that poke-mom is HOT as hell, I'm overall pretty satisfied also look at that fucking apron shading, I'm really proud of my pixel art here.

Rival Lara:

- Next, I made the players two rivals starting with Lara. Lara is kinda inspired by Silver from Pokémon G/S/C. I heard some people thought he was a girl back in the day because of his long hair and I think that's a cool idea for a “mean girl” like rival who also has her baggage and goes through her arc. I really like her design but I'm not sure about the colors, it's hard to do black and other dark colors with the color palette I decided to limit myself to, also hair over one eye just for edge.

Rival Willow:

- Next is Willow, your childhood friend, and friendly rival, she was based kinda on Mallow from Pokémon S/M, and her vibe just fits a childhood friend, she also has a sorta tomboyishness to her, that just works well imo, you might also notice her eyes look kinda off, her eyes are based on Lana from Pokémon S/M and that is because I decided to base Willow's mom off of Lana's mom from the anime, I think Lana's mom is HOT but don't find Lana herself very hot, plus there isn't enough substance behind the character of Lana's mom to write much for since her character in the anime isn't super fleshed out and is only in a handful of episodes, so I decided to make original characters based off of Mallow and Lana's mom sorta combining them Lana and Mallow to make Willow and making Willow's mom like Lana's mom. Hope that makes sense.

Professor Ivy:

- Lastly, I decided to make Professor Ivy from the anime, nothing much to say here, she's not an original character, I made her fucking hot though, the pixel artwork here on the coat is something I'm proud of to, I tried to make her super chill-looking.

Willow’s Mom:

- Willow's mom isn't done yet but I've blocked out some basic parts, it's messy and unpolished though, honestly, I'm not super satisfied with it even at this stage, I want her to have more originality since she's an original character as it did with Lara and Willow, those two characters are based actual characters but they aren't just copy paste the same, they have their things going on.

Anyway, I'm probably going to continue writing more stories next week. I want to release the game soon for at least up to the 1st gym and a bit with a good enough amount of content to jack off to, I'll see though. I'd love any critique you'll have for these designs as well.

IF YOU HAVE ANY CRITIQUES PLEASE GIVE CRITICISMS ON ANY OF THE DESIGNS NOW, IT’S EASIER TO CHANGE THEM NOW HERE IN THE EARLIER STAGES.

Week 5 (8/12/2024):

This week I decided to work on writing the early trust scenes. As stated way earlier a couple of posts back there will be what I’m calling a trust scene every 100 affection with some other requirements depending on the character that end with a sex scene (for example maybe one character may require you to have 100 affection with them, need to be spoken to in the evening). I decided to add an additional very early trust scene at 10 affection that has no sex scene but instead basically a primer that tells you a bit of the character's personality, the dynamic between you and this character, and maybe place a metaphorical seed for future stories, basically a vibe check for the player to see if they want to pursue this character at a low investment. So far I’ve written one for every character in the game so far (Mom, Willow, Willow’s mom and Professor Ivy). I won’t speak much on them to avoid spoilers but I’m very happy with them.

Some people may realize this post is 2 days late as I was at a family outing this weekend and wasn’t at my computer to make a post. This isn’t really relevant for the game but I’m really glad I was basically forced to take a small break away from the game, coming back I feel like I have so many new ideas, before I was kinda worried since I felt like I couldn’t think of much so I’m feeling pretty happy right now. I have a much clearer vision for the game. No pics this week and there probably won’t be for a bit since I’m working on a lot more story stuff and want to avoid spoilers but I'll still have some non-story stuff sprinkled here and there.

Week 6 (8/17/2024):

This week I've decided to take a break from writing since I was drawing blanks, in general I've been pretty low focus this week, bad sleep schedule meant I didn't get alot of shit done, but here is what I have.

New Town: Campus-ish Vibe

I've begun making the second town/area in the game, it's supposed to be a campus-like town. Again the game is meant to be non-linear but for people who arn't great at pokemon games or are new to the format this is encouraged to be the first place the player goes to. The current idea is to have the gym leader of this town be Roxxane (from gen 3) since in the game that she's from she's like a preppy teacher type but I’m open to suggestions if anyone feels another character might better fit this role or is like way hotter as a teacher in this area.

Thinking about Gameplay Mechanics

As I said earlier alot of this week was kinda wasted and it's partialy cuase I've just been kinda stuck on what to do with some of the gameplay. Since this game (like most h-games) will be updated being kind of barebones at first I want there to be a good amount of shit to do while the player waits for the next update. that being said I also don't want the player to be to over leveled. I don't have anything done yet but I am brainstorming a couple of ideas, like having side quests or battle tower like facilities to earn TM's, BP, Items, Protiens and stuff to control IV's and EV's, EXP candies etc. I've decided to slow down the EXP rate gained from defeating Pokémon. Instead, I'm thinking about using EXP candies as the primary way of leveling up. These candies could be obtained through battle tower-like activities or side quests, I'm going to be generous with them and see how it goes from there, there will be level caps while the game isn't fully out (which will probobly be removed once all 8 gyms plus the elite 4 and champion are all in game) so I'm not worried about the player being overleveled. I think it allowes the players to strategically allocate experience to their Pokémon, and also lets you select which pokemon you want to level up instead of needing to grind (which IMO is the worst part of pokemon games) and to store XP for later if you find a new pokemon you want to add to your team but is under-leveled. TLDR I just think it would make the game more fun. This system is still in the experimental phase, and based on player feedback, I might revert to the traditional leveling method or workshop it.

Streamlined Item Acquisition

I changed pokemon essentials normal way of handling gaining items (which is normally a long message that you cant skip with a jingle) and scripted in something quicker and unintrusive, since I plan on making systems that reward the player with a load of stuff it would really suck if you had to sit through that everytime you got something.

But yeah thats the end of this week, I'll try and get more sleep or focus up for next week.

Week 7 (8/24/2024):

This week, I focused on the first gym featuring Roxanne, the rock-type leader. I wanted to make the gyms resemble 2D Zelda-style dungeons. Once you play it, feedback on how successful this is would be great!

Gym Design:

I'm proud of the gym's design. The special "item" here is called the creatively named "Rock Smasher." Can you guess what it does? I’ve always disliked HMs in Pokémon games, so in my game, they’ll be items you unlock from gyms. I’m still figuring out how to stretch this concept across 8 gyms, especially since "cut" and "rock smash" function similarly by removing obstacles. I don’t want repetitive puzzle gimmicks, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Difficulty and Balancing:

The gym is challenging, so I've included a nurse halfway through. Defeat her, and she’ll permanently heal you when you go talk to her, it isn't a tough battle but you'll probobly already be worn down from the battles from befor to get to her. Roxxane, the gym leader, has 5 Pokémon, with a level cap of 10, and uses competitive moves and items. I worry this might be overkill, be tough, but players will have access to good moves and items early on, I'll definitly need feedback on balancing her and this gym in general once I release version 1.

Encounters:

I added some encounters to the starting town, that park area in the middle of town. it has:

- Litleo (Normal/Fire)

- Deerling (Normal/Grass) - Note: I edited deerling to learn the move Leafage earlier so she has access to a grass type move before lv 10 and can use grass STAB.

- Bidoof (Normal/Water) - Note: Bidoof is normally just Normal type; I changed it for balancing, I also gave it an early water type move for the same reason as deerling.

If I've done my job right, then the player should have access to enough pokemon to make a full team of 6 before the first gym. Just my reccomendation however, do not rush to the first gym right away, talk to other NPC's and try interacting with other sytems in game that'll give you access to other items, rare candies etc. that will help you alot.

Art:

About 3 weeks ago (week 4) I posted an unfinished version of artwork for Willow's mom, at the time I was pretty dissatisfied with it. I worked on it over this week and I'm really really happy with how it looks!

Development Progress:

Last week, I created a TODO list for version 1. Looking at it, I estimate about 4 weeks left in development. However, with college starting soon, my schedule might change. We'll see how it goes!

Week 8 (8/31/2024):

This week was kinda all over the place, no singular focus, but did get a pretty good amount of stuff done, so lets get into it:

Trust Events:

I wrote the level 0 trust events for Willow and Lara, nothing much to say here, I’m happy with the trust events I've done.

On my todo list of things to get done:

-Create level 1 trust events for all four women

-Develop level 2 events for at least two characters (if time allows)

-Create art for all the events

Besides that I'm a little concerned that players might initially dislike Lara since she's designed to be a jerk who gradually warms up to the player. However, I think her character will work out well in the long run so I'm not too worried.

Routes:

- Route2: I made route 2 that connects Cassiopeia Academy and Lyra Town. It's a simple forest with some places to explore for some items, a couple items locked behind needing the Rock smasher item. This will be the real “Early route” early grass types, rodents, and basic wildlife. It has one spot that's inaccessible without swim, and a crater spot to the left that I think looks cool, overall, I'm pretty happy without it turned out.

- Orion Cave: You might notice a cave entrance at the lower right of route 2, I’m calling this cave, “Orion Mine”, You won't actually be able to enter the mine until you get the Rock Smasher from Roxanne’s gym and you’ll see that there is a ladder in the bottom left going to a second floor, which won’t be accessible until you get whatever the equivalent of HM Swim will be in this game. For now, and for the rest of version 1.0 the ladder won't do anything, it’s just there to be something cool to look forward to in a future update.

- Route 1: Lastly is route 1, this is a swampier damp forest, it’s connected to the lower exit of Lyra town and is connected to route 2 with Orion mine, for now the exit at the south of route 2 won’t lead anywhere but I’m thinking that’s where the water type gym will be for a future update. I haven't put any encounters in any of these routes yet, but I’ll figure it out soon. I guess some behind the scenes stuff, this was the first route I made for the game, I ended up repurposing it as a route for Lyra towns bottom exit, since it felt like it would make more sense for a swampy route to connect to a more humid or watery area instead of Cassiopeia Academy, which is why it's named "route 1".

Side Stuff:

- Skip Time: I also added a feature where you can go to bed to pick what hour to skip time to. For now you need to pick the time in military time because math is annoying (so if you wanna skip to 7pm you need to input 7 + 12 which is 19). If you pick a time that’s before your current hour (so if it’s currently 12 o clock and you pick 1 am) then time will advance a full day first before going to that time you picked.

- Generic NPC: I’ve been drawing up a generic male and female NPC sprite, here is the male, still unfinished, I looked at Summer Memories (might be my favorite H-game) generic sprites and decided to go with something that looks like that.

Pictures

Week 9 (9/7/2024):

This week was actually pretty productive! I've been getting my sleep schedule in order and made a list of things I wanted to get done on sunday. Overall, I'm feeling pretty good about what I got done this week.:

New Mini-Game: Café Challenge

I started this week wanting to flesh out the side activities in the game. In the northeast part of town, you'll find three shops. One of these is a café where you can play a mini-game for money.

The game is straightforward but (imo) pretty fun:

-You have one minute to serve customers their specific coffee orders.

-Mess up, and you'll earn less.

-It's simple, but coding it took a long time!

I definitly want to code more simple minigames like this in the future sprinkled around the game, it was pretty enjoyable to code all of this together.

Gifts and Affection System

Next was making gifts, this is a dating sim after all, I made a bunch of things you can gift to the girls in game some being pokemon themed, I briefly mentioned gifts in a dev blog way back, but you can give gifts and how many affection points you net is dependent on the gift and the mood of the girl your gifting to, (the mood is highlighted in the gifts description), all gifts will always net some points but you can really min max it if your paying attention.

Gameplay Mechanics Updates:

- Trainer Scaling: Trainers now scale with your badge count.

- Wild Pokémon: They don't scale, maintaining a natural progression, and making it so you actually can feel yourself getting strong in comparison to the rest of the game world.

- Post-Battle Rewards (EXP): you will be rewarded EXP candy distributed in equivalent to normal battle EXP. (So if you fought a pokemon that would normally give you 300xp, you instead get like 3 exp candy XS').

- Post-Battle Rewards (BP): You will also get 1 BP (Battle Points) - a semi-important currency for Pokémon Centers and battle facilities.

- Phone Call Event: I added a phone call event that happens shortly after getting your starter, you will get a call from the Pokemon League Assistant briefing you on these mechanics.

- Evolution Changes: Removed trade evolutions replacing them with either normal level up evos or leveling up while holding an item. You won't be able to expierience this in the first build becuase of the level cap but y'know it's there for like the future and stuff.

World Building and Side Quests:

- Trainer Battles: Self explanitory, added trainer battles to route 2 and Orion cave (except route 1, since it's not really going to be a main route in version 1 and I don't want the player to have to much extra EXP in reserve as that could really throw off future balance)

- Route Encounters: I've added encounters to each routes. I was thinking of having one super rare encounter for each route (like 1 percent) but I'm not sure, I'd like feedback here, my worry is that it could really mess up team building and balance in the early game if the player gets super lucky, but it could also be super exiting to encounter a rare powerful pokemon, like that same feeling you get seeing a shiny. I was also thinking of locking rare pokemon behind quests, so that's an idea to, I'm not to sure yet.

- Created two side quests (aiming for at least 5 at release):

┕- Show max friendship Pokémon to an wise old man resting in Orion cave will give you a Riolu egg if you do so.

┕- Help a clothing designer in Lyra Town by gifting her a Sewaddle (a nod to Burgh from Pokémon Black and White who is a fashion designer in Unova).

These sidequests are pretty simple but I think that'll be fine for now since these are literally the first 2 sidequests, I also added a plugin to give you a UI to track your quests.

Thats about it, college starts on the 9th and I am not exited at all for that, hopefully it doesn't slow work down here.

Pictures

Week 10 (9/14/2024):

I got sick this week so I was not very productive, it happened on Thursday so I still got some stuff done those first 4 days. I also had my first full week of college and after doing that I don’t think it’ll slow progress too much? They'll definitely be a hit to progress but it should be fine overall. Luckily most of the bones of this project are done so I’m not worried.

I started the week wanting to make some better sidequests and I think I cooked up some pretty good stuff here is what they are:

- [Side Quest] Campus Clean Up Crew!

┕- The academy groundskeeper is trying to keep the area clean but it seems like litter-causing Pokémon like Grimer and Trubbish have made a mess of the campus. Help the groundskeeper clean up by catching or defeating these Pokémon.

- [Side Quest] It's just a burning memory…

┕- An old man in Lyra town's park is losing his memories and his grandson wants to recreate a photo album of his history as a pokemon trainer. With his grandson, Jhonny, photograph a specific battle in Jenkin's life that matched his old, faded photos.

- [Side Quest] Oh Dear, my Dear Deer!

┕- A student at Cassiopeia Academy is trying to write a paper on pokemon that change their forms depending on their environment, catch a deerling of at least two different forms then show her your Pokedex data.

- [Side Quest] Pompous Pumpkaboo

┕- This smug dick head named Peter has a pretty big Pumpkaboo and keeps bragging about it. It's time to put that Pompous, Pea-brained, Pathetic, Putrid, Pitiful, Pungent PETER back in his place by catching a bigger Pumkaboo.

- [Side Quest] Mini Macho Miner

┕- Jill is a scientist having trouble digging for minerals in the cave on her own and wants to recruit a Machop, a pokemon she seems to be strongly infatuated with... Anyways, catch one for her to help her out.

There is one more sidequest I want to add in the future I’m calling Trainer Quests. I think some of the generic Trainer Classes are kinda hot and want to make a side quest where you get a sex scene with that Trainer Class at the end. Basically a hook up, no affection meter for this character, and they don’t have further stages to go from, they aren't super complex or meant to be a love interest in any way. I want to start with the Lass, “Oh Dear, my Dear Deer” was originally supposed to be a Trainer Quest but it was wayyyy too easy, so I'm still brainstorming there.

Achievements:

I got an achievements plugin in, it only has the default achievements that the plugin comes with, I can now add my own achievements and stuff.

Held Items:

Held Items like Air balloons, berries etc are typically items I never use in a pokemon playthrough but are basically essential to pokemon team building when it comes to competitive team building. I was originally going to make it so all consumable held items are restored after each battle but that was very overpowered, with just one berry you could always restore some of your HP forever for every single battle from now on. So instead I think I’m going to make the item distribution pretty generous, when the held item is consumed if you have a spare in your bag it will automatically be replaced after battle (so if I have 5 sitrus berries in my bag and my starter uses their berry in battle, after the battle finishes they will automatically be holding a sitrus berry again without the hassle of needing to go into your bag and re-give it one and you will have 4 sitrus berries in your bag) and if anyone doesn’t like this I added an option in the game settings to turn this off.

Exp Crafting:

I made it so in the pokemon center you can craft EXP candies into different sizes so you can use your EXP Candy S’s to make a EXP Candy M. There is more crafting stuff I can do in the future but right now I have no ideas or plans for that.

Pokemon NPC Guy:

I added a guy who’s just there to be pretty convenient, you can change your pokemon’s nicknames here, relearn old moves, and craft here for free. It's also where you can exchange BP for random gifts. Next to him is also the normal pokemon shop guy who will sell you what you would expect.

Train:

There is a train in each downstairs area in every pokemon center. This is just fast travel, it’s that simple. I was originally going to make it so you need to go to the area before you can fast travel there but I thought back to my time playing Pokemon Crystal Clear, which will let you fly anywhere and it was really fun flying to somewhere I’ve never been to, having no idea what was around me and kinda just traveling around and eventually I’d stumble across another place I recognize again and it was just pretty cool, it won’t do much in the first version since the only two towns are Lyra Town and Cassiopeia Academy but it’ll grow with time.

Time:

When you go into any area with a name tag, it’ll also announce the current time next to it.

And that was this week, good lord, I hate colledge so fucking muuuuch.

Pictures

Week 11 (9/21/2024):

Another week, more work, I don’t think there's a real theme for this week. I'm at the point where I'm trying to finish up my check list and I think I’m making pretty good progress.

Streamline:

I decided to streamline how events work when talking to a love interest. The original system was made from testing and pushing RPGMaker’s eventing/scripting system to see what works resulting in some spaghetti code where if not dealt with now would have been a real pain in the ass later.

Daily Reset Event:

Make it so some events/variables etc reset at 12:00 at night, this is mainly so the player can’t do some brain dead gameplay of spamming stuff with a love interest or farming a material and breaking the in-game economy. There's a quote that “players will optimize the fun out of a game”, so i’m just trying to avoid that.

School Exam Minigames:

Just some fun minigames/plugins I added to the schools, there are two teachers on the second floor of the school in Cassiopeia Academy, you can take a test and get rewarded BP. The first is a “Who’s that pokemon” Style quiz and the second is a Type matchup quiz, both self explanatory. I’ll have a more battle-related facility next week, so I don’t want anyone to think this is the ONLY thing you can do here, these are just meant to be silly fun things you can do here to kill time.

General Store:

The general store is a store in Lyra town. Like animal crossing where the Nook shop has new stuff every day (at least in new leaf, that's the only one i played) there is new stuff to buy in the shop and it refreshes daily, the shop is also slightly discounted as well. You can talk to the cashier to also get your normal pokemart stuff. The shop also can exchange BP for gifts. I think I mentioned this in another blog but gifts all have their own specialized moods that make them prime for gifting when the Love interest you're gifting to is in said mood (though all will be happy to get a gift no matter what, you just get bonus points for lining up the mood with the gift correctly). (Moods of LI’s reset daily). You can spend 230 BP for 10 random gifts or 23 BP for 1 random gift. This is just so you can save up on random gifts over time for any specific occasion when needed. I also had some fun writing the cashiers dialogue, I might make a event for her later in another update, probobly not a fully blown love intrest but maybe some side quest for a sex scene or something, definitely not for 1.0 though, I'm already biting alot more than I can chew.

Pokemon Center BP:

In general I like the idea of BP returning random things, you kinda gotta work with the scraps luck gives you. You can roll for the following: Berries, usable items (So potions, ethers, revives etc.), held items and pokeballs, each have different prices for BP cost. I think it’s a fun system, though I won’t really know till’ people test it out. I think it will have a good gameplay loop of playing/battling for BP then exchanging that BP for items that should make your battling better, which then loops back into getting better items. It still needs some work for sure, I’m playing with the probability code and stuff to make it not frustrating which is really most of the work im doing when it comes to this system, when your dealing with randomness in games there is a fine line between frustration and fun, it's definitely the top priority to finalize next week since I feel like i’m so close to making it feel good. But yeah, the framework is there and I'm feeling pretty good about it. BTW I totally get being kinda skepticle of the system but I do think its got potential, if it sucks, thats fine, I can easily change it to a more traditional BP system in another update.

Mood Character Portraits:

I already mentioned moods, the player needs to be able to read the mood of the character their talking to as that's a pretty big part of the romance system i’ve coded so I got started on making some art, here is the Mom characters portraits:

That's about it for this week, soon enough I think I’m going to get to the point where coding and eventing are done, and when that happens it’ll be time for art, sex scenes etc, I want to get coding and eventing done by next week, but if i'm being realistic it’ll take at least 2 to 3 more, we’ll see though maybe if i really go on that grind i can get it done. Speaking of art I’m not fully sure of the artstyle I'll do, most of y’all will have seen the character portraits in pixel art. I think that’s fine for portraits but I think the sex scenes themselves should be drawn, I do wonder if I can pull it off. I can draw pretty well IMO but when it comes to drawing on my IPad the slipper surface compared to rough drawing paper is so weird, I can't get used to it. I have ordered a “Paper-like” screen protector for it so hopefully that helps, we’ll see, worst case scenario the sex scenes are also pixel art, which i’m pretty confident in my own pixel art ability to make that look sexy.

Pictures

Week 12 (9/28/2024):

I’m writing this after a 4 hour college class, my ass hurts from sitting so long and my brain feels like mush so apologies in advance if the writing quality for this ones meh.

BP RNG:

Last week I introduced BP and made it so you could use it to roll for random items, and while keeping that option there I decided to make an additional shop section so the player can have more control over what items they want on their team. The shop refreshes every day, just like the other shops, so if you don’t like it, it's not the end of the world. I haven't added it yet but i’m also thinking of having a few permanent items you can always buy there that are universally useful like a more standard shop, i just need to figure out what those items would be. I still don't know how players will react to it until v1.0 is out but I think this’ll alleviate any frustration the system could have made.

Mapping:

This one was far less exciting, some of the maps were mapped in a way where you could see the black void if you walked too close to the edge, which fixed that. Was a sort of annoying fix since it also meant having to redo the coordinates for where doors and stuff take you to every map that needed fixing.

Gifting:

I got so used to the placeholder code I had in place for gifts that I completely forgot to implement it until now, the code was pretty complicated and took a lot of days and trial and error, definitely should not have held this off. I needed to splice the text at the end using a “/” in the description to see the type of mood the gift complemented then comparing that to the girl's current mood but yeah, it’s now done. Also added the unique dialogue for a girl's reaction to a gift vs a really good one and all.

Pokemon Training Institute:

This is the big building in Cassiopeia Academy. It works like so, first you pick the reward you want, your options being money or Exp candy, then you pick which level you want to fight against, starting from level 5 and going up in increments of 10 (so 5, 15, 25 etc all the way up to 85). You will then fight a team of 6 to earn your reward, if you lose you’ll still get a pity prize but it won't be that much. You can't access the higher levels until you earn badges, and the amount of your reward scales with the

Price Balancing:

Some of the prices for the game were out of whack and would have really screwed up balancing so I went through most relevant items and fixed that.

More Achievements:

Added a lot of romance related achievements, like ones for gifting, saying the best possible thing, getting romantic partners, meeting LI’s etc, adding a couple more related to battle next week.

Character Busts:

Drew a couple more character busts for more character expression variation and a generic one for female NPC’s.

Starting the Lass side quest:

Nothing much to say here, I started it, I had some fun, definitely the highlight of the week, gonna finish it next week. For those who didn’t read that blog or don't remember, some female pokemon trainer classes will have sex cg’s you can earn through a side quest with them.

And that was this week, I’m genuinely so tired. I’ve been practicing more with the Ipad, I feel like I'm relearning how to draw but I think I’ll be able to do it eventually. The paper texture screen protectors unfortunately didn't give me the tactile texture feel I was looking for but that's fine.

No pictures this week, I’m tiiiiiired.

Week 13 (10/5/2024)

This week was a little slower, I've been realizing that I'm running out if stuff to do that's eventing and programming, which is good, means the rest of the work will be art and writing which I personally find a lot more relaxing, ill touch on that a little later though.

I started with moving the exit for route 2 transitioning to Cassiopeia Academy further to the side, it's Always kinda bothered me how this route only required like 2 trainer battles if you chose not to explore, alot of the more interesting parts of it are so out of the way, besides i have an new idea for the upper side for a future update so it'll all work out in the end.

Next was adding some permanent items to Lyra Towns BP shop, I decided to go with the miracle seed, mystical water and charcoal which all boost grass, water and fire moves. I made them a little more expensive than usual since it's The first towns items and im still kinda iffy on it, the problem with trying to balance items like this is that most trainers don't have items besides the important ones which really gives the player a leg up, I'm open to different ideas for these.

I went back to the battle facility in Cassiopeia I made last time and added some bp rewards, it's pretty simple, every 5 battles there you get 5 bp.

Re-challenging gyms: in the gym you can now talk to the pokemon statue to initiate a re challenge, you can also pick what level you want the challenge to be set at, how many options you have is dependent on your badge count, in 1.0 you'll be able to rechallenge roxanne's as level 10 which is with no badges, and level 20, which is with 1.

Sprites: just some overworld sprites I worked on, I've been using placeholders this entire time so it's about time I got started on them, right now only the player done but I'll get more finished.

Texting: i found this really cool plugin on Eevee Expo that adds texting to the game, it has support for emoji's, custom pfp's, sending images, groupchats and all kinda wild stuff its cool. I'm still debating on how I'll implement it but I have a few ideas. I've been playing ZZZ alot and that game has alot of texting between missions, trust events etc so I think I'll use that as the main inspiration. I've started adding it to the Lass quest.

Lass quest: I was working on this but stopped halfway feeling a little confused on how to continue it so I have a question for yall. How should the player interact with this quest/work for it? I planned on making it with her needing. Should it be through battle, purchasing an item, fetch quests, or should it just be go from point at to point b and read the dialogue for the quest to progress through it like a side storyline or something. That's originally what it was shaping up to be but I stopped wondering how fun it'd be. So yeah I need advice here, would it be fine if it was just a side story with good writing or do you want some interaction there, and if so, what kind?

Collectibles: I didn't add anything but I want to, I've always found stuff like the moron seeds and random stuff you find in games fun as long as they feel low pressure and not mandatory. It's fun for me and I'd like some thoughts on it.

That's all for now, another more light week. College has really taken a way bigger hit on my productivity than I expected, it's not even a time thing but just in terms of feeling drained energy wise. I'm also honestly getting kinda worried for future weeks since all that's going to be left after a while is writing and art, and since I don't want spoilers it's going to mean a lot of “I wrote and drew this week” which would probably suck to read.

Pictures

Week 14 (9/12/2024):

I’m going to take a break from pokemon Love Link. It won’t be a long one (only 1 week) and I promise I have 0 plans or intentions of abandoning this project, it will come out however I feel like I really just need to take a small break to refresh and come back to the project better with everything going on. I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting less and less stuff done and have been facing creative blocks over and over again, I just couldnt think of anything to work on and it was really frustrating, I already kinda knew this from the past weeks but ignored it but it was so obvious this week with the little work I got done. So lets get into it.

Lass Quest: Not even done, 2/3's done and I do know how I want to finish it but still, it's pretty bad that over 7 days I didn’t finish the sidequest

1 art scene: I’ll be a little more fair to myself for this one, I kept restarting my finished pieces over and over again trying to get better at drawing on an Ipad and trying to find the right artstyle for this game. It definitely won't take me multiple days to finish just one scene. Here it is, it's very sketchy and messy which I amn’t sure about. I think it looks kinda artsy and cute, the foreground and background are obviously unfinished but overall I like it. I especially like that I only used 5 colors for the whole thing, making a limited color pallet work is always fun. There are absolutely things I dont like about the piece but I’d rather hear yall’s raw thoughts on the artstyle and not risk influencing what you see, y’know? I know that artists are usually their worst critics so i’d like to see the opinion of someone who’s play the game. How’d you feel about this scene. I tried a second style two just to see what it'd look like so theres that to, yall can lemme know your thoughts. If i'm taking a week off I can experiment with different styles while im on break so let me know if you want me to try some different style out and I'll see.

Pictures

Week 15 (9/28/2024):

I was really not exited to write this article, and I want folks to understand that I really didn't want to cancel the game. This is 5 months of my work going down the drain thats just going to be unused now, (I am releasing the assets on github but thats pretty much it). After alot of consideration, I've decided to cancel Pokémon Love Link. I know this is disappointing as hell, and I genuinly, I'm sorry, I can't imagine that staying up to date with a week dev blog only for it to be abruptly canceled is fun.

There where a bunch of factors that led to this decision. Between classes, assignments, and trying to maintain a healthy sleep schedule, I've found myself with increasingly less time and energy to dedicate to development. Money was another one, you just straight up cant monetize a project like this without getting nuked, I made the game innitially not caring but I don't know, I'm not a kid anymore, I have responsabilities and stuff, money is something I have to consider, money's been getting tighter with my family to which kinda puts a but of pressure on me, so spending so much of my day developing a free pokemon fan game for fun just seemed less realistic. Also the legal risks of developing a Pokémon fan game, especially one with adult content, has been had been kinda on my mind. Even without monetization, the project could face takedown notices from The Pokemon Company, potentially erasing months of work. I've also been running into various technical limitations with RPG Maker XP that have made implementing certain features more challenging than expected. While these weren't crazy on their own, combined with everything else, they've contributed to mounting pressure that's been affecting my motivation and creativity.

I mentioned it earliar but I'm releasing all the assets on github, you can try it if you want I guess, it has no sex scenes and alot of the dialogue still doesnt have character busts, theres alot just missing and incredibly unpolished but its there, if anyone ever would want to pick it up to continue to develop there more than free to.

I'm not leaving game development entirely. I'm currently prototyping a new project - a 3rd person beat-em-up inspired by a pretty old game called Oni.It's a completely different genre from pokemon, so I totally understand if folks arn't intrested. Thank you all for your support throughout this journey. The feedback helped drive this project forward for as long as it did, and I'm grateful for every comment and suggestion you've shared. Even without the feedback just chatting about random shit about pokemon and the anime and things we liked was fun.

-Luximora

[GitHub Link: https://github.com/Luximora/PokemonLoveLink]