Let's... Make a dating sim!

Okay, seriously, now. Look at the Let's Play subforum. Just look at it. It's all Hongfire up in there, in the best of ways. Now, I know several of you are against the whole genre, and that's just fine-- you can move on and ignore this thread. However, I get the distinct feeling that there are several people with various artistic talents-- at the very least, I know some of you can write the hell out of your LPs. So, I'm just going to throw this idea out: WHY DON'T WE JOIN FORCES AND CREATE A DATING SIM LIKE NONE OTHER (...except possibly Hatoful Boyfriend, which can never be matched)?

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Ren'py, and if not, here's the link for you all to peruse:
http://renpy.org/

Katawa Shoujo, after all, got its humble start in a 4chan thread which began as a joke, and you all saw what it's become (and, well, regardless of whether that's a good or bad thing, the result was still pretty extraordinary).

So, I just want to see if there's any interest. If nobody else is interested, I would be happy to lead this project, but if somebody else would rather take command, by all means, I'd be thrilled to help out with artwork/writing/voice acting.

How about a little brainstorming?

I work for EA and as such I would have to get permission blah blah my involvement could endanger the project so I will instead cheer for you guys from the sidelines.

My company does not forbid me for working on personal projects, so long as I don't use any code/assets that would be considered infringement. If you want a programmer, I'm in.

I know I'm still a n00b, but, if you ever need a writer...

Yeah, I know about the page, but I meant more that the game itself came to life entirely based on the love and commitment of a few, humble forum-posters.

I actually do have an idea in mind, but I thought it would be best to keep it open and not try to force my view point down anyone else's throat, buuut... Hell, why not.

All right, so, given that this is a dating sim we're looking at, what I've had in my head for a while now was this idea I tentatively like to call The Pity Sex Club. It revolves around four college girls who, having noticed the fact that they are surrounded by a fairly sorry assortment of love-deprived young men, decide to combine their powers and pick a target who they will seduce as a sort of... Act of charity. No idea how they came to form this club. Maybe they got drunk and thought it was a brilliant idea. This will need more thought and backstory for it to be at all believable, unless we just want to go for straight-up wacky/parody here.

In any case, the Pity Sex Club consists of four members. One of them is the seductress, and the character you play as for the most part. She is basically in charge of actively pursuing whichever target the player decides to focus on. I've tentatively named her Talia. There is a leader character, the one who orchestrates all of the various movements and runs the whole show. She's a hard-ass intellectual with the obligatory heart of oh-so-sensitive gold underneath, and I thus dub her Helenne. There's the spy character, Dana, who is something of a guy's girl and a bit of a tomboy. She's the one who interacts with the men on a "friendly" basis to find out all of their interests, hobbies, turn-ons, turn-offs, whatever, so that they can have something to work with when Talia swoops in for the big seduction. I've always envisioned her as a lesbian character (potentially dateable?). Finally, we have Maxie, the adorkable, naive, enthusiastic genki geek. She's a cuckoocloudlander type, but she has mean hacking skills and the like, and as such, is the group's other venue of gathering intel on the guys, by reading their secret e-mail/chat exchanges, and finding other relevant data on them for Talia.

All right, so that's the girls. There's tension in that Helenne is actually interested in one of the potential "pity" candidates (the professor), Dana has a slight thing for the protagonist, blah blah blah, drama.

Anyway, the guys that I've dreamt up for this include a depressed male professor (I hereby dub him the ANGIE ROUTE) who is bitter over a recent divorce. Professor Luke Tanner. Next up is the typical nerd option, Edward, who is hopelessly stuck in... Everything that every nerd trope indicates. See the Shall We Date? Konkatsu For Marriage thread if you want to get an idea. We have Brian, who is a bit of an arrogant twat-- he's attractive, self-possessed, yaddayaddayadda, but is holding out on sex because he hasn't met anyone "worth his time". He's thrown into the pool by the girls as a challenge, rather than a pity thing. And finally, we have Jakey, the "I'm such a playa!" type, who is actually utterly, utterly hopeless at picking up girls. He's the type to throw sexual innuendo into every conversation ever, wear hideous Hawaiian T-shirts and sunglasses indoors, and try to pick up anything that moves, with little success.

All right, so I imagine this game to be, more than anything, a deconstruction of dating sims, rather than play it straight. I'd love for it to include minigames of some description (for instance, involving Maxie's hacking), which have an outcome on the plot, different, very calculated seduction "stages" and techniques, various meetings by the club to discuss the progress on their mission, etc. The way I see it playing out is, at first, Helenne introduces the club to all four potential candidates. (Or, rather, three of them, and one of the other members insists that the professor be thrown in as well, which Helenne reluctantly agrees to.) Research is conducted (Talia accompanies Maxie while she does her info-gathering, and... I don't know how we'd handle Dana's side of things-- maybe switch to her viewpoint?). After this part, which will, of course, still include dialogue choices, minigames, stat-building, whatever, you begin to actively pursue the dudes. Talia interacts with them all, while the club carries on working in the background of things.

I've always pictured this game taking place at an art school, but that's just my own personal bias. I simply feel it allows for more kookiness, but I'm obviously open to pretty much anything.

Also, for each guy, there is going to be a rival/cockblock of some sort, because, c'mon, this is an otome game. So each of the guys has another love interest of some description (or, in Jakey's case, a terrible self-proclaimed "wingman" who attempts to get the protagonist for himself),

I don't know, the idea is certainly nowhere near developed enough by any means, and there are lots of issues which would need to be worked out, but I'll throw this out here anyway! I tend to lean toward realistic games, within this genre (although, haha, Hatoful Boyfriend, I never knew you'd turn out to be so awesome!), so I'd rather try to avoid throwing in supernatural/sci-fi/fantasy kind of stuff, but hell, that's just a personal thing.



TL;DR, I HAVE GAME IDEAS

But, Elyscape, I would love to hear your idea! Like I said, I'd be happy being involved with anything. You all are such great people.

Ooooooh, you work for EA? One of my closest friends works in the UK division. I'm always "SO TELL ME MORE SIMS NEWS" and he's always "DEAR GOD, SHUT UP ABOUT THE SIMS".

So, Angie... TELL ME MORE SIMS NEWS.
No, but seriously, your support is fully appreciated!

Huzzah! Let's see how this thread progresses, and if it sounds like it's to your liking, by all means!

I'm a huge n00b, too, don't fret! The more, the merrier. The way Katawa Shoujo did it was, it had a different path-writer and artist for each route, which I think is a fabulous idea, as it really gives the various characters a different, unique feel from one another. I think it would be fun to handle this one the same way!

I heartily endorse this idea, and would be willing to contribute either writing or really amateurish art. Can't code worth a damn, but have lots of free time lately while waiting for back surgery that may never happen.

I hope this is going to be an original idea though, and not a bad clone ripoff of another game, or something attempting to be Katawa Shoujo 2 (which 4LS actually is discouraging). Just to get the creative types to come out of the woodwork, I propose we start taking suggestions for setting, characters and tone. Are we going for comedy? Serious? I'd definitely say college age (to avoid any pedo bear appearances) and dealing with internet/gaming/nerdy things (which I could lend embarrassing experience for). Also, if it's involving vampires and werewolves like a Twilight thingy I'm out, but would totally be on board for anything with zombies (people love them some zombies).

The creative ideas this thread will spawn I can already imagine being awesome, even if the project doesn't actually come to fruition.

EDIT: BTW the previous two posts were not there when I composed this and "Pity Sex Club" sounds only "meh ok" IMO. I could see it offending part of a potential audience if it's too desperately leaning on "pity", and possibly implies it being more than just a "dating sim" and bordering on porn (which KS definitely did a good job avoiding).

Yeah, let's steer very clear of anything resembling Twilight, for my sanity!

Anyway, I definitely do not want to make anything that resembles another game. I want this to be an original production, with elements thrown in by everybody who has an interest in the project, so that we all have something to feel we really contributed to the end result. I think, for tone, humor is the way to go-- just look at the snark in the various LPs. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard. Although, we could pull a Hatoful Boyfriend and go with an idea that SEEMS absurd on the surface, but actually turns out to be thought-provoking and tragic. But then, we'd just be mimicking Hatoful to an extent, so we'll see.

I vote that we have a large pool of characters. In my idea up above, I only mentioned four potential candidates, but I think we should have more. Everyone likes to find their "type" in a dating game, after all, even if you're just playing it for the lulz. Typically, you at least need a nerd option of some description, a jock option, a "cool guy that everyone wants" option, a ladies' man type, an older man type, a younger dude choice, the rebel/bad boy... I'm surely missing some tropes here, but yesh. That's if we're going with the standardized formula, anyway.

Anyway, I'm with you! I think college-age is perfect, and the more internet/nerdy in the game, the better.

Alternate idea that just came to me all of a sudden-- DATING GAME SET IN A GAMING FORUM.
I'm serious!

Please see the edit I made while you were potentially posting that as a response.

Like I said, I'm not particularly stuck on that idea at all, it was just a random concept I thought up a while ago, which certainly needs a hell of a lot of work and has some major drawbacks. As far as the sexual aspect goes, however, I do really want to avoid any porn/hentai. I always imagined any sex to be simply implied/happen off-screen. Whichever idea we end up going with, I suggest we stick to this. Katawa Shoujo handled the sex pretty gracefully, but I still managed to be fairly squicked out (particularly during the shed scene in Emi's route, and the masturbation scene in Rin's). So... Let's try and keep it tasteful, folks!

And I agree that the "pity" aspect is a bit of a hard sell-- my thoughts on the matter were that, during each route, the heroine would OMGz DISCOVER THE TRUE DEPTHS OF THEIR SOUL AND REALIZE THAT SHE'S BEEN A TERRIBLE PERSON TO BE SO SHALLOW AND GET INVOLVED IN SUCH A HORRIFIC ENDEAVOR. Basically, the equivalent of a guy in a cheesy rom-com who dates a nerdy chick as a bet, and then falls madly in love with her, blah blah blah. I figured that at the end of some routes, at least, there'd need to be a reveal of the club's actions, followed by disgust on the behalf of the men, at which you need to make a last ditch attempt to win them back.

But anyway, like I said, lots of big problems with that idea.

Sooo, moving on to other potential situations for a dating game:

Internet dating? (Has anyone here seen the Japanese drama, "Densha Otoko"? It revolves around a huge geek who saves a stunning girl from a drunken pervert on a train, and then begins asking for advice on how to win her heart. It's absolutely lovely, and has a lot of hilarious pop culture/gaming/anime/internet humor. I'd love it if we could adopt a similar tone for this. The reason I bring it up is that, whenever somebody else on the forum posts during the show, we are immediately shown a shot of them in front of their computer, each with a very individualized look/bedroom/style/etc, as they speak what they're typing in a voice-over. You get to know the twenty-something posters pretty fast this way, and you never feel like you're stuck reading walls of text.)

There's a cute little dating sim that involves meeting somebody who you play against in an MMO, called RE:Alistair. However, I think they could have done a lot more with the idea. You only had three candidates, the game was pretty short, you didn't have a lot of interaction (and NONE during the MMO scenes themselves, which would have been hilarious!).

Anyway, if we're going to put the internet at the center of this, we'll need some kind of hook beyond "the internet".

Shutting up now! What sort of situations would you guys like to see in your ideal dating sim??

Ok, time to put on a project leader type hat here and mention that the story needs to have appeal and some sort of happy ending.

Unfortunately, that idea doesn't seem to fit either criteria IMO Elyscape. We don't want people depressed by the story we're telling, or to be duped that their whole dating/romance adventure was a mirage (hallucination).

The ideas at the beginning stage should focus on basics, like I said previously work with 3 things in mind, setting, characters, and tone. We also should isolate whether it will be a "first person" story, where the reader is the protagonist, or not. Anything else, including detailed descriptions of story, interactions, or branches IMO clearly falls into cart before horse. I also don't think we want to get too descriptive early on, because then it'll be everyone contributing and wading through huge walls of text.

I also think the first things to concentrate on are communication (IRC?) and whether or not Lum would actually allow us to work on this here, since it is his playground we're using ya know.

I like this idea a lot, actually. I'm a sucker for twist endings, and I appreciate bleak, existential storylines. I actually think it's one of the reasons everyone was pleasantly surprised by Hatoful. If it had just been a wacky game featuring pigeons and homicidal partridges, it would have been funny, but that's it. However, the direction it took with BBL was just mind-blowing, due to the fact that it didn't pull any punches with the tragic storyline.

I also really enjoy the idea that he's seeing everybody in his world as part of this twisted school-world landscape he's created in his head. I think we'd need to present a few female options for him to choose from-- all of them would turn out to be visions, but the ending for each would be different to some degree? Hmm. Not sure how that would work. I suppose we could always just make it a one-girl game, so it would be less of a dating sim and more of a visual novel.

I'd be up for this! So do you see the rest of the people in his dream school world as being the various residents/nurses/doctors at the asylum, but in alternate-reality forms?

You know, though, the part that drew me in about this idea was the counselor/asylum/hallucination aspect, and made me think-- how about a dating game, played fairly straight, set in a psychiatrist ward? What would you guys think about that? I'm someone who-- personal revelations over here-- has encountered a couple of psychological disorders, and I've actually spent a month in a rehabilitation facility (eating disorder, natch-- I'm much, much better now, this was about ten years ago), and the atmosphere in there can sometimes almost be likened to a very strange sort of boarding school. I met people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, someone who CLAIMED to be suffering from amnesia (though there was a lot of room for doubt on this one), suicidal depression, severe autism, addictions... And despite our extreme differences in age/personalities, there was an odd sense of camaraderie present throughout it all. And, rather unsurprisingly, despite the very serious reasons we were all there, there WAS something of a high school "Who do you have a crush on?!" kind of atmosphere. I even had a roommate. She was a fifty-something-year-old alcoholic who wanted to set me up with her son.

Just a thought, another seed, but it could be interesting!

I definitely do think there is appeal to be found in Elyscape's idea-- plenty of visual novels are dark, and successful. I DO agree that there should be the option of happy endings, however, because if we're going for multiple endings, then it wouldn't make sense to have them all getting you to commit suicide.

And yes, I apologize to Lum if we're being disrespectful, I'd be happy to find an alternate venue for the discussion of this idea if you have a problem with it! I just thought it was a good place to propose the idea, join forces, and then, once we're assembled, we can move elsewhere.

In any case, I think if we're going to go with a dark plot, we should at least make it darkly humorous at points, and, like I mentioned earlier, allow for happy endings as well (even if they are not the "true" ending).

An example of a very, very dark visual novel is the following:
http://www.gamezone.com/downloads/train-of-afterlife-demo

And another dark dating sim, by the same creators, is:
http://zeiva.net/otome/x_note_story.html

But, you know, for the psych ward idea, I just had a thought for the hook. What if, as a way of bringing the various people in the unit together, they assembled nightly to play some sort of live action roleplaying game to relieve their boredom in the clinic? As such, we could throw in some blurring of the lines between their RP (and the characters they choose), and allow for "in-game" antics to occur? We could also keep it light-- just because you're in an asylum of some sort, doesn't mean that everyone's grim all the time. When I was in the center, I threw an impromptu New Year's Eve party. Seriously. We stole some speakers from the computer lab in there, hooked up an iPod, had our relatives bring in snacks during visiting hours, and even toasted one another... With our little plastic pill glasses. It was actually a lot of fun!

All what now?

Here let me google that for you

I don't get it. There's nothing about hongs in that link.

Okay, guys, let's keep the snark in this thread directed at pigeon-dating and badly translated dating sims! Let's keep things productive and not let this derail. Not trying to be all Mary Poppins over here. Just don't want this thread to go to crap.

Although, teehee, all the same.

Broken Forum: The Dating Sim

You are a user that has just joined the forum's ranks, for whatever reason. Is this just another place for you to chat... or an arena for your love?

But jokes aside, I'm not entirely sure about some of this. The idea behind Seeing Someone New would have to be executed really well in writing for it to not come off as just a more complicated "it was all just a dream" - see Shutter Island as an example of a similar kind of thing done poorly. If we want to invoke the pigeons, I actually really didn't like the fact that Anghel's route was (probably) just a massive shared hallucination, because it rendered everything that actually happened in it moot. Of course, that could just be my perception.

Judging by the people I've so far seen around these parts, I would suggest that comedy would come more easily. I really like the mental images that "zombie dating sim" gives me. ("How did you know that was my favourite kind of brain!?")

I think part of the question is how realistic it needs to be. The best dating sims from an entertainment standpoint are far from the most realistic ones, but how far would that go? A dating sim where you are a medium and you can bring someone back to life with the power of your love? A dating sim where you are on the police force, and you need to balance keeping your job with making your romantic advances? An underwater, mermaid dating sim? A dating sim on venus?

I ABSOLUTELY agree with you on finding Anghel's route problematic for just that reason. All the other routes and endings tied in well with the other happenings and events in other routes, while Anghel's just cancelled everything out. As hilarious as it all was, it didn't make as much sense to me.

You know, this IS the second time someone's mentioned zombies, and while you were kidding for the most part, I do love the tension formed by end of the world scenarios. Wouldn't necessarily have to be zombies, but I'm picturing a sort of Shaun of the Dead ordeal-- holed up in close quarters with other survivors, and interacting with them as you try and save your skin. Choices you make can end up in various teammates' deaths or zombiefication... While still maintaining that Edgar Wright dark humor.

My only gripe is that the zombie thing has been done to death. It HASN'T been done in this context, though, so, let's hear more opinions.

But, okay, the Z-word aside, who's up for some kind of "facing the apocalypse-- let's find lurrrrve!" scenario?

I'm down for a writer position, and possibly a coding position (I've done some HTML and some light modding for the Sims 3)

The zombie idea apocalypse kinda sounds interesting. I remember someone in the Shira Oka thread suggested the developers make a game in the same town but with a zombie apocalypse - that sounded like an intriguing idea.

Or maybe we could do a fantasy dating sim (fantasy is my writing specialty)? Most of the dating sims I've seen take place in modern day high schools; although three Shall We Date? games are historical fantasy and there's this series called Fantasia which is just brilliant.

Perhaps a school setting in a fantasy world. Schools have been done to death, but maybe a sort of warrior/magic academy part Magical Diary, with elves, dwarves (at least a type of dwarves that are as tall as humans), dragon/human hybrid races. I'll brainstorm a bit tomorrow, when I have more free time.

If this game ended up going down that path I'd have to pull out pretty quickly or else risk going completely OTT. Fantasy kills me, because I just can't stop going into more and more and more depth. When you start researching what you can of plate tectonics just because you want to make sure that the mountains in the world you're creating are actually appearing in places that make sense for mountains to appear, you know you've gone way too far.

It'll be fine, fantasy is all about stuff not making a lot of sense. Suspension of belief and all that.

ALSO, had a mini thought a while ago - how about we ask the player a question or two at the very beginning with a choice between A B C and D. Afterwards, we have a prologue, yadda yadda, and based on the answer/s given, they are thrown into one of four different scenarios, e.g. if they pick A, they end up in a fantasy dating sim. If they pick B, they end up in a zombie apocalypse dating sim. C for I dunno, a sci fi dating sim? And D maybe the traditional modern day high school. Whatever makes the cut. I realise this would be A LOT of work, but it allows for the writers to concentrate on the setting they like best, and would make for a unique game depending on just one choice.

I've been keeping a few dating sim ideas kind of close to my chest in case I ever got on my ass and made them. I figure they aren't as programming intensive compared to other ideas I've had, and would be a good way to learn some cheap tool. I have game maker for example, though that's scripting more than programming.

Do I share them to be ridiculed as unoriginal and boring, which would be pretty accurate? Or, do I save my ego and live in delusion that procrastination won't win in the end and maybe I'll make as much as a whole thousand of dollars with my brilliance as donation ware?

Yeah, what Elyscape said. If this actually happens, we'd want to just go for one game first.

I think it would be more important to get people working together to make something coherent than it is to go Allie and create ALL the games just yet.

No no, please do share. Even if they were to be unoriginal and boring, which I kind of doubt, it would be much better to use a simple idea to see if we could actually go anywhere before anyone got up to make a big fancy thing.

One is set at an prestigious (and old) private boarding school overlooking a lake in a small new england town*. Taking place over three years, the player manages scholastics, dating, class politics, and choosing whether to investigate a series of murders that puts the town on edge throughout her stay. It may or may not include a dark cult, magic, fishmen and the town disappearing into a sinkhole in a possible finale. The game focuses on the crunchy sim and adventure aspects in addition to story, allowing the player to use skills, items, and magic, to influence characters, events, and solve puzzles.

Unique features (??) include each character in the game has an in depth history providing a template and reasoning for multiple possible roles within the story, allowing the narrative to be semi-randomized for each play through. In one game, a character may help you, in another they may not, or they may actively work against you even being the primary agent of the Big Baddie!

I had a list of endings I need to recreate. I guess I deleted the file while cleaning out old folders. Still, even the happy endings would have some tragedy since it's based on a murder mystery investigation concept.

Pros:

• Crunchy sim and adventure aspects.
• The same overarching narrative but heavily branching plot based on randomized elements and player choices. Think Alpha Protocol lite.
• And of course, insanity and the old ones.

Cons:

• Cthulhu is a bit cliche now.
• Including magic makes it sound too much like Harry Potter.
• And there's some board game that combines school and Cthulhu already.

The other one is pretty similar, except involving a school for the children of super heroes. It would have a mystery, a focus on significant crunchiness, and randomized elements.

*That's pretty much a dead giveaway isn't it?

Edit: I know nothing about dating sims, so this may all be passe. I didn't develop characters because I wanted to wait until I got something up and running to handle the game-ish aspects in particular and figured I'd leave that up to writers if I ever got around to working with any. It's just really an idea and a broad (really broad) framework for the gameplay aspects.

I can help out with programming too

...Really guys, really? OwO

I admit I do have some ideas, but at the moment I'm a little busy because I just had a hilarious prank pop into my mind last night and since I only have a month or so to attempt I might be pressed for time. Hell, March is the NaNoRenO. Still, would like to be kept in the loop if'n ya please because I'm tentatively making steps in Ren'py.

Actually I have managed to read the first book, and was rather charmed. Sadly, our library didn't stock the others because it was a bit out there in premise and people over here are more concerned with other stuffs. But yeah, I know that series as Train Man which...is kind of odd. Anyhow, I rather like this sort of feels.

A dating sim where you can date the Founding Fathers. One of them is a vampire.

Boom, done.

This was my original thought too.

The zombies idea I had was more of a solo choose your own adventure and dating sim, where the protagonist/reader would make more choices than just romance as part of the story. This in turn would lead him to discover several romance options (save women or have them save him), to perpetuate humanity with. Don't know if starting with a group of persons together will work really well, and was thinking it starts with a solo person who meets different love interests or forms a group.

It would have a darker humor, and I was envisioning Shawn of the Dead references/humor along with other zombie trivia and movie references too. I have to admit though, Elby talking about the zombies dating one another seems like an incredibly funny premise.

Most difficult about a "zombie apocalypse" would be art assets, double so if we're talking characters that are zombified.

As far as the other ideas so far go, schools have been done to death (like Elby said). A magic school. Nope definitely not for me. A boarding school? Same reaction IMO. I still don't like the implications of involving too young characters too if we focus on "schools", so I'll probably have the same reaction to any "school" setting that doesn't specifically say college in it's description.

Having multiple different settings in one? It's actually a good idea, that possibly could work well, but isn't feasible because of the art required alone. The main reason for needing to get the Setting down before even beginning working on story or arc ideas is because we need art for characters and background. Needing four sets of this just makes it four times as difficult.

The online dating thing suggested also has been done, and the forum guy seeking advice is something that's also not totally original, and implies a little more of a desperation/clumsiness to the romance than I would find comfortable, personally.

I suggest people submitting new ideas for story put it in a recognizable format, which I'm going to put my zombie idea into below (so it's easily quotable, and will direct people to the crux of the idea).

Setting: Zombie Apocalypse
Characters: Main hero is Male alone, meeting different female love interests through his adventures trying to stay alive. Possibly meets others who compete for affections of the love interests (and dies trying lol).
Tone/Perspective: Comedy, leaning on zombie movie references, internet/geeky comedy, with some added suspense and action based on the setting. From first person perspective of protagonist through adventure, with branches for story that involve both actions and romance options.

I also think it'd be best to start branching out as a core team, to work toward having a private place to discuss this, to get some sort of hierarchy in place, and also to discuss a time frame. Snakesvsplanes I suggest you contact Lum via PM not only about requesting to discuss this, but possibly asking for a private forum (also maybe look into setting up IRC). Anyone who mentioned coding, or helping coding, maybe starting to examine RenPy, or other VN software to check if your skills are applicable, and how much help you can be.

It took 4LS 7+ years to create their VN, so it also needs commitment from team members to stick with an idea, and people who will remain with the project throughout it's life-cycle. I really don't want to start story boarding or having walls of text with spoilers appearing too soon (especially here in a public forum for obvious reasons).

BTW ---> Look a wall of text!!

Hurrk--
I can't believe I actually care enough to say this, but you're reading my big bold blue four-letter name wrong.

The rest of your post I will hunt through when it is not 4 in the morning because I really fucking need to stop being awake and on the internet at 4 in the morning

Awright, guys, I dropped Lum a line!

Let me try and catch up as best as I cannn here.

I have the same problem. Fantasy just makes me lose complete control when it comes to the world-building aspect, and I can just get extremely lost in the most minor details. So, I'm down with having a couple of fantasy elements (I.E, zombies), but not going for a full-on fantasy world.

I, personally, love a good murder mystery/romance. I think, though, if I were to go down that route, I'd think in terms of Agatha Christie-- something like And Then There Were None or The Mousetrap, each of which has the various characters all trapped in an area (an island / a manor), without any way to escape (for specific reasons). As such, they are thrown into situations where they -have- to interact with the characters around them, and it results in a similar "OH MY GOD, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" feeling as the aforementioned zombie idea, leading to the same extremities of emotion. We'd need to be careful here to build a unique situation and environment, as well as making it possible for the main character to "save" certain characters from death by making the right choices and advancing in solving the mystery.

Now, Jisei here had a similar theme (minus the dating element), but in my opinion, didn't execute it well. You never feel any sense of urgency or even real shock at who the killer is, the gameplay is extremely linear... It was a cute casual game, but had no real depth, in my opinion.

Okay, moving on...

I say we have one character get zombified-- a love interest. And you're given the option to kill them outright or try to keep them contained somehow. And if you go for the latter, you continue interacting with them in various ways (including feeding them... somehow)... And if you play your cards right, you can end up with a bizarro romantic zombie ending. I don't think that's too much of a stretch, and could make for some truly hilarious, yet also genuinely sad, moments, like when Shaun's mother or Ed ended up getting infected.

As for zombie art assets, I don't actually see a big problem there. Just study the art in the Walking Dead graphic novels, or, alternately, try and get ahold of this comic:
http://greenoblivion.com/comics/theabandoned.html

I think this works, and also allows for a lot of creativity within the constraints of the genre. What we'd need to speculate about further is the setting-- rather, are we going to set it in modern day, or go for a historical zombie game? (We could go nuts with this. Hippie zombies at Woodstock! Zombies aboard the Titanic! Victorian zombies! The sky's the limit.) And, of course, we'd have to decide upon the location. We need something to give this an original feel, and these two elements can make or break that. I'm going to go ahead and vote for the 70s punk rock scene, perhaps in the UK (as I'm from there), but with several modern geek/internet reference thrown into the mix. It's a comedy, we can have them lampshade the fact that they don't have the internet/computers ("If only there was some way to do research instantaneously and contact individuals on a global scale!"), but still have them making random memetic references and what-have-you. I'm aware that most of you guys are American, though, so I'd only pick England due to my personal associations. I've lived in the States, anyway, so I'm more than familiar enough with it to write a US scenario.

Also, as a female, I'm going to go ahead and throw out the idea that the protagonist could also be a woman/girl, as that is done much less in terms of zombie heroes, but I'm really happy either way.

I'm going to throw out an alternate to Ren'py real quick, called Novelty, which is geared toward non-programmers. However, I suggest we stick with Ren'py, as it allows for a lot more flexibility.

Anyway, assets we will need:
-- music.
-- character art (sprites).
-- background art.
-- full CGs.
-- user interface design/implementation.
-- programming.
-- writing.
-- direction (as in, someone to oversee the production, and keep everybody on track and working together fluidly).
-- mini-games (optional).
-- animations (optional).

I have a couple of friends who are very talented musicians, so if all else fails, I can certainly nag them to help out with that aspect.

As far as communication goes, Tao, you mentioned IRC. I'd be happy with that, although I'm admittedly not very familiar with setting up my own channels and whatnot in there, so if someone else wants to go ahead and do that, I'd be overjoyed. Like I said, I messaged Lum, but I think, once we settle on a core idea, we'll need to start thinking about taking this elsewhere (unless Lum would want to host a subforum for this on here!).

Whew. I'm going to go ahead and post this before I accidentally browse out of this page or something.

Well, to be clear it's not a magic school in my idea, it's a boarding school. Magic (spiritualism more-so really) creeps into the story because of the mystery, but it's not Hogwarts. It just seemed natural given the general focus of the genre to go with schools and it's a setting that gives the player fair amount of choice and exposure to different groups of people. Still, I think what I'm more drawn to in my idea is the focus on an overarching narrative happening around the dating sim aspects. That can draw the player in, have more gameplay, and provide an angle that isn't squarely focused on romance, letting player choice have more sway so it feels less like walking down a scripted path.

I can understand that. I personally don't have a problem because most of the examples I've seen were just Angie's let's plays which didn't really seem to focus on sex (though there was that touching game).

Yeah, again, that's what I kind of liked about using a location and other objectives where the player can get to know several spaces, rather than just have them act as backdrops. A larger narrative can provide the opportunity to have multiple or more expansive settings to explore with the characters.

Both a good idea for the standard format and a neat concept.

Basically, this is all good advice (which you don't need me to say). +Like!

I'll step back and be moral support whenever updates occur. :)

Don't step back! I liked your ideas a lot, and am sure you have a lot to contribute for sure!
(I mean, unless you just want to watch and support the process, which is fine, but don't be shy!)

I think we have a winner. :)

Thanks! However, I'm not sure how much time I could commit anyway. So go team! (Rah Rah Rah and all that).