One Year!

Holy shit. We're at a year of development. That's crazy.

Given the monumental milestone (how many of these type of games last a year?), we wanted to do a little retrospective. Where have we been, where are we going?

Why did this project start? I was sick and tired of good ideas going to waste either because of abandonment, milking, or just lack of project management. I’d tried to get involved with other projects as a writer, but was always kicked aside due to lack of leaderships and PM-ing skills.

I also wanted to see a story that had lots and lots of choices, variations and things that mattered. I hated sandboxes where you were constantly clicking around trying to advance story and so, so many of the games out there that just should have been VNs – essentially single path forward, so don’t make your players do work for it.

I enjoyed corruption stories and female protagonist MCs (all of my writing is essentially female-first) and grew up on CYOAs (those white-backed books are so nostalgic for me). So, after trying to get a team together to do an adult version of “Growing Up” to no avail, I decided to take a pass at the concept that I’ve seen so many times that just never goes anywhere: secret agent girl…who never wanted or expected to be a honeytrap. Yet, she needs to be.

And so, Blue Swallow was born. A little twist on the Red Sparrow idea, begin with a character creation prologue (because I always enjoyed deciding who my MC was), and utilizing Twine because of its facility and ease of use [for a non-programmer like me]. And as it grew, so did the team.

What about our team? What are their perspectives on the past year?

From LewdPirate- I joined because I thought there was somewhere I could add a lot of value, getting in from the get go and build a good foundation was really appealing to me.

I did play three separate versions of FA, and never understood why it warranted being rewritten (at such a late stage) so many times!

I have played a lot of interactive fiction smut, and I’m trying to write my own, so working with someone who actually writes was also immensely interesting to me, as most other projects I worked on, the story was a second thought.

The last year for me has been fun, I’ve enjoyed extending the wardrobe, and getting to know Goof, who I send smut to once in a while.

I’m hoping to find time to actually play the game in its current state, since it has been ages since I played.

Personally I got very overwhelmed by the many different options, but I do have to give it a go again soon.

Finally it’s exciting to get animations in, despite the initial technical difficulties.

And speaking of Goof- My journey in this world began as I played so many games in this erotic arena where the story, characters, and dialogue was either disjointed, off, or didn't make sense so I thought I'd volunteer my time and limited expertise in helping developers make their games better.

Enter Blue Swallow.

Well, this game already had a stellar writer so I have just done my best to support the writer and build my skills while supplying any other help or hindrance I can.

Now a year later, this project from a spark that Cass wanted to make has turned into a game. It's deep in writing, building to a full on art filled spy thriller.

The game has grown leaps and bounds thanks to the community and the team as it's been so fulfilling.

In the next year, I hope the game reaches larger audiences and we can just keep expanding endlessly with different areas of the world needing a good/bad spy to save the day or not.

One day if we get big enough perhaps we do a contest to insert a player as a stable character for a certain Act. —-----------------------------------

We've just finished the Final release of 0.5. With that, Claire, our protagonist:

• Can experience a full Prologue of character creation.

⋅⋅* Physical Identity (what does she look like? how does she identify herself?)

⋅⋅* Growing Up (where is she from, what is her family life, what does she enjoy?)

⋅⋅* High School (what clique does she join? who does she take to Prom? how does she experience her sexual awakening?)

⋅⋅* An optional Gap Year (African volunteer? Backpacking in Europe? Swiss Finishing School?)

⋅⋅* College (Does she get in? Does she rush? What does she study?)

• Engage in 73 (yep, nearly 100) sex scenes, each with their variations, alternative text and options based on the Claire you’ve built

..* Innumerable options, playthrough paths and choices with meaningful, content and character-altering effects

• Can get to and experience places around the globe!

⋅⋅* Bangkok!

⋅⋅* Tallinn

⋅⋅* Manila

• Can begin her experience as a Secret Agent, where her mission means saving her missing mother and hopefully saving the world.

And from a technical standpoint:

• 20 content-expanding releases

• Customized Paper Doll and dozens of outfits

• Three animations

• Passage and background art

• Implementation of more than 8 integrated systems:

⋅⋅* Semi-Open World Exploration

⋅⋅* Stats and level-up mechanic

⋅⋅* Dossier

⋅⋅* Wardrobe, Clothing Purchasing, and Outfit selection

⋅⋅* Relationships

⋅⋅* Corruption and Bad Ends

⋅⋅* Arousal, Tired, Hungover States

⋅⋅* Fertility and Impregnation

• 311 Individual Passages, each with multiple arcs and variations

• Nearly 50,000 lines of code

What does the next year look like?

We'll be expanding the existing content:

• More Prologue content!

⋅⋅* Fleshed out Cliques!

⋅⋅* Fleshed out Vignettes!

⋅⋅* HS Pregnancy Arc!

⋅⋅* Fleshed out College Arcs!

⋅⋅* Additional Gap Year Arc(s?)!

• More Main Game Arcs!

⋅⋅* Make friends/boyfriends/get training!

• Continuation of Existing Main Game Arcs!

⋅⋅* Investigating the Club!

⋅⋅* Infiltrating Manila Underworld!

• HD Art toggle!

• More animations, clothes, and art!

What am I most excited about? All that’s coming. The past year was a proof-of-concept to myself and the community that the game can exist, can be developed as I envisioned it. Now it’s taking that PoC and expanding it, seeing where we can take Claire!