Important Announcement

Hello, lovelies!

I’m Charmmy, the main developer and director of Love Me.

This is going to be a very difficult post to make, because I’ll not speak as the team as usual. This post will be only from me, as an individual person. It was mean to be posted last Sunday, but I was bedridden for a few days and couldn’t do it.

And that’s actually what I want to adress. You see: I’m disabled, both physically and mentally. I’m always ill, I always need at least a day in bed every week. The last two years, a couple of new disorders joined the big family of mental problems that I already had and my health have been worse than ever, mostly struggling to find energy to keep going somehow when everything is simply too weak both on my body and my mind. I don’t wish to throw myself a pity party, I’m very aware there’s tons of disabled people out there making amazing things and being amazing. But I’m not one of these people. I’m not amazing. And I can’t keep going anymore.

I was so determined to save Love Me, so in love with the project, that when no one could take lead on it anymore, I offered myself. I’m actually good organizing things, so things were good for a while, progress was being made and people seemed to like the new vision I had created in order to make the game’s scope more clear and feasible. And I thought I could do it! I had put so many hours on this, you can’t imagine how hard I tried. Writing,  leading, searching, designing and doing tons of research about game development, because I don’t have any experience with that. I never wanted to be the director, that belonged to someone that knew what the proper steps were. But I thought I could do it, and I was wrong.

Life is hard and all the team was having problems to keep going. Eventually, progress -although it never fully stopped- was so slow it wasn’t sustainable. A good director probably would have been able to redirect the team to a good path once more, but again: I’m, not a good director. I’m a 2D artist. I was ill all the time. I barely had time anymore to do my part. I work part-time (since I don’t have any social help) and that already leaves me too exhausted to do anything more the rest of the day; my energy is very, very limited. When I realized that the project was going bad, I tried to talk to more people inside and outside the team, looking for a new director or at least, a co-director to help me. But no one came forwards. Eventually my husband forced me to set a end date to it, because it was destroying my nerves and sucking it all my energy for virtually nothing. Not even being able to record a video I was promising for months because I couldn’t reach the very barebones level of polishment for it, was incredibly frustrating and started a lot of anxiety attacks. And it was not the only thing to give me anxiety…

So as much as it makes my heart sinks, I quit.

I promise I did my best. But my best was simply not enough.

So what does this mean for Love Me?

I’m honestly not sure. Me quitting doesn’t mean the team have to close down, obviously. But I was the one single-handing all the leading aspects and everyone was reporting to me, so unless someone else takes the role, I don’t think it’s feasible to expect the project to advance. The team is full of very talented people that have created amazing material, but no one is currently able to take the lead. 

I am not just disappearing either. I will organize and make sure every folder and asset is correctly labeled and accessible on our Drive. i will also hang around the group waiting to help the new director, if there’s one. And if everything reactivates, I will try again for the place of 2D artist, because that a thing I CAN do and I will love to do for the game. With all the management part, I was barely able to drawn anything! I have a comic and some unfinished sketches that I probably try to finish and post here, even if it just for the record. I still love the project after all.

And for the development…until further notice, I would consider Love Me to be FROZEN. Not on hiatus because that implies a return date, and I don’t know if there will be a return. But not cancelled either, because that would mean all the team is closing the project definitely, and this is not the case either. The team will announce their status once their feel confident on it.

I’m really sorry. I truly am. 

I hope everyone the best. 

OST - Game Over

Did you like our last music video? Because we have a new one!

Love Me OST - Game Over

September Progress Report

Hi, lovelies!

Sorry for uploading some days late. We hope you’re all doing well.

This month, we have been working basically in one thing: creating and implementing things for a second playable build. This build is a HUGE step forward the last, and includes more zones, more characters and specially, more interactions and reactions from them. The original plan was to upload a video showing you that build in this report, but sadly we encountered some issues here and there and it’s simply not done yet. We are working hard on it and will release it as soon as it’s done, tho!

Meanwhile, please enjoy this image from the what it’s coming. And don’t forget to check YouTube now and then! Maybe a new music track is ready too…;)

Credit for placeholder sprites: Hydrasis, Nicnubill, Ayene-chan.

July/August progress report

Hi, lovelies!

We truly hope you had an amazing summer. We had a pretty productive one! Last month there wasn’t much to talk about and that’s why we decided to put both July and August together for the report. That being said, we have some cool things to share!

Level Design

• We have finished and implemented the first floor of a main building.
• This includes several rooms, that have been designed specifically for their future purpose and so, they will probably stay mostly the same (meaning we are testing on the actual intended map).
• Several placeholder blocks with hitboxes have been added in places where furniture will be. Although that probably won’t be their final location, it gives a better idea of how the environment will act with actual things around.
• Two more floors are on the making, and the next building and an exterior area is already being designed

Aesthetic

• We have created a completely new tileset for the game.
• Fei has been added with her own sprite, and Nori is being worked on.
• A placeholder NPC for students and another one for school staff are already implemented for testing.
• This upcoming month, we will already start creating furniture and other decorations.
• The animation for people being stabbed and dying is next on line. 
• Sketches and ideas for the UI and the Game Over screen are being made. 
• Full-body portraits of the main characters will be finished soon, hopefully. At least Miki and Nori are already sketched!

Gameplay

• Controls have been revised.
• We are already implementing a way to trigger a game over. Yay?
• The internal clock has been implemented. Keeping a close eye to it will be extremely important in the final game, since characters will move around depending on the hour. And you don’t wanna miss classes, right?

NPCs AI

• Characters have now a line of sight, which means they are able to “see” what’s happening in front of them.
• If they see you with a knife, they will run away from you!
• They can move around and run away properly avoiding obstacles on their own.
• Characters can talk to each other. In the future, you will be able to spy on their conversations.
• Each character has a unique routine, that will tie up with the clock. This way, every character will have a unique route and set of actions every day. Although the current routines are very simple ones, only for testing, we are setting a system that will allow us to easily create and modify them in the future.
• Not only do they have independent routines, but their dialog is unique too. That includes normal dialog, dialog before being stabbed, panic dialog if they see you with a weapon, reactions, etc. We’ll make sure that you don’t feel like there’s five people on campus, and that the others are just mindless clones.

Music

• The main theme is almost done. 
• The music that will be heard when the police is on their way to catch you is done too. We only need to adjust the length.
• The game over track is also done.  We may add little touches depending on the type of game over you get.
• Minus some minor adjustments, the music for the main menu is ready too.

A lot of things are ready! We are very excited with the progress and we hope you are too. We know it’s hard to visualize this list from thin air; and that’s why, when the update we are making to the build is ready and playable, we are planning on creating a video that will show actual footage for you to see. Please be patient and we promise it will be worth it! That will also be our official end of the prototype phase and the start of the sandbox phase.

Until then, please enjoy these little snippets.

The Game Over screen will have a different text and drawing depending of what triggered it!

June Progress Report

Hello, lovelies! Charmmy here.

I know, I know: this post is super late. It’s supposed to be posted the first 5 days of the month, but it’s completely my fault. With summer comes vacations…for others. Which means a have a lot more work to do on the office and often must do overtime. I’m sure some of you can relate. Early summer is also finals time for students, graduations, family visits, etc. All the team without exception is especially busy these days!

Sadly, that means there’s not much to show, but we already knew summer would be like that. It’s always like that. However, we did something really, really, really important:

Love Me have an actual, playable prototype of the game!

It’s very basic, and we need to fix some bugs -some minor, some quite important- to consider the “build” to be finished. But, hey! It’s there, it works, and most basic mechanics are ready to be polished to add more things. I know it doesn’t feel like much, but we are happy with how the progress, although slow, is being consistent so far. We’re going to focus on the AI next and hopefully everything goes smooth from there.

Before the next report, we will post one or maybe even two videos on our YouTube channel. For now, I’ll just drop here this super cute -and dangerous- animation by Jaru!

Thanks for following us!

March Progress Report

Hello, Lovelies!

We are here with some news from the last month. First of all: we have two new members on our team!

• Mitchellk96 - Composer
• Dama - Environmental Pixel Artist

Both are already working and done amazing things that we hope we can show you soon! Their inclusion means that Love Me will have, for the most part, original music and art, which is amazing.

That said, march have been a month of organizing and redesigning. A lot of work has been put on making sure we have a clear vision of the game, and we are working hard on all the features and concept for them to work properly together in the new format. It’s mostly work that we can’t show (sorry!), but it was completely necessary to making sure future progress is fast and concise. Some things that we have achieved this month include:

• A proper walking animation for Miki.
• New tiles.
• A new layout for the school.
• Two music demo tracks.
• New characters and new traits for existing characters.
• We found a program that allows us to directly import layouts to Unity.
• A lot of features are already working on its basic stage: interactions, inventory, items, rain, day/night cycles and shops, among others.

We are putting all together for the first build, that should be ready in a month or two with the basics already working. Isn’t it exciting? We may also upload some music or video footage on the YouTube channel, as soon as it’s an option. Right now, we are too early on development.

Still, we can show you a few sneak peaks!

That’s all for now. Thanks for following us!

LOOKING FOR A PIXEL ARTIST

Big Announcements: hiatus, team and the future of Love Me

Hey everybody! Charmmy here. I hope you’re having a marvellous 2019 so far.

In the last two weeks we have been discussing the current situation of the game and some important decisions were made. I don’t wanna make this too long, so I will save you the details and go straight to the news. First off:

The hiatus is over!

This hiatus did go on for far longer than everyone wanted, but now it’s finally over and we are already working again. We are setting everything, and progress will hopefully be stable soon.

That brings us to the second point. We have a new team! We are all people that worked on Love Me before and decided to continue the project, despite other leaving (including Fatcat, who was our director before). The new team is as follows:

• Hambony as the Management Assistant
• Christian v1.1 as the Programmer
• Chimokelly01 as the Writer
• Xrsjaru as the Pixel Artist
• And I, Charmmy as the 2D Artist

But wait. Pixel artist? Where are the modellers and the animators, and the 3d artists?

Well, that’s precisely what brings us to the last and probably most important point.

Love Me is now a 2D pixel game!

(These images were made as a mockup to pitch the 2D idea and don’t necessarily represent the final look of the sprites)

I know it’s a drastic change, and it will probably turn some people away, but developing a 3D game as complex as Love Me turned out to be a very ambitious project that got constantly stuck for some reason or another. Even before the hiatus there were mentions here and there about simplifying the game, even changing its genre completely to visual novel or making all the deaths scripted, but that would eliminate the core of the game entirely, so instead, we opted to go for a 2d style that allows us to drastically reduce the amount of work without having to throw off the basic aspects that made Love Me what it is.

Sure, we will have to forget or rewrite some features or mechanics, but on the other hand, there’s new ideas that were impossible to do in the original format and are now feasible.

That’s all for now. We will update you as soon as possible with more info. We want to thank all of you for your patience and understanding of the situation, and hope you liked all the things we announced today.

Thank you for following us!