After some thought, I decided to enlist a few changes, and work out some plans.

I've changed the main character's name from Anna to Rachel, to create some link to earlier work. This has the advantage of working with a character that is already familiar to readers of "Nice Day", provides some insight into her life, and creates a reason to read my old work to see about Davis.

Davis will star in the rabu rabu romansu road, looking her up after three years. This isn't canon with Nice Day, of course, because in this route she will accept him. And he has the balls to ask her out. In Nice Day, he originally never saw her again.

What this means is that I have to rewrite some parts to reflect Rachel's voice, and reference Nice Day a few times without being a reference you would only get if you read it.

I'm unsettled on the child's age. He's not too old to be naturally distrustful of older people and cliqued with peers, but not so young he's difficult to follow for older people. I need to strike appropriate balance, or keep that matter non-descript, while making it known for myself.

Another change is the impact of routes. The main route is pretty easily the canon path where Rachel remains without Davis in her life, and meets with Alex the kid. I had originally planned the romansu and foreber alone routes to still keep the meeting with Alex, but I've decided to branch even earlier, and exclude him from the other routes.

Each route will therefore feature a different person to guide the reader to the eventual endings, with each route hopefully having no more than three branches.

For the canon route, I thus far have two branching options: whether to take Alex up on playing soccer with him, whereas refusal would originally fall in line with non-canon romance path but will now set you on the track to Alternate Future, and whether you'll hear him out or pretend you don't notice him pondering what to say - whereas one of those will cause the meeting with Alex to be a "happens just once" event and cause the story to end sooner than before. I might take that one out, or replace it by another choice because of how forced it feels.

Feel free to comment here, I'm going to hijack this for Riri no Burogu~

I settled on what should hopefully be the final revision to the main path's flow.

Rather than offer a choice on hearing Alex out, the reader will now default to that, and instead is offered a choice on whether or not to return to the party.

Choosing not to go to the party makes Rachel go for food in town, where she meets up with an old acquaintance and has a moment, too.

Choosing to go back to the party has Rachel join her classmates in rucking up her house, and features a different path of thought.

Either way, they re-branch to Rachel fulfilling her promise with Alex the next day, and deciding to declare herself a teacher to the children, signifying her intention to continue her studies.

I have to think of what to do with the party route, but it'll probably be focused on interactions with her classmates so you better understand what kind of person she is from their view, and how she feels about that.

Whereas the Acquaintance Route deals more with questions she herself asks, and presents her own distorted view of herself, and a more reliable view from the Acquaintance on what kind of person Rachel is.

Either route leads to a happy end, but should be different enough to be worth a re-read... I'm thinking if I should let that route choice influence the ending as well, so to give more than just a small change in the lead to the conclusion... creating multiple conclusions would be neat, after all.

Not sure which I would declare as my true canon route, as both are interesting to follow - the party one being a natural since it -is- her home, and it'd be better of her to not just let her classmates muck about without her.

The Acquaintance route might deal with love with Davis again, forcing a dichotomy between the Best End and the Alternate end where she hooks up with him - it'll reinforce that the events of Nice Day are really for the best in their own way.

Hm, requires some more thought. I want to make this into a satisfying spiritual successor that'll blow people outta them waters.

Naturally, for the Rabu Rabu Peesu route, Rachel will not decide to continue her studies, and turns to accountancy instead - another veer off from the canon route to further elaborate on this, and to show that different people have different influences on her.

Whereas Alex re-awakens her love for working with children and the desire to teach them, the idea that she can definitely do it, the meeting with Davis will present a character that will support her no matter what she does, and she ends up settling for second-best, or being supported into a choice she doesn't fully support herself.

The ending will likely involve some lingering regrets, but should still become a fulfilling end. Meeting different people has different effects on your life, after all, and it should be a principal point for a story that's about your own motivation.

Carrying on because of inner strength leads to the best choice you can make, but relying on the strength of others to make a choice may goad you into a choice they think is best.

Not a bad thing by itself, but it may lead to a choice that wouldn't be one you'd repeat. The difficulty will be writing it in a way that doesn't force some kind of faux-insight on people, while still being thought-provoking enough to the right audience.

Put simply, I don't want to FORCE the reader to think about everything, but those who look should be able to discover those signs.

Difficult to pull off, but I need a challenge for the hols anyway!

Any bad endings?

No bad endings!

Anyway, I just got word back from the composer, and it looks like I'll have an ally. Now all I'll need is a reliable editor, and a reliable artist.

Preferably people with skill.

As for project progress, I've begun drafting out the romansu romansu route, leaving the main story route unattended until I can get a second opinion there.

The romansu route involves a return of Davis, and I have been having some difficulty in establishing him properly so that he is not a creepy stalker. ... this proves itself more difficult than I initially thought.

No matter! I'll steam on!

http://www.mediafire.com/?x4belxpdde3xy0e

Rewritten version, steaming on like a pro and boss!

I've decided to cull the routes to three rather than four, mostly for ease of writing, and because it makes more sense given the story.

I've also changed Rachel's personality a little - in Nice Day, she's a talkative girl who talks about everything. I figured it stood to reason she thought a lot, too, and so she is more pretentious deep in this new revision.

The exposition scene with Alex has been shortened - I've decided it added little to the story other than words, and Rachel thinking about things seemed more appropriate. If the idea of the story is to provoke thought, the best way is to touch on philosophical subjects, right?!

Second route will involve ECONOMY, and comes in two flavours: staying at home, then refusing to go with Davis... or going out, then refusing to play with Alex. Both times, you have to refuse someone... isn't it sad?!

Third route is obviously OMG DAVIS I WANT YOU TAKE ME NOW so it's all lovey-dovey. I'm not actually looking forward to writing that!

I might have an artist, and the composer is still on-board. We'll see how this goes~

Mocking up what I kinda want to do with the game... Think I should adjust the upper and lower margins of the window as well and add a pretty-esque border around it so that it'll look less like a sectioned off zone.

Sprite is obvious placeholder etc. Background even more so, I don't even know what I was going for.