Hanako Games

Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#1 by hanako - Mar 15 2018

Yup. It's time for our favorite game again: polling on ideas that I simply don't have time to make, in order to torment you with things that I might _like_ to work on but probably won't.

Although, to everyone's surprise including mine, the Little Princess game did actually happen, so you never know...

Everything listed, I have at least thought about, and might be able to tell you a little more about.

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#2 by Oki - Mar 15 2018

Tell me more of this top gun with dragons?

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#3 by hanako - Mar 15 2018

Oki:

Tell me more of this top gun with dragons?

This is a setting that would make an awesome anime but may be out of my budget for a decent game. It is about WAR and HOTSHOT PILOTS and FANCY DRESSES and also DRAGONS. In this universe dragons are not controlled by riders, but by military pilots who fly inside a bubble (the Dragon Pearl) and control the dragons with their minds (I am uncertain whether the dragons actually exist. They may be 100% psionic projections, or they may be wild creatures captured and tamed by the military, or some sort of psi-mech combo like the pearls themselves) They are the military elite, who can travel great distances at high speed and wreak havoc on the enemy with their flamestrikes.

Because their jobs are totally mind-based, Pearls traditionally wear dresses as their uniform, and the more highly ranked and successful they are, generally, the more ridiculously rich and elaborate the dress. If you see a lady at a military ball in a huge sparkly dress, be scared, she can probably kill you just by looking at you.

Story would likely be about some hotshot cadet who was top of her class and thinks she is All That having to learn what it's like being in the military for real. And some amazing aerial battles against other dragons (see again budget problems)

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#4 by asperity - Mar 16 2018

Oz romance adventure with Dorothy and obscure book characters

Are you calling Ozma obscure, or are you considering leaving Ozma out? Because noooo. (Scraps, she's a bit more obscure, but would also be delightful.)

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#5 by hanako - Mar 16 2018

Ozma's slightly more obscure than she should be, adaptation-wise! Although I hear that a recent TV series actually did Ozma *including Tip*. But I haven't seen it, and what little I know about it suggests it's nothing like the books in tone and nothing like what I'd do.

My list of possible characters also includes Polychrome, Evanna, Jinjur, Jellia Jamb, some combination of Ozga and the Mangaboo Princess, and Fluff. But probably not Betsy, Trot, or Scraps, not in the current idea.

Unfortunately while I have enough ideas to write an oz-style book, figuring out how to weave it into a reasonably-interactive game could be tricky and kind of crazy on the art side as we have to pass through a lot of weird fantasy kingdoms. So while I still kind of want to do Oz somehow, I still don't really have the right idea.

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#6 by FantasyFan - Mar 16 2018

Time travelling murder mysteries sounds awesome!

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#7 by Franka - Mar 16 2018

I know absolutely nothing about Oz, and I think you'll find that to be true for many parts of the world. As such, everything about that would be completely obscure to me, and I wouldn't understand any references whatsoever. Something that might be worth taking into consideration if such a game should come to pass.

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#8 by hanako - Mar 17 2018

For this story pretty much all you'd need to know about the background is "This little girl named Dorothy went to the magical land of Oz once and came back to Kansas" and that would be covered in the opening narration, because I'd need to specify all the ways that it's DIFFERENT from the movie version that a lot of people know. Book-Dorothy looks nothing like Judy Garland, and there never were any Ruby Slippers in the book, for starters, and then there's the fact that I'm still changing some of the story for my own ends. So I'd have to start with a quick summary of the past. All those characters we're mentioning would be being met for the first time*, you wouldn't need to know anything about them.

Many ALLP players had never read the book either, and plenty who'd seen one of the movies thought I was making up stuff in the game that is actually straight from the book. That's part of the fun of it for me, showing off these details that people don't know about.

* - technically Dorothy met Jellia in the first book but never knew her name or had a conversation with her, and this entire thing can be summed up with "Oh! I remember you! You're the girl that - " when they meet again.

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#9 by Franka - Mar 17 2018

You've already given me much more information than I had to begin with.

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#10 by Staldice - Mar 18 2018

With the recent release of Into The Breach, my vote just had to go to time travel! Maybe you could combine a few of the genres, though? I think a comedy-focused yuri cast tripping over themselves trying to solve time-travel mysteries might have some potential What do you find yourself leaning towards personally, Hanako?

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#11 by hanako - Mar 18 2018

I don't lean towards making any of them, I'm extremely busy with other things. I'm obviously tied up with Wolf Hall, there's the vampire thing I'm fooling around with, and I probably should do the LLTQ sequel eventually...

The time-travel and comedy yuri stories can't be combined, but the time travel story actually was designed to feature a pre-existing couple as the protagonists. They're partners and work together to investigate mysteries throughout the timestream. It could even become an ongoing series.

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#12 by phoenixgirl - Mar 18 2018

hanako:

The time-travel and comedy yuri stories can't be combined, but the time travel story actually was designed to feature a pre-existing couple as the protagonists. They're partners and work together to investigate mysteries throughout the timestream. It could even become an ongoing series.

I have an interesting idea who that couple could be although it might be too obvious. ;)

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#13 by hanako - Mar 19 2018

phoenixgirl:

hanako:

The time-travel and comedy yuri stories can't be combined, but the time travel story actually was designed to feature a pre-existing couple as the protagonists. They're partners and work together to investigate mysteries throughout the timestream. It could even become an ongoing series.

I have an interesting idea who that couple could be although it might be too obvious. ;)

They have to be a pairing of contrasts, to make it interesting when they split up to investigate things. Very different skills + different personalities. Could be a sullen ex-cop and an easily flustered hacker. Could be a grease-streaked racecar driver and a sophisticated socialite. Could be a buttoned-up librarian and a freewheeling party girl.

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#14 by phoenixgirl - Mar 19 2018

Awww ok. I thought it might have been characters from one of your previous games but then, that might end up being way too obvious. XD

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#15 by hanako - Mar 19 2018

No, I just meant pre-existing couple in that we wouldn't be playing them meeting + getting together (at least not in the first game, though if there were a series we could always jump back in time eventually) but start with them already a couple, and find out more about them as they go about their work. And no schoolgirls. An adult couple!

Though if you want to imagine couples from earlier games becoming time agents that could be entertaining

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#16 by Gamer - Mar 19 2018

What would the Starfleet Academy game look like? Will it be like Ender's Game?

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#17 by hanako - Mar 19 2018

I only read the books (the movie, from what trailers I saw, looked more military and less psychological) but I can fairly safely say no, nothing like Ender's Game.

The starfleet-ish game is in many ways the most direct sequel to Black Closet, because it would basically be about assembling teams to take on randomly generated missions. The missions are in the holodeck-equivalent, so nobody really dies (at least, in the early part of the game!) but you are the captain-in-training so it's your job to look over the scanty mission briefing and put together a crew out of your fellow students that you think can take on that challenge. Then you go through the storyline together, and how your team performs depends on THEIR skills, their interpersonal relationships, and their stress levels (if you keep taking the same people on every mission they will burn out). And how you do in the missions affects how they feel about each other and about you.

It's a pretty complicated idea that would take a lot of time to make. Also, since it would likely need a lot of (possibly randomly-generated) crew members, romance would probably have to be more limited and interchangeable, not the in-depth stories of the main Black Closet cast.

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#18 by cutetoboot - Mar 25 2018

My SO made me vote for Top Gun with dragons, but for my part I only support it if Mav and Goose are girls...

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#19 by hanako - Mar 25 2018

It can be safely assumed that anything I can logically yuri up (or even not-so-logically), I probably will

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#20 by rincewind - Apr 5 2018

I can't say no to Dorothy and Yuri Oz.

Always liked OZ, even if I just started reading the books.

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#21 by KitCat - Apr 16 2018

Time travell... hmm... Time travells murder? hynk... not joking...

Good luck!

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#22 by Mystic Ame - Apr 18 2018

I vote for the yuri one but if the others contain yuri too I'd love to see them too

edit: I just read the post about the OZ game and it seems like it would be very yuri and now I really want that game

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#23 by somestrangecircus - Apr 19 2018

This is Hanako we're talking about. There will always be yuri.

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#24 by hanako - Apr 19 2018

Well, Wolf Hall is a bit short on the yuri.

Though of all the weird fan pairings I've seen in fic, I must say that sending Virginia to the May Day Ball with Isobel's not a bad idea.

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#25 by hanako - May 2 2018

Vaguely pondering whether the Oz game would work better as a kingdom-management game instead, although explaining all the backstory will be tricky.

Oz is something I keep wanting to play with but never quite settling on just the right idea.

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#26 by hanako - May 2 2018

Possible plot:

You are Ozma, Princess of Oz... and that's almost the sum total of what you know about the situation. You woke up in a palace surrounded by various interesting girls (dorothy etc) who you feel like you SHOULD know, but don't... with a nice witch telling you that you've been under an enchantment for most of your life and that's why you're confused, but now you're finally back and you can claim your throne and restore your kingdom. See, the kingdom has been suffering while you were away. It's kind of a disaster right now. But you can fix things! Just give orders and they'll be carried out. You're bound to do the right thing, because you're the true princess, after all! And anyway, you'll have all your friends to help you. Okay, you don't actually remember them right now, but they're your friends, really!

Thus leading to a game in which you alternate between trying to run a country and trying to get to know your advisors, as well as figure out more about yourself, because boy are you confused right now. What enchantment were you under, and why? How do these people know you? And if you're the true princess why are so many people talking about Queen Jinjur?

Convenient amnesia means that anyone who doesn't know Oz can just figure it out along with Ozma. People who know the books will think they know Ozma's story, and they will know one major detail of it, but the overall plot is changed enough to have plenty of surprises. And as you go through story sections to try and fix Oz and its neighbors, you pick up more girls to join your harem of advisors.

If all goes well, in the end you will have wooed a girl enough to marry her and rule over your restored kingdom together.

On t he other hand that's drifting far enough from a traditional Oz story that it might work better as a pure original work instead. Who knows? Ideas are always rolling around in my head.

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#27 by Mystic Ame - May 7 2018

The Oz game idea excites me more and more, I really hope it becomes a real thing someday!

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#28 by hanako - Jul 8 2018

I am definitely not working on an all-lesbian Phantom of the Opera game.

I do think about it occasionally, though.

Some of the many, many ideas that I've gone through:

You play Christine, plot is fairly close to the book except Everyone's Girls, your romance options might include the Phantom, Rachel, Meg, and the mysterious Persian.

You play Christine and you have both male and female romance options and the Phantom is actually intersex and nonbinary and this is a terrible idea for multiple reasons, both because there already IS a sexy Phantom otome game and because while that would make for a believable Phantom backstory it's too touchy a subject with too many possible unfortunate implications.

You play a girl named Christine but the story is actually about ballet rather than opera and your mysterious tutor is a former dancer who was horribly burned in the past (And might secretly be Jessie from ALLP), you are torn between your Love Of Art and your desire to land a rich patron and be kept in comfort.

You play a friend of Christine's looking for her after her mysterious disappearance, so you become a young opera singer much like she was in order to get to talk to people who knew her and try to determine what happened to her and which lover she ended up with.

You play a private detective hired by the managers to try and figure out what's currently going on with your star singers and the mysterious Opera Ghost. All major characters are female. You may seduce them, be seduced by them, or catch them fooling around with each other... and then the murders start happening.

Re: Project ideas that exist only to disappoint you!

#29 by somestrangecircus - Jul 9 2018

To be perfectly honest, I've also given thought to a yuri Phantom of the Opera. I doubt I'll ever make it, but I hope someone does. It sounds like it would be rather fun.

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#30 by JerbokIceblade - Aug 9 2018

I'm gonna just say that I would love a Phantom game even if it is eons in the future. Also, I'm sad there's not more love for the Dragon Game, but the time travel one was my second choice. I also really like that Date Warp vibe which is kind of like that.

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#31 by KitCat - Aug 17 2018

... hmm....
well... i don´t think i can make good game any these...
well... i don´t even know what idea that´s is...

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#32 by mmayall - Aug 20 2018

wow...I would adore an all-lesbian phantom of the opera vn...

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#33 by somestrangecircus - Sep 4 2018

Another OELVN developer, ebi-hime, is also toying with the idea of lesbian Phantom, though apparently with maids?

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#34 by Saluki - Sep 25 2018

I voted for the yuri one but if everything else has yuri too, then I'm most interested in the Oz adventure. Throne-grabbing lesbian princesses are in high demand. Everyone in the yuri community I know also prefer to play a game with a plot plus yuri subplot, instead of a game about yuri.

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#35 by StarViella - Dec 21 2018

man, i wish i was a gajillionare - then i'd just pay you to make all the games you think of!

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#36 by hanako - Dec 21 2018

heh, even with zillions of dollars part of the problem is TIME!

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#37 by hanako - Dec 29 2018

For Christmas I've started collecting a bunch of Imperial China fiction.

Which suggests HAREM DRAMA will probably be in next year's list of games that I am not actually working on

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#38 by Bloody Vikings - Dec 29 2018

You are a cruel, cruel woman, Hanako!
I'd adore a courtly intrigue/harem story in one of the Chinese imperial courts (or variant thereof, live how Confines of the Crown or LLtQ are distinctly not Europe, but close enough to rhyme.)