Behind the scenes writing: Episode 5 (6/6)

(Warning! This post may contain major spoilers for the story! Read further at your own risk.)

This is a behind the scenes look at the upcoming episode writing, which will cover what are called "events" during the episode. Episode 5 is looking to be around 35-40k word count, which is our biggest episode yet and added with the other content planned for v0.20 it'll be our biggest update yet in general.

If you haven't seen the the previous posts, you can check it out below.
(1/6) https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-scenes-5-53807158
(2/6) https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-scenes-5-54054794
(3/6) https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-scenes-5-54924750
(4/6) https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-scenes-5-55297918
(5/6) https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-scenes-5-56254997

Continuing from where we left off...

Something pretty unexpected happens at the literature club and it isn't long after before they wrap up their meeting anyways, with everyone heading off to do their own thing, including Erika. It leaves Brandon to maybe meet back up with the guys, but with how late it's getting in the day. He doubts if many clubs will be filled with students anyways.

Regardless he's walking along and in the middle of texting to his buddies, when some giggling nearby catches his attention. While leaning up against the door to satisfy his curiosity. The door suddenly swings open, sending him flying to the ground followed by the overly loud voice of Miki asking if he was spying on them!

When looking up to answer her, he notices another girl with Miki that he hasn't met before. After a bit of exchanges, we learn that the girl is named Bindy er.. That's what Miki seems to be calling her, so Brandon just follows suit since the girl doesn't seem bothered by it.

Along the way, Brandon quickly learns that Bindy is a mute! She can't speak or rather doesn't speak, instead using her notebook to communicate. Miki invites Brandon to play hoovernatch with the girls, which sparks a pretty lengthy explanation of what hoovernatch even is.

After learning about the made up game, he decides to play along since he didn't have anything else going on for the rest of his night. So the group plays through a few rounds and before long, Brandon feels the need to use his diaper, but he's pretty embarrassed about wanting to do it around these two.

Regardless, he can't hold it anymore and wets himself. If it can't get any worse, the girls both seem to have noticed too! This for some odd reason hypes Miki up, making her super excited and her playful spirit might be just a bit too overwhelming for what comes next...

After some very interesting events that followed, the trio is caught off guard by the inner-com system. A voice rings out along the room and halls, telling all students to report to the gymnasium for a urgent meeting.

Naturally it confuses Brandon and even the two girls, mainly because something like this hasn't happened before, even for Bindy who has been at the academy for about 2-3 years. So the group has no choice, they head to the gymnasium and find other students gathering together. Staff and teachers are up on the stage area as a very mysterious figure walks onto the stage and begins to speak...
   
~Writers notes~

-This about sums up the final event of episode 5. I did cut out the ending, but only because it's a pretty big spoiler for the academy story taking place and I think it'll have a better effect on players if they go into it blindly. :P The main event here is Miki and Bindy related.

-I was pretty split on how I wanted to tackle this event, because originally I had two concepts in mind. The first one being what we're seeing here, which is based on the original hoovernatch event from old game versions long ago, which is focused on being linked to Miki's club. The other option was to focus on a old moment where Miki is dressed up like a magical girl, goofing off in the hallway and causing some trouble among Bindy. I liked this idea for a good way to focus more on some club stuff for Miki, but I think what I went with instead feels better overall in the timeline of events.

-Bindy (Charlotte) Of course had to fit into the cg moment for this event and so I'm happy to see that come to life. It feels like such a long time ago when I first remember back when we used 3d placeholder assets for cg art. The hoovernatch event even way back in the early builds of the game had a cg moment that hinted at Miki and a girl playing together, simple as that. It was later that we improved on this, by giving the girl a name, Bindy (Charlotte) and the rest is history!

-I think players will enjoy the new hoovernatch moment, I tried to make sure the choices and interactive moments to be really fun! It should give some fun outcomes with playing hoovernatch.

-We'll end up learning a little bit more about Bindy and how Miki met her, what the story behind them hanging out is. This is mainly because we begin the game with the idea that Miki and Erika are best friends, both with similar backgrounds of not having anyone else at the academy to hang out with originally. So I do hope fans will enjoy learning a bit about their relationship.

-Episode 5 has been probably our craziest amount of content to date in sheer amount of word count, along with the most cg art and new sprites in a given release. On top of that, ep 5 has some pretty heavy academy story pushed into the spotlight and should hopefully feel like the mystery is starting to roll along with it.