Weekly #172

We're on a countdown of sorts to the July 14th release of Life Changes for Keeley. Last week we had a nice shot of one of the two protagonists, and I enjoyed frap's caption:

"Like I said, you picked the wrong sister."

Showing knowledge of my games is a quick way to my heart.  That and chocolate. (-:

I had a couple of goals while writing LCfK.  This is the female protagonist game I've wanted to write for a long time, but I know that those are a hard sell for the typical audience of this genre.  So, my overriding design principle was "variety."  I took care to write a game where you could play as a male or a female, and the story made sense. Don't want to play as a woman? No problem.  You can play the James paths. Want a typically emotional Tlaero story about failure and redemption?  Yes, there's a path for that. Want an atypical Tlaero story where you can repeatedly cheat on your wife and possibly even get away with it? There are paths for that too. Want an old-school Tlaero dating sim? There are also paths for that, (though you'll have to play as Claryce in those paths). 

I also focused on the variety in the sex scenes. There are a large number of them in the game, but I varied the people and the situations and the writing styles. Some are descriptive, while others are dialog and moan heavy. And there's even one that's written as poetry. Mechanically, they run the gamut of present, flashback, and framed narrative.   MF, MFF, MMFF, FF, and FFF.  There are various people's fantasies, including a long-running one of my own. 

My first real game was the one where we met Keeley, and this game has a lot of nostalgia for those early games from a decade ago. There is also a reflection of my motivations for getting into this genre in the first place. Back then I wanted to show people an alternative to the prevailing narrative of, "Meet a girl, get her drunk, and you can have sex with her." This time I wanted to show an alternative to present "lesbian" games where the MC is a woman who acts almost entirely like a man, as well as the games where the MC is either a man or a woman, and there's little or no change in the story. I recognize that my influence on the genre has waned and that so many games and developers have far surpassed me in popularity.  Frankly, I don't really expect this to cause much of a blip on F95.  But I stayed true to myself, and I believe that a number of you will enjoy it. If so, that will be success in my book.

So, this week, we have an image of Keeley from the game. She starts the game in a bad place, but there are many paths to happiness for her. Which one you take will be up to you. I felt that this image nicely captures her uncertainty but hope for the future.

What do you think? Is the future uncertain or hopeful? 

Tell me in captions.

Tlaero