[Game] Heartache 101 ~Sour into Sweet~

[flowerthief]

A project I've had in development for the last couple years is finally complete--a customizable (moddable) romance simulation, to my knowledge the first of its kind.

Assuming the role of a male high school student in Japan, you will meet, interact with, and date a number of female characters with the goal of winding up with one of them at the end of a 101-day calendar. Yeah, you've seen this all before...or have you?

In other romance sims, there's little reason to replay the game again once you've pursued the characters you're interested in. But Heartache 101 ~Sour into Sweet~ allows for a female cast that is completely open-ended. You can create new characters and add them to the game, share them with other users, and add characters created by other users. You can create the images for new characters from a template, or use images you created yourself, or images from any source. (only "standing" images of characters can be imported; there is no event CG in the game) A scripting language is provided for writing story events.

The game's official website is http://heartache101.3eeweb.com/. Check it out for more in-depth description of the game system, it's characters, and content created by other users. Some user-made characters are already available for download and play. Date, create, and share!

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Download:

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Please download the game from the official website. (It can also be downloaded at RMN)

Documentation on how to add new content is contained in the help file included with the game. A full list of credits of artists, composers, scripters, testers, etc whose work went into making the game is also in the game's documentation.

I should note that while the built-in story and characters are all BxG (boy pursues girl), BxB (boy pursues boy) is also supported. In other words, it's possible to create and add male romanceable characters to the game for players who have that taste. GxB and GxG support may possibly be added in the future.

If you have any questions or encounter any bugs while playing or creating new content, please let me know! If you finish creating content that you think other users will enjoy, you're welcome to post it here, but be sure to upload it to the website as well.

edit: Changed the website host

 

[Spoo]

I generally don't have the patience for dating sims, but I had some fun with this one. I liked the board game element you implemented; it mixed everything up quite a bit. I wasn't too impressed how Miki and her green haired friend still basically acted like they hated me throughout, even though I got Miki to Lovesick and the other one to Like. It wasn't until right before the ending they started being somewhat nice.

 

[flowerthief]

I'm glad somebody here has had some fun with it. The games I make are niche, and dating sims in particular aren't everyone's cup of tea, so I'm never quite sure how to reach my target audience.

(That plus the problems I'm having with my web host are making the post-completion phase not as satisfying as the post-completion phase of making a game should be ><)

 

[Drago del Fato]

I don't know whether you're gonna hate or love me for saying this, but IMO this program is a waaaaaay better tool for making Dating Sim games, especially if you have this kind of artistic skill. :D

Visual Novelty
http://www.visualnovelty.com/

It's free btw.

And I'm definitely gonna try this. :D

 

[flowerthief]

Well Heartache 101 isn't a tool for making a completely original dating sim, but more like an already functional game with some (modest) tools that allow new characters/story to be added to it.

Have you ever noticed that there are *very few* free, complete dating sims around that aren't either very short or made with Flash? A dating sim doesn't really capture the old feeling of Tokimeki Memorial and the like unless it has a decent-sized cast of pursuable characters for players to choose from, but it takes a great deal of work to make a full-blown dating sim of that sort, no matter what tool you use.

However, to create a single character for an existing game system...that ought to be less daunting. That's the idea behind Heartache 101. It's aimed at the specific audience of people who don't, for whatever reason, want to make a full-blown dating sim. (Whether or not it suits them depends, of course, on how enjoyable they find the existing game system to be)
It is also aimed at players who want to be able to replay the game with new characters made by themselves/their friends/whoever.

 

[Drago del Fato]

Well I don't know about them being short. But this one isn't too bad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvyIIZXEoKc
It's commercial one and it's long.

 

[danyo34]

I haven't played many dating sims this intricate, but I find it nice that the characters actually interact with each other instead of having complete isolation. And I liked that you could leave people you didn't like in random encounters, and go talk to someone else.
I ran into some weird things with the dialog box archive with the chocolate lady at the game centre. It wouldn't let me go back to see what she said, and then went on with the conversation when I pressed the right arrow key. And also, just a small thing that you may want to fix in the next update:

Spoiler

Tsubasa? I think it should say Riho here.

I also was surprised in Shihoko's story when there was no option to say that seducing the coach for personal gain was a bad thing. I earlier thought that she was being forced into sexual relations by an older man, which definitely sets off some red flags...

And some more of my nitpickings:
-The way the choice system worked took some getting used to, although it does prevent people from automatically picking the first choice. The up arrow is for the lowest option, and the down arrow is for the highest...It messed me up at the internet cafe a few times and I accidentally went and came home without doing anything.
-Ellipses=three periods. It probably annoys me more than the average person, however, that you used four or however many periods.
-It may have been my fault, but I saved enough orbs for the cell phone plan upgrade, then found out I needed money too...darn.
-Meeting people was hard at the beginning, although that may have been because of the way I played. I saw Tsubasa pretty quickly, then Riho a while later, then Shihoko. I thought I would have found the rest of them (except maybe one or two) by now. And I'm on day 88.
-The transparency isn't set on the game icon, so on Windows 7 there's white around it in the toolbar.

The board idea is nice too, although I'd like to see some more variety and deviation from the straight-path-with-some-loops-coming-off template. And I like the windowskin and title screen.
I'm quite impressed with this. It's the first dating sim I've come across (that I can recall) made in RMXP.
Good job.

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So, I ran into a bit of a problem...I'm at the phone call with Shihoko where she says she doesn't know the difference between "boys" and "a boy." The conversation ends, then the bedroom background is still up and it sounds like I go on normally, but can't see anything past that. Help?

 

[flowerthief]

^ Thank you much for the feedback. I appreciate it.

I'm having trouble reproducing some of the issues you mentioned:

Spoiler

That phone call with Shihoko...if I understand what you're saying, the text for the conversation ends normally but the game doesn't continue because the bedroom background won't go away? Hmm. Would you by chance have a save file you could send me from before that happened so I can see for myself?

If you happen to still have a save file from before you encountered the chocolate lady at the game center, that might be of help to me too. I'm not sure what would have caused that.

Also, if you remember any of the places where you saw ellipsis with four periods can you let me know? I thought I had gotten rid of all of them. Unless they were at the end of a sentence, in which case four periods is correct, I believe. The six-period ones were deliberate tho :P

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

after playing for a while i decided to comment, ive really enjoyed playing so far, which is saying alot because i dont really like these kinds of games, i was just bored. ill give you more feed back when i finish it.

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

i found a mistake, its easy to fix though :P i was talking to keika and i got a call from riho.

 

[flowerthief]

^ Riho must like you. When a girl likes you, she will occasionally call in the middle of your conversations with other girls.

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

that what i figured, i also figure you meant to put "\v[17]." not "\v[17.]"

 

[flowerthief]

Ah, I see it now. Thanks

 

[danyo34]

Okay, so...I'm unused to testing games for others and overwrote my save files. But luckily, my little sister played and I found the same bug! It seems that whenever the chocolate lady appears, another event starts, and using the left text scroll to get back to the event before messes things up.
Unfortunately, the bedroom glitch has yet to be replicated.
And about the ellipses, I didn't know about the four periods thing. Sorry about that. And also for responding this late.
If you want the save for the chocolate lady glitch, get back to me on that because I'm not sure if you need it anymore.

And since I finished I have some more generic comments:

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-I finished and got the generic ending for Shihoko. That was surprising. I was expecting an "and then we were happily married x amount of years later with children." I guess it makes sense though.
-I finished and got Akari's non-generic ending, and thought that it was really sweet and much better than the generic one. It kind of stinks for the ghosts though. I was expecting them to move on to heaven in a bright light. No peace for them, I guess.
-I saw the Riho introduction scene where you don't take the shortcut. Now the pervert police line makes sense.
-The end graphic was out of place. I mean the red background with the heart. But there's probably not much you can do about graphic inconsistency seeing as you're using a bunch of different sources.
-Transparencies on the heart and on the zodiac icons seemed weird. Maybe the zodiac symbols were supposed to be outlined in white, but with the way it is now, it's hard to tell.
-The sound effect for a girl accepting a date is really long, or the time it plays is really short. I thought it was a weirdly-placed song at first, then listened to the entire thing.
-I like the ending song. And the one for Chiemi's notes.
-I found another glitch that's more surprising than game-stopping.

My sister used the free move to get onto one of the loops off of the main path, and then kept on going instead of stopping at the arrow. The day ended when she got to the right end of the screen though.
-For the first time through, Shihoko only accepted one date. Every other time I tried it was apparently too close to the other one. I'm not sure what caused this.
-I was looking at the character customiser, and found that girls can set up their own dates. This never happened. Could you tell me what triggered it? And how do I get the character customiser to open from the black box thing? Do I just wait, or press enter, or...?
-I'm still on version 1.0, so disregard whatever you fixed. But what did you fix? I can't find a changelog on the site.

I nitpick because I care. Really, I'm pretty satisfied with this.

 

[flowerthief]

^ Thank you again for your feedback.
My computer broke down this week so I'm gonna be unable to do anything with the game until I get it repaired (or buy a new one), but I can answer your questions at least.

The changelog is in the help document. (The glitch your sister discovered with Free Move should be fixed in v1.1)

The character customizer ought to load from the black console if you just wait a bit.

Spoilers about dates....

Spoiler

A girl will only set up a date when she is in a Love state exactly, and it happens randomly. You'll get a message on your phone during school asking to meet at one of her favorite date spots. (It can happen when you already have a date set up with another girl that day :P)

The more days that elapse after your last date with a girl, the better the chances of her accepting the next date, so Shihoko should have accepted again eventually. Of course, her level of affection also influences when she'll accept again.