Hi everyone, and welcome to this new WOTF’s devlog! Guess who just finished chapter 5 right in time for this devlog, but I haven’t got a single word of chapter 6 written, which means I kinda failed my monthly goal… But progress is progress, and that’s what matters most (and I mean, I wrote two chapters this month, it’s not nothing lol).

So, once again, it’s a bit complicated to detail what I wrote or where I’m at because now we’re in highly spoilery territory. But basically, just know that I am VERY excited because I declared, months ago, that Chris was my second favourite protagonist of mine and I’ve finally reached the point where he can become the Chris I’ve been envisioning this whole time!! Chapters 6 and 7 are going to be a blast for me to write, although they are certainly going to be hard on our poor protagonist.

If I were to share something, I’d just say it’s funny how different from HSL it is! For example, you remember that, in HSL, there was a birthday scene dedicated to celebrate Chloé’s seventeenth birthday. It was important, as the scene shows how young she still is (after all, she remains a minor), how her only focus, even on her birthday, is Matthieu and how he, on the other hand, has an umpteenth breakdown when he realises he’s celebrating his girlfriend’s seventeenth birthday. I won’t go into a deep analysis of my own game, but basically, you can tell this scene was important in HSL.

Well, in Waterlily on the Froth… Chris’ eighteenth birthday happens during an ellipsis. Obviously, there are plot reasons why he cannot exactly celebrate it, but that’s spoiler: what I can say, however, is that my point here is instead to show how Chris turning eighteen… didn’t really change anything. A point I tend to see online, raised by people I certainly wouldn’t want to be friends with, is that: “How come a person seventeen years and three hundred sixty-five days old isn’t legal, but an eighteen year-old is?” Well, I guess that’s my answer: this is indeed creepy to try to seduce or sleep with someone the moment they turn eighteen, because they do not develop a magical understand of relationships and sexuality.

I’ll stop there, because well, I can’t go too deep into WOTF without spoilers, and also, I guess seeing me analysing my own game is a bit boring. But I’m really excited about it! I guess seeing a wall of text must be a bit boring, but I guess I should be able to finish the script before May (even April if things go perfectly), and then I’ll be able to work on the visuals, and it will be more interesting for you! But to state my monthly goal: I want chapters 6 and 7 to be both finished. They shouldn’t be too long (unlike chapter 4) so it should be manageable hopefully!

Talking of visuals (yes, skilled transition), I’ve been experimenting with another art style that I want to use for my NaNoRenO project (because I’m participating again this year: last year’s project actually was High School Lolita!). This time, the project is a wholesome one, with a love interest named Doug Biden (yes, it makes me laugh, let me have this). So I experimented this art style with Doug and some OCs of mine:

I’ve started to think this art style might also work for WOTF. I’ll certainly use another approach for shading (following the feedback I got from last month, I’ll certainly go with a smooth rendering for the skin and something more textured for the hair). Do you guys think this way of drawing the face features might work? Don’t hesitate to let me know!

And I guess that’s it for this devlog! Thanks for reading me and for following the development of Waterlily on the Froth!