Night with the AArdvarks is now complete. Enjoy!
Feedback is welcome and encouraged. I look at it and consider ways to improve for future games. You can also talk to me on the Discord.
What’s next:
Night with the Aardvarks was a good warm up project for me. I am now starting my next project which will be a large visual novel with choices, rather than a short story.
This will take place in the DC universe centered around the Teen Titans but other DC characters will enter the story later such as Wonder Woman and Harley Quin.
As much as I can, I will keep the feeling of the original show but with some darker and more adult moments. This goes for characters, setting and art style. So, like what Ferdafs did for Rick and Morty a way back home, but for Teen Titans.
The team at the beginning of the story will contain Raven and Starfire for sure.
As of writing this, other starting characters are not certain but it will likely contain “Beast Girl” a female version of beast boy. The reason for this is that her comedic personality fits very well with the team dynamics and will add a lot of fun to the story. Rather than crushing on Terra, she will develop a crush on you, the newest member of the team. But don’t worry Terra will be added to the team later on in the story.
You will NOT be playing as Robin. Some people like him, but many people hate him. I’m just starting to flesh out the story, so you may be playing as a kryptonian with a hidden past, or Batman who has has swapped souls with a Bruce Wayne from another universe who’s parents didn’t die. Whatever character it is, it will be a blank slate type character that has had a tragic past but can choose to grow from it, or not depending on what the player chooses, and can make good, bad, or neutral choices that affect the story.
I realize many people do not like the art in my past games. I have been improving. Even while working on this game, the last animation I did (Dora’s 3rd animation) is better than the previous ones and I know how I will draw and animate differently in the future.
For this Teen Titans visual novel, I will spend a lot of time upfront refining the style to make sure it is very close to the original style, with only very slight improvements that do not detract in anyway visually or make the characters feel different than the original characters. The characters will be characters I can re-use so I can spend more time perfecting them, rather than separate images for each piece of story such as in night with the AArdvarks. They will have plenty of expressions for each character that change with the story.
The main character will also be visible on the screen with the other characters, which means the players can see his emotions as well which adds a lot to the immersion factor. This is a mistake I made with the teaser I released “Into the woods” which was my first attempt to make a hand drawn game, as well as Night with the AArdvarks.
The environments will look like the show. The environments being textured, as in the show, brings more contrast and makes the clean flat shaded characters stand out more.
If for some reason this flops and people don’t like the art style, or any other element, I will redraw and improve things as many times as necessary until it’s very popular. But I’m going to take my time and do things well from the start.
This will be the most immersive teen titans visual novel that feels the most like the show, while still being for adults.
You can support this project or check for updates on it here:
https://www.patreon.com/OrtusGames
