Omg, this looks so pretty and the story, characters and poly relationship is a top notch! Female protagonist quality mature/adult relationship with 18+ content are lacking, so It's like your answered our prayers(we prayed for more erotica aimed at women). Thank you and I wish you luck!
I'm gonna give a really long response, sorry, but I think this could be helpful for other IF writers who stumble across it because you brought up such a good point.
A bit of lore. I applied to Heart's Choice (Choice of Games romance publisher) during the pandemic and got rejected, but I couldn't shake the idea of doing an IF. Meanwhile, I'd been drafting/worldbuilding Bride of Shadows as a novel series in my spare time for a few years. I'd been planning to take a semester off from teaching and write book #1 this year, but in November I stumbled across Arcadie: Second Born on Steam. Until then, it never occurred to me that I could just make an IF on my own and self-publish it, so I started doing research and learning Twine in December.
My husband was very confused that suddenly I was making a game and I can't blame him because my biggest doubt was that I didn't see other IFs like this. Most of the other popular ones were either smut (which is fun, no shade, I'm just one of those chicks that needs emotional attachment with erotic stories) or open-gender high fantasy aimed at everyone. I probably told my husband like 100 times "this isn't going to go well because you can't play as a guy, there are only two ROs, and they're both guys" but secretly I suspected there'd be at least a small niche for erotic fantasy romance IFs aimed at women because it was exactly what I wanted.
If the response so far has been any indication, there's definitely a big hunger for this sort of thing. Rest assured, I'm thrilled and I have every intention of continuing with the full story, getting new episodes out asap, and ultimately publishing it as a full game. I've purposely structured the story so that it won't become too overwhelming. I think a lot of IF authors get burnt out because they feel like they have to stuff the story with lots of characters, which bogs down the creative process. I also structured the IF so that instead of having to wait 1-2 months for new chapters, I can publish in episodic format, uploading new nights every 1-2 weeks, which imo is amazing for avoiding burnout because you have much smaller goalposts to hit. It's the difference between having a goal of running five kilometers and five-hundred meters. One is a lot less likely to leave you overwhelmed and wanting to throw in the towel.
tl;dr: I love this format for my story, I've taken a lot of preemptive measures to avoid burnout, and I'm in this for the long haul. Also, if anyone reads this and is thinking of doing a female protagonist erotic romance IF, go for it!
Thank you!! If you've played BG3, I have it plotted so that there are a few different core endings, how satisfying they are will depend on choices you've made along the way. There are no objectively bad endings, but there will be a lot of opportunities to die if you make really bad choices. In that case, you can always abuse the "Back" button.
Wow, it's so surreal to think of this as an otome game but tbh you're not wrong. It started as an MMF interactive novel and then morphed into something approximating an otome as I learned to code and kinda went wild. I'll update the tags so they're more appropriate, thanks!
Thanks for correcting the tag. I saw the tags said Yaoi but the description said mmf without any indication of gender selectable mc so was confused about the tag.
Hey! In my opinion, I suggest you should keep the Otome tag (in combination with the LGBT one) and/or at least add the Female Protagonist tag. Personally, that's the two tags I always add when searching for gender-locked MC.
This randomly popped up on my tumblr and so far it's all i ever wanted from an if. I been waitngggg for an if that has some form of pregnancy included in it. That added with the lore and the two lovers this is setting up to be one of the top ifs in rotation.
Spoiler question down below:
What determines the father of the baby? Or with how this story is going is it even that simple? Or is it too early to say?
Thank you! As for the question, explaining it would spoil a few plot points. I'll say that as currently drafted you can go either way, but one way is a lot more complicated.
OMG! The world that you created is so wonderful and the language spoken by both LI??? My dear, you have done such a fantastic job 🫶🏻🫶🏻 I can’t wait for the next update and hope you take plenty of rest after each update ✨
Thank you! I was conflicted about adding a fantasy language, I figured it may annoy people, but I'm such a sucker for that sorta thing, I couldn't resist. I plan on doing a lot more with it once I add the language as a stat and optimize the coding for translations. I'm so grateful for your feedback!
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I'm really looking forward to the rest of the story.
Is the url for the blog wrong? When I clicked on it, it took me to an error page.
I think I had it routing to my Tumblr dashboard. Doh! Should be fixed now.
The story is amazing, I’m so excited for the next part! Thank you for this masterpiece.
Thank you! ❤️
Omg, this looks so pretty and the story, characters and poly relationship is a top notch! Female protagonist quality mature/adult relationship with 18+ content are lacking, so It's like your answered our prayers(we prayed for more erotica aimed at women). Thank you and I wish you luck!
I'm gonna give a really long response, sorry, but I think this could be helpful for other IF writers who stumble across it because you brought up such a good point.
A bit of lore. I applied to Heart's Choice (Choice of Games romance publisher) during the pandemic and got rejected, but I couldn't shake the idea of doing an IF. Meanwhile, I'd been drafting/worldbuilding Bride of Shadows as a novel series in my spare time for a few years. I'd been planning to take a semester off from teaching and write book #1 this year, but in November I stumbled across Arcadie: Second Born on Steam. Until then, it never occurred to me that I could just make an IF on my own and self-publish it, so I started doing research and learning Twine in December.
My husband was very confused that suddenly I was making a game and I can't blame him because my biggest doubt was that I didn't see other IFs like this. Most of the other popular ones were either smut (which is fun, no shade, I'm just one of those chicks that needs emotional attachment with erotic stories) or open-gender high fantasy aimed at everyone. I probably told my husband like 100 times "this isn't going to go well because you can't play as a guy, there are only two ROs, and they're both guys" but secretly I suspected there'd be at least a small niche for erotic fantasy romance IFs aimed at women because it was exactly what I wanted.
If the response so far has been any indication, there's definitely a big hunger for this sort of thing. Rest assured, I'm thrilled and I have every intention of continuing with the full story, getting new episodes out asap, and ultimately publishing it as a full game. I've purposely structured the story so that it won't become too overwhelming. I think a lot of IF authors get burnt out because they feel like they have to stuff the story with lots of characters, which bogs down the creative process. I also structured the IF so that instead of having to wait 1-2 months for new chapters, I can publish in episodic format, uploading new nights every 1-2 weeks, which imo is amazing for avoiding burnout because you have much smaller goalposts to hit. It's the difference between having a goal of running five kilometers and five-hundred meters. One is a lot less likely to leave you overwhelmed and wanting to throw in the towel.
tl;dr: I love this format for my story, I've taken a lot of preemptive measures to avoid burnout, and I'm in this for the long haul. Also, if anyone reads this and is thinking of doing a female protagonist erotic romance IF, go for it!
This is all I wanted and moree 🫶. I have a question though, are there bad endings? Not that I'd mind I'm just curious :D
Thank you!! If you've played BG3, I have it plotted so that there are a few different core endings, how satisfying they are will depend on choices you've made along the way. There are no objectively bad endings, but there will be a lot of opportunities to die if you make really bad choices. In that case, you can always abuse the "Back" button.
I'm officially obsessed
❤️
Otome game tagged with yaoi?
Wow, it's so surreal to think of this as an otome game but tbh you're not wrong. It started as an MMF interactive novel and then morphed into something approximating an otome as I learned to code and kinda went wild. I'll update the tags so they're more appropriate, thanks!
Thanks for correcting the tag. I saw the tags said Yaoi but the description said mmf without any indication of gender selectable mc so was confused about the tag.
Hey! In my opinion, I suggest you should keep the Otome tag (in combination with the LGBT one) and/or at least add the Female Protagonist tag. Personally, that's the two tags I always add when searching for gender-locked MC.
That's a great idea!
This randomly popped up on my tumblr and so far it's all i ever wanted from an if. I been waitngggg for an if that has some form of pregnancy included in it. That added with the lore and the two lovers this is setting up to be one of the top ifs in rotation.
Spoiler question down below:
What determines the father of the baby? Or with how this story is going is it even that simple? Or is it too early to say?
Thank you! As for the question, explaining it would spoil a few plot points. I'll say that as currently drafted you can go either way, but one way is a lot more complicated.
OMG! The world that you created is so wonderful and the language spoken by both LI??? My dear, you have done such a fantastic job 🫶🏻🫶🏻 I can’t wait for the next update and hope you take plenty of rest after each update ✨
Thank you! I was conflicted about adding a fantasy language, I figured it may annoy people, but I'm such a sucker for that sorta thing, I couldn't resist. I plan on doing a lot more with it once I add the language as a stat and optimize the coding for translations. I'm so grateful for your feedback!