BOW & ARROW DETECTIVE AGENCY

It's Valenmas Day here in Fancy Town, and what better way to celebrate the day of love and festive gift-giving than a good ol' game of deduction! A mystery, if you will.

When PI Jancy True receives a letter of confession from an unknown source, no one is safe. Not even her own co-workers. But the victim can't solve her own crime, no no! That's where you come in! Help a distressed Jancy True on an oh-so-special Valenmas Day! Which of the three Drawtective hooligans had the beans to confess their feelings to their own boss?

Well, in order to figure that out you’ll have to get to know each of the drawing detectives more. On a personal level, even. After all, this case is quite personal. It’s almost a perfect meet-cute setup, if only you weren’t the most ironic case of dichotomy around. Despite your high-power love connections, you’ve never been able to get a date yourself.

It’s a tale of mystery, romance, plot twists, and confessions, oh my! Will you find out who Jancy True’s secret admirer is? Will you break your case of misfortune and bad luck in love? There’s only one way to find out!

The Case of the Secret Admirer follows you, the player, as a Detective of Love working under your father’s private investigation business: Bow & Arrow Detective Agency. When you’re called to a typical love case, you quickly find out it’s anything but. These clues are harder to decrypt than any previous case, but at least you have your one-time ability.

This visual novel is a fan game of the YouTube series Drawtectives, owned by the Drawfee Show. With a mystery to solve and romance in the air, there are three endings to discover plus an additional fourth secret ending!

And that isn’t the only secret hidden within this game...

I imagine there are a ton of questions swirling in your head, and that’s great! However, before you send over an ask, check out this FAQ post to make sure your question hasn’t already been answered.

From who’s on the team to the content rating to a proposed release date, check out the FAQ/Q&A post here!

2023 was a sucky year for me. I know the next season of Drawtectives is supposed to come out sometime this year but what good is it sit around and wait for the season to come out before continuing the project?

TW/CW: general sickness, I mention The Virus in one sentence

TLDR: I’ve been sick for over a week, next post will be pretty big/major to make up for my absence

———————

No posts, no updates, nothing. Have I given up?

Nope!

I’ve just been sick. For over a week I’ve been recovering from a cold/virus that I coincidentally got after being around someone who had The Crown™️ but I tested 4 times and I don’t have it. So… I don’t know what it is either.

Sorry to worry everyone. I’ll resume work on the game super soon!

Making a game as accessible as possible is extremely important. However, I am just one person. And while I'm trying my best to make my fan game more accessible to those with disabilities, it's also important to check in with my audience to make sure nothing is forgotten and if I'm implementing something incorrectly, or worse, offensively.

The engine used to make this fan game is RenPy. Although RenPy does have accessibility options, there are two problems with it:

It's not accessible to access it whatsoever

It doesn't cover everything

To get a better understanding of what I'm talking about, take a look at the default accessibility settings page:

First of all, you're probably wondering how I even got to this menu. You may even be baffled if you've played RenPy-based games before (i.e. Doki Doki Literature Club before it was remade to be ported to consoles) and you had no clue that this menu even existed.

That's the main issue I have with this. The options are good for basic presets, but you have to know how to even access it in the first place. I only learned of this while messing around with the game's main menu. If you select "help", the last thing it tells you is how to access the accessibility menu.

So unless you stumble upon a visual novel for the very first time and truly have no idea how to play through a visual novel and therefore need help on what keys to press and what they do, you'll probably never know that if a game is made with RenPy, it'll have an accessibility menu that's accessed with "Shift + A". And even then, most people just stumble through their first visual novel without checking the help screen out and instead just press a bunch of random keys until they figure it out themselves (or maybe that's just me).

That's the one thing I want to tackle first before anything else in regards to accessibility in my game. I want to make it easier and more known that there are indeed accessibility settings for those who need them. My current idea is to make a main menu selection that takes you to the accessibility menu when you click on it, no key combinations required.

Now, back to the menu itself.

The settings within the accessibility menu are pretty good. They cover the basics, such as dyslexia and TTS. However, as an individual who doesn't need those things, I have no clue how useful/helpful they are. For example, is Opendyslexic a good font or is there another font that is more universal among those with dyslexia?

As for self-voicing/TTS, this is something that I need to work on in the back end of things. While by default it's pretty good, I did some research and learned that there are ways to make a TTS version of the game just as enjoyable as a non-TTS version. That sounds super obvious reading it now, but as someone who doesn't need TTS, it's never crossed my mind. For example, by adding alternative lines of dialogue for TTS to read so that it doesn't fumble on certain words is a great solution. This is in addition to adding alt text to custom images that may otherwise not have any alt text for the TTS program to read.

Other things I want to focus on are:

Color-blindness options

Shaking/flashing toggles

As you can see, the list is short. On one hand, that's good because that means I don't have a whole lot to work on in this category. However, it also makes me worry that I'm missing things.

This is where I ask for your help as an audience. Are there any accessibility settings you would like me to add? Any that need modifying? Please let me know!

It's super important to me that you all know how far along I am in the making of this game. That way you all know what I'm specifically working on and where I am with the progress of the game.

Tasks will be added, removed, and modified. If you see something on the task list, don't assume it's there to stay. Especially if progress is written as "???" as that indicates that a mere idea as opposed to a concrete concept.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to send me an ask over here!

With all of that said, here's the public progress sheet!

Q: What’s the title of the game? A: The Case of the Secret Admirer!

Q: What’s the game about? A: There is a dedicated post all about the game here! (coming soon)

Q: Who’s all on the team? A: Just me, myself, and I. My main blog is @zodiacemma for those curious/interested.

Q: Can I be a part of the team/help make the game? A: No and yes. No, I don’t feel comfortable collaborating with others when there’s no pay involved. Time and effort is valuable and I’d rather waste mine than yours. However, there are still ways you can help out! Polls, concept art, and more will be posted with the full intention of receiving criticism, critique, and the alike. Audience input is super important!

Q: What if Drawfee doesn’t want this fangame to be made? A: I highly doubt that Drawfee will have (copyright) issues with this fangame’s existence. But if they do, it will be removed off the internet to respect them and their wishes.

Q: What’s the rating of this game? Anything explicit/mature? A: The game will be the equivalent of a teen and above rating. Meaning that there will be swearing and crude jokes, but no gore, violence, sex, or nudity. I don’t feel comfortable writing in that direction.

Q: You said there’s a romance system with multiple endings, does this include a romantic ending with York? Isn’t he asexual? A: Yes and yes. York has been confirmed to be asexual by Jacob himself. However, his exact canon is that York is asexual and somewhere on the aromantic scale, but not strictly aromantic (“York is somewhere on the aromantic spectrum and is asexual. According to Jacob, ‘He really just cares about how strong or not strong people are.’”). As someone who is on the aromantic scale themselves, I know how important it is to write a character like this correctly. It’s important to know that there will be no sex or mature content within the game and that York’s ending will be written with his aromanticism in mind.

Q: How much progress have you made? A: Wanting to know where the game is in production and if the creator is even working on it is super important. That’s why I’ve made this checklist that you can check out here! Tasks will be added/removed so make sure to check often!

Q: Will there be a demo? A: Yep! The main point of the demo will be to see audience reaction to game assets, character writing, and art style likeability. 

Q: Where will the game be released? A: On itch.io! And don’t worry, it’ll be 100% free.

Q: Is there any release date for the demo and/or full game? A: Before 2024 is all I can give for now. And even then, that might change. I’m about to head into community college so progress will slow down eventually. But even with that in mind, I still want the full game to be out before the year is over.