Dialogue 2.

Dialogue 2.

Ambitions.

Content warnings: Pet play, sexual teasing.

This is a "blog post" presented in a visual novel style. Use Spacebar, Enter, Right Arrow, Down Arrow or Left Click to advance the text. Use Backspace, Escape, Left Arrow, Up Arrow or Right Click to rewind the text. Rewinding can be a little glitchy. A transcript of the text is below. 

Aria: Hello, I'm Aria.
I'm boooooored.
And I'm horny....
Won't someone make me their pet? I'm a good little kitty. Meow meow.

Kity: That can be arranged.

Aria: Meow meow.

Kity: Here, I'll put this leash on you.
Good, good. Now get on the floor.

Aria: Meow meow.

Kity: Good, good. Now put your head right here.

Kat: Oh, what's going on here?

Kity: Aria's bored, so I'm making her lick my shoes.

Kat: Wow, your shoes are really nice today.

Aria: Yeah, anyone who could look at and see these shoes with their eyes would agree they're amazing.

Kity: That wasn't a meow.

Kat: I'm just wearing these boring running shoes.
At least my socks are cute though.

Aria: Meow meow meow.

Kity: Hee hee. Aria loves socks.

Kat: You can play with them later, okay?
....
Speaking of playing, it's been a while since you released a game, huh?
We've just been hanging out in the Void Between Games....

Aria: Hehe. Yeah, I have a lot of game ideas, but it's so hard to make them.
It's hard to focus and stay motivated. And a lot of my ideas are heavy on the writing and art side.
My writing, at least fictional writing, is something I've never had a lot of confidence in. It doesn't come naturally to me.
As for art, I'm okay with small-scale pixel art, but larger sprites like these ones, or more detailed drawings, are hard to do.
And I'm so busy in my day job, and I get tired after work, so my ideas are just languishing....

Kity: Basically none of that was a meow.

Kat: Ooh, I wanna hear more about your game ideas.

Aria: I'm going to take the world by storm with my grand ambitions.

Kity: I guess the right one's looking pretty shiny. Okay, do the left one now.

Aria: Meow meow.

Kat: Ariaaaaaa.... Am I going to be in any of your upcoming games?

Aria: Hmm, maybe not until KittyKiss. That's going to have quite a large cast.

Kity: Oh, what's it about?

Aria: Aria is a graduate student who lives alone with her pet cats. But one day, they suddenly transform into humans! And some humans are turning into cats, what kind of mystery is happening?
One of Aria's cats is going to be sadistic and playful, and the other is more gentle and romantic. It's going to be a dating simulator for the ages. And all of Aria's friends are going to show up and have a role in the story. ....Maybe.
But I definitely want to get some experience making visual novels before I start seriously working on it. I don't even know if I'll ever reach the level required to make KittyKiss. It could take years.

Kity: So it's like your ambitious dream game that you'll never actually make.

Aria: Exactly. It's nice to have at least one of those.

Kat: I wanna turn into a cat. What will my cat form look like?

Aria: That's a secret.

Kity: In other words, she's never thought about it before this very moment. You might not even get a cat form.

Kat: Nooooooooo....

Aria: Hehe. Well, very little about the game is actually planned out. I want it to be a visual novel with mystery elements and dating sim elements. You can date different girls but there's also a big mystery at the center of the plot, about why cats are becoming humans and humans are becoming cats.
I'm interested in exploring the concepts of "pets" and "ownership" in a BDSM context. Feelings of being someone's pet, or belonging to someone....
By having humans and cats switch roles, surely some exciting things will happen.
But I don't know what they are!!

Kat: Maybe someday, we'll find out!!

Kity: Aria likes it when cats dig their claws into her. Probably something like that.

Aria: It feels so nice when you're holding a kitty and you feel their little claws. Meow meow meow.
Another problem is that I have really low confidence in my ability to write mystery stories.
I love mysteries, but writing a compelling mystery feels like a nearly impossible task to me right now.
So that's why I started working on the draft of "Detective Aria".

Kat: Detective Aria!!

Kity: Detective Aria.

Aria: It's a series of small adventure games. Each is a self-contained mystery, but there's also an underlying plot thread connecting them all.
The mysteries are supposed to be pretty short and simple, and they all feature the same small cast of characters.

Kity: I see. It's like a way for you to level up your mystery writing skills.

Aria: Yeah. I have a vague outline of the whole series, like who the "criminal" is in each mystery and their general motive.
But I tried fleshing out the first mystery, and it's so hard!!
It's so hard to keep track of all the clues, and make sure they make sense and don't contradict each other.
I feel like I almost got a working outline, but there are a few little issues I still need to figure out.
Maybe writing a mystery is even more of a puzzle than solving a mystery.
But anyways, the bigger problem is that I don't have a satisfying ending for the series. The ending I came up with in the outline feels like a boring cop-out to me.
So even if I figure out the first mystery, and I turn it into a game, I still need to come up with a satisfying conclusion for the whole series.

Kat: Wait, so are the mysteries like....
Sexy?

Aria: Oh.... yeah, I think so.
Like, all the characters are gay and have sex with each other a lot. Probably.

Kity: Ah, so these are still going to be adult games.

Aria: Yep. I haven't really worked out how explicit I want them to be. But I want to have some fun writing them.
Maybe understanding the sexual relationships between the characters will actually be important to the mystery.

Kity: Aria couldn't have stolen that burger. She was too busy eating something else.

Aria: Oh, what was it?

Kity: I'll show you later. Hee hee.

Aria: Meow meow.

Kat: Sounds like you're kind of stuck on Detective Aria for now. Too bad. I wanna play it.

Aria: Yeah, but I have like two to five more game ideas.

Kity: Two to five, huh.

Aria: Well, some of them are kind of in that "this barely qualifies as an idea" state.
The most fleshed-outone is probably the sliding tile puzzle game....
In this game, Aria teaches you how to solve those annoying sliding tile puzzles.
Like the ones where you have one free space, and the rest are filled with tiles. You have to rearrange the tiles in the right order by sliding them into the free space.

Kat: Ooh, I love those.

Kity: I don't.

Kat: I like the ones with pictures on them. Like a picture of a kitty.

Kity: Or a picture of Aria in a kitty maid outfit.

Aria: Yeah, probably more like what Kity said.
So, this game is kind of a reaction to two things.
One thing is "adult games where the gameplay isn't really sexy".
I don't think I've actually played many games like this, but I think there are a lot of sexy games that are just like, sexy poker, or sexy mahjong, or sexy sliding tile puzzles.
Rather than the gameplay being about doing sexual things, it's just a regular game with sexual elements tacked on.
For some reason, I want to try making a game in this style.
The other sort of related thing is "games where your reward for doing well is a sexy woman".
A lot of the aforementioned kinds of adult games probably fall in this category.
But another example is like, if you beat Metroid in a short enough time, then Samus will strip down to a bikini.
I have mixed feelings about this, because I don't think it's inherently bad, but it's often done in a way that makes me uncomfortable....
It's like the developers are saying, "Here's a beautiful woman we prepared for you!" And that feels kind of weird and objectifying to me. I guess.

Kity: Kat, here's a beautiful woman I prepared for you. ^_^

Kat: Thank you, Kity.

Kity: You'd rather have it that way, right? Hee hee.
It makes sense that it feels objectifying, since they're presenting a person as if they're a "prize".
But it also feels like they're also making assumptions about your sexual desires. That you want this woman to be "yours", or you want her to strip for you, or something.
When those assumptions don't align with what you actually want, you experience a phenomenon known as "ludonarrative dissonance".

Aria: I don't think that's what that means. But there is some kind of dissonance there. It feels a bit like someone is talking past you.
So, obviously you can't make a game that appeals to everyone, let alone a sexual game. Everyone's desires are so different.
But I want to try to take on these concepts in a way I feel more comfortable with.
I want to be more respectful to the player, by presenting the "reward" more carefully and giving them more options.
And I want it to be clear the "reward" is comfortable being given to the player.
So, the reward in my game is going to be Aria. Meow.
If you solve my sliding tile puzzles, you can do whatever you want with my body. Hehe.

Kat: Hehehe, I hope you don't regret saying that. You're talking to a sliding tile puzzle expert here.

Kity: I can't believe you actually like doing those. Hee hee.

Aria: I figure if I'm putting myself in the game as the "reward", there are no questions about my agency or whether I'm being "objectified". It's my choice. But I know that some players still won't really want to receive a person as a "reward". In fact, if I was the player, I might feel weird about that myself.
So I want to be careful about how I navigate that.
I want to be up front about it, and let them decide if they're comfortable playing with me, and what they want to do. So that nobody gets surprised with an uncomfortable scenario.
That's the idea, anyways. I wrote a script, but I haven't got very far on actually programming the game.
Even though I like the idea, it's been hard to motivate myself to work on it for some reason.
It's probably the game I'm most likely to finish next. Unless I come up with a small idea that's easier to make.

Kat: I wanna play. I'll speedsolve all the puzzles.

Kity: I just wanna slide Aria's tiles around, if you know what I mean.

Aria: Meow.

Kity: Well, I think we should wrap up this Dialogue. It's getting late.

Aria: Noooooooo. I haven't even told you about the magic collar game. Or sexy Megaman. Or Cute Jump M. It's a collaboration with my friend Sylvie.

Kity: You'll have to tell us some other time.

Kat: Sexy Megaman?

Aria: Part of why I want to make adult games is to explore my own feelings about sex, and understand them better.
And another part is that I feel like there aren't a lot of adult games out there that seem appealing to me.
I want to reach and connect to others who are similar to me, and make games that they can enjoy.
And I want to create worlds where BDSM is sort of a normal and fun thing that people aren't afraid to talk about.
It makes me happy when I see openly masochistic characters in fiction. I want to make that a little less rare.
And although most of my games will probably be narrative games, I want to explore lots of different genres and styles.
Making a sexy platformer seems a little hard though. But I'll try to figure it out!!

Kat: Aria's ambitions....!!

Kity: That's a good place to end this, I think. We'll see you later.

Aria: Wait, but I'm the one who decides when the scene ends....

Kity: Not if I'm the one holding the leash.

Aria: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The End 
The gentle sound of the aria fades from the evening sky.
Maybe you'll still be here next time I feel like singing.