What this game is about?
Shoujo City 2D, Shoujo City 3D, and the new game, Anime City, aren't sequels or remakes of each other, but new projects built from a scratch around the same core idea. The main difference between these projects is quality and scope, which are increasing with each iteration.
Tokimeki Memorial, one of best known examples of a classic anime dating sim, was my main source of inspiration. In this game, if you want to interact with a girl, first you must improve your skills, e.g., if that girl likes drawing paintings, you should improve your art skills. After that you can ask her out and go on a date to a shrine, amusement park, etc. That's the core game concept. Gameplay is mostly about reading texts appearing on screen (and making choices), and when it comes to improving you skills (another half of gameplay), you usually click on a button ("do music", "do sports", etc.), and your skills change without any further input.
The kind of game I always wanted to play is one built around the same concept, but where you can actually do all of these actions. E.g., if you want to improve your "music" skills to approach a girl from light music club, you'll actually have to learn playing musical instruments. And when you later go with that girl on a date to a shrine, you actually can try your luck with omikuji, buy candy apples at a food stall, etc.
That's the main reason why I started making video games and spent over 10 years already developing and refining a formula for a perfect anime school simulator. My main goal always was keeping aesthetics and traditions of a classic anime dating sim, but designing a game with fully interactive gameplay, where you always remain in control of everything you are doing.
Future development
Features that are planned for future updates after first release:
- More NPCs to interact with. The final goal is to add 8 characters who can be asked out on actual dates/interactions (4 boys and 4 girls). Right now there are only 2 girls.
- Full year cycle (affecting weather, foliage, harvestable resources) in addition to day/night cycle.
- At least 2 more school clubs (drama and photography) in addition to those already available (4).
- At least 2 more locations (Buddhist temple and shop for clothes).
- More content for each activity/feature. This goal doesn't have any specific target numbers, since most features can be expanded indefinitely (e.g., more clothes to wear, recipes to cook, plants to grow, etc.), so new content will be added here within limits of what can be reasonably achieved by a solo developer.