My friend and I have decided to adapt a story we’ve been working on together into a game. From what I’ve seen in already published games, rarely are there over eight ROs. Given that there’s two of us and this is a pre-established story, we decided to genderlock the characters and ended up with 7 male, 7 female, 1 nonbinary, and 1 demigirl ROs. In addition, there are 3 other characters the player can form an entirely platonic relationship. Is this too much to keep track of?
Each of the characters is distinct in personality and will have completely different routes. For example, some of them will jump straight into a relationship (that may or may not last) and others will only fess up their feelings near the very end—and we’ll have a good balance between the two extremes. The ROs also have varying involvement with the main conflict, making them more difficult or less difficult to interact with depending on if the player gets involved or stays out of it.
We were also thinking of implementing a system where certain options in a playthrough lock you out of dating specific ROs because the player somehow went against their core values. A lot of these characters also have “canon” relationships with each other, so if the player doesn’t make a move before a certain time, they can start dating someone else.
Would people be interested in having this many ROs available, or will it be too overwhelming, even if some are not romanceable in certain routes?
My opinion: that depends on how much screentime you can give them each, so that the reader will be able to tell them apart and get to know them before deciding (and how much you are able to handle as writers).
I think that would be too much. In my experience, the less RO there are, the deeper their routes are and the more screentime they get. That’s only logical considering how much branching relationships can lead to.
Personally, I had the best experiences with stories who have no more than maybe six RO … Stories with more RO tend to either giving these characters little screentime/focus or making the relationships more superficial.
I’d be interested, even if they hooked up with each other and are sometimes unavailable. There’s no reason to turn down more options. In practice, though, an overabundance of ROs usually means individual ROs are not given the time and attention they need. Theoretically, there’s nothing stopping you from writing a 19-RO-game of the same quality as a 4-RO-game, but it seems a herculean task.
In my opinion, anything above 5 is too much. The standard number of heroines in a galge is 4 for a good reason.
I usually say something like “it depends on the game or how you’re planning to handle it” but 19 major characters, even if three aren’t romanceable, is vast. I’d recommend having a good look at them and thinking about which can be removed and/or whether they have overlapping traits or roles in the story that mean they can be combined.
It’s OK to have a setup where you don’t get to know everyone on a single playthrough, but a cast of 19 will make it difficult for you as authors to flesh out everyone in a satisfying way. Even moving from 3 major characters to 4 adds a huge amount of work - especially when it’s your first project, having such a big cast is a good way of setting yourselves up for stress.
On another note, I much prefer seeing a more balanced spread of genders in a cast especially if the male and female characters are cis. It’s worth taking a look at that, too.
I think you need to ask yourself this question: Would you rather have 1000 words with 19 RO’s/platonic characters or 10 000 words with 5 RO’s? (yes I know the math is not perfect, it’s the idea).
Just do an experiment. Write a conversation/interaction with your favorite RO. Then see how many words that is. Then multiply it by 19. And now imagine doing that for EVERY scene for the entire game. Either you have to accept that the dialogue will be mostly the same and thus the RO’s will be bland and mostly names, or you’ll have to write until you’re pensioners.
I think that 19 character will be a lot of work even for you and your friend that it can even make your mind drift away from the story itself
But you should consider not to lock the gender of all your ROs and lower the number of personalities
That would provide the player with a lot of RO options and will make it easier for you to manage
Also you can add one or two secret or hard to get Ros that will need specific conditions to reach them
I think that this will lower your 19 Ro to around 7 or 8 characters which will be very easy for you and your friend to keep track of
It’s not even from romance viewpoint – keeping this many characters relevant to the plot and meaningfully contribute in manners that aren’t just “this is a RO for the sake of having a RO” is probably an even harder challenge you’d face with such setup.
In addition to what others have said, I also wonder if you underestimate what collaborative writing means. It’s not just you have two people, so you write twice as fast. Things like consistency and tone matter. Having a cast that large will only make that harder.
New gamedevs in any genre are always told to start small. It’s a drag tbh. But it’s also good advice.
This is too many ROs. If you’ve gone into the double digits, you need to start pruning. Sixteen different possible love interests is asking a player to juggle far too much. Generally speaking, either side of five is a good number to start with, I’ve seen good games with less but going much higher tends to turn into soup.
Woah, I went to bed and didn’t expect to get so many replies. Thank you to everyone that answered.
We’ve already agreed to cut down the number of interactable characters, although some of them will occasionally be referenced (since this takes place in a small school setting—it’s a bit difficult to avoid everyone).
I see a lot of concern with the depth of the love interests if we did attempt to pursue more than the usual amount. I will say, neither of us are coders and we’ll probably run into issues when we get to that part of the project with so many options, but the characters have been in development for at least three years. It’ll most likely be a lot of writing from our side, and we’re not particularly rushed to get a project out any point.
There were also a few replies regarding the facts that the characters are genderlocked. Unfortunately, we most likely will not be changing that. The love interests are characters before they are ROs.
Shepherds of Haven has ~10 ROs and I feel like they’re all well-developed and interesting, and all get multiple chances to shine within the narrative. This is primarily possible because SHOH is HUGE, it simply wouldn’t be possible with a shorter word count.
Similarly, there are many more examples of abandoned WIPs with a large number of ROs, or stories where a few ROs receive way more attention and development than others. 16 seems totally unmanageable and I just cannot see how you could do that many characters justice. Most traditional books’ main casts max out at 7-8 characters, and those books don’t even have to worry about branching like IFs do.
Are all of them full ROs with their own arcs? Or are some flings (less developed, minor characters that only show up a few times)?
4 is the golden number. pretend its a political compass type square, have 2 axis you want to aim for and put each romance option in each smaller square.
maybe. but for some people the tropes help. the audience here, most really are just looking to scratch a certain itch than read through a fleshed out character that develops. even then, no rule against having a character that fits a trope but is also fleshed out and develops throughout the story.
I agree that it’s better (artistically even if not commercially) to avoid super-tropey ROs. But doesn’t your reaction depend a little on what’s on the axes? Have one be e.g. rationalism v superstition and the other be nostalgia v futurism – I can imagine a game with those as core themes. Would ROs written around a values quadrant like that still feel like walking tropes to you?
Yes, I wanted to second this point in particular, Collaboration is a lot of work. There are aspects of management that come on top of the work of writing itself, and that’s if everything is perfectly smooth sailing. Don’t expect collaboration to decrease your workload. Ask yourself where you want to be, ten years from now, because that’s the scope of the project that you’re outlining.
