@EditorAvila
I’m picturing the MC as a helpless trust-fund baby who has no idea how to survive on their own.
@kyros
Not sure what you mean. I feel like it’s an inside joke on the forum I’m not involved in ):
@ParrotWatcher
You meet the other four at different locations. Each character has a distinct personality and I’m planning it to be sort of rom-com ish. Don’t worry, it’ll come clear in the demo 
Don’t worry, it’s not an inside joke(not on the forum at least)
Go ahead and google Hatoful Boyfriend
Thank me later
…Ryouta is best birdboyfriend.
Where would the story take place, I’d assume America or Europe, but Asia or Africa sounds plausible. This is assuming the MC is from old money such as European nobility, American tycoon family, African Prince or Asian political family.
I’d love a dating sim game. But yeah, for mcs that are only into one gender the game could be pretty short/feel lacking. If the mc is a trust fund baby maybe have a plot to better ourselves? Maybe still have the mc meet the characters of the gender we aren’t interested int but have them help us better ourselves? Plus I think yeah if it’s a straight up dating sim it’d be cool to have customisation, such as how rich you are, or if you’re always rich how your family got their wealth etc. Or a sub plot to help a ro with an issue would be good too.
That game was amazing
Fair enough, but even so, it seems a little unfair that straight players would always be able to romance three of the five options, while gay players can only romance two of them, especially since this is supposed to be a romance-based game, and you already have a genderflipping character in your cast… 
@kyros
A dating sim with pigeons. Sounds interesting. Tragically, no, you will not be able to romance pigeons.
@EditorAvila
Not sure yet. I’m considering Nantucket, Massachusetts only because I was born there and there are a lot of rich people, but probably North America for sure.
@CreepyPastaKittyFay
I want to focus more on the characters and the romance itself and how many different paths you can take there. I don’t want to introduce too many variables and make the game more complicated and give myself a migraine. But I also want the game to be enjoyable and have a lot of replayability.
I have some sub plot ideas in mind already concerning your family and your RO’s as well. I’m going with the “less is more” idea, that way the reader can visualize the game instead of having it spelled out for them.
@ParrotWatcher
What I could do is make all the characters gender-flippable and I gotta admit I’m considering it now. I’m just worried that making all the characters gender-depedent would make it more difficult to flesh them out, especially since I’ve already built out every character’s persona and background and imagining all the dollar sign and brackets is making me worried.
No matter, no birdie could equal Iwamine-sensei anyways~ I can settle for human ros lol
Ah, no, I’m not really worried about the non-gender-flippable characters; 
it’s more that the one who is gender-flippable flips based on the MC’s gender, not their sexuality.
Romance is not bad, not many games give it much focus so there is a nishe to fill (as you can already see in the comments)
However I know I’m not interested in a romance game if there isn’t much of another story, just because without a story it’s difficult to establish the MC besides the romance aspect and well…I enjoy choicescript games hugely because of the roleplaying aspect. I wouldn’t have much fun if the MC has nothing else to do besides falling for the ROs.
I don’t have much of a problem with chapters devoted to ROs I may don’t want to pursue, if it fits the plot and I’m neither forced to be nice or to pursue said character. Actually…this could be used to establish friendship/enemy arcs or to give room for polyamourus romance paths. But yeah forcing romance focused chapters with characters that the player isn’t interested in may not be a goid idea.
Some little side note: I’m a bit sad that we won’t get any nonbinary ROs tbh. I understand that many authors are a bit intimidated and scared to do something wrong on the other hand we have many nonbinary people on the forum that probably would be greatly invested in helping any author trying to write nb NPCs, especially ROs, because by now those are sadly rare… but yeah this is mostly a side note.
Anyway, good luck with your project, I will wait patiently for a demo.
I know that having character-romance based chapters would be annoying if it was linear or railroading, but I want to prioritize the different paths you can take around with the RO’s.
As for the NB thing, I get what you mean. Representation is hard to come by.
I plan on having a demo ready in the summer, maybe June or May.
I would die to have that!
I’m like the biggest fan of romance.
As long as the story is well writen I am all in!
Are you saying my wait for a romance novel is over? Im in.
I’d definitely take a romance game regardless of whether there’re other subplots to the story. As long as the gender-flip character is written well that both genders work.
I should say that I don’t think it’s as hard to pull off a gender-flip as a lot of people seem to think. In all the games I’ve played, the only time it ever bothered me was Affairs of the Court, and that was far more due to the fact that the society had very rigid gender roles, and they were being doled out almost at random (which would have been quite interesting if that had been the intent, but it really didn’t feel like it was…)
I’ve seen a few HG that were downright bizarre in that aspect, but not exactly the commonly talked about ones on the forum. One such coming into mind is Double/Cross, but it was the MC’s gender-flipping that didn’t work so well, since the ROs were gender-locked. The ROs behaved quite strangely until I figured the MC was likely written as a female, and that’d make the story go much more smoothly.
And others might just be my pet-peeves, for instance in Pendragon Rising—I don’t mind the gender flip of everyone to simply reverse societal gender roles (like Choice of the Broadsides did), but while having a female warrior MC I’d gladly romance a male RO who has a more stereotypical “nurturing” gender role, I still found the fact the male RO was a head shorter than the MC a tad weird. It seemed like a dead giveaway the story was written with a male MC and female RO in mind.
Affairs of the Court on the other hand, didn’t really go down in my memory as a bad/strange case of gender-flipping at all. I don’t recall minding anything in the game regarding genders in the slightest, and it’s one of the rare games that I played both male and female MCs.
Guess a lot of whether gender flipping works out comes down to personal preferences.
IIRC, in Affairs of the Court there is a scene during the play where the monarch physically lifts the MC that seemed weird to people playing with a male MC and female monarch.
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