Imouto, or little Sister is the most important and, quite honestly, only interactable character in Living Together!. What better subject to shed light on for my first Dev Log than Imouto? As a cohabitionation simulator, you’ll be spending a lot of time with her in the game and the mechanics around this interaction are a core part of the gameplay. A typical evening spent together will see a caring Oniichan interact with his Imouto several times. You get the choice of having several types of conversation with her and a broad range of topics. Other activities include playing games, drinking tea or a soda and bathing. Imouto also has emotions, influenced by a number of factors and which in turn influence all other interactions. Today, I’d like to focus on the conversation choices and what makes Imouto tick internally!
Imouto Psychological Matrix
Imouto comes equipped with a psychological matrix consisting of over 50 contributing facets. Think of things like topic interests, mood, desires, her trust in you and her attraction towards you. You can add hormonal fluctuations due to her menstrual cycle to this, as well as the impact you have through your actions ─ for better or for worse. At the start of a new game, Imouto’s core persona is established by determining her interest in 50 topics, ranging from socialising, school subjects, sports, hobbies and more. However, these aren’t given random values but are given a “seed”. Through this random seed, I can keep each Imouto believable, with a set of high-interest topics and a broad range of other interests. She will never be random, or completely focussed in her interests.
I think I’ve hit a very realistic spot, where she’l have between 5 to 7 topics she’s more interested in than the rest with 1 or 2 topics possibly being somewhat outliers (for instance, a favourite hobby of hers). She’ll have a broad scope of other topics she has some interest in and approximately a similar scope of topics she has little to no interest in. This makes for a person you can talk too about many things without them completely ignoring you or blowing you off. For Oniichan this means more oppurtunities to get to know Imouto a bit more and build that all-important trust.
Multiplying all the possible combinations of Imouto personas together, I came (or rather, I stopped trying at) half a googol. To put that into perspective, there are way more possible Imouto personas than there ever were people on Earth living and dead! This is combined with a method that produces a well-adjusted person in terms of topical interests.
I cannot possibly say which topics are more likely to be of higher interest to her, only that it is likely there will be 1 or 2 she’s very interested in, 3 to 5 other high interest ones and then another set of broader interest topics. Another thing the seed does is that is clumps interest together into clusters. If she’s very interested in a sport, chances are higher that she’ll have a higher interest in other sportsy topics too.
Having a Conversation with Imouto
By selecting the Talk option, you can select between 3 conversation types; Casual Conversations which build Trust, Lewd Conversations which build Attraction and an option to try and cheer Imouto up (useful if her Mood is bad). You are presented with a number of topic categories. For a Casual Conversation (I think the most important mechanic to build Trust in the early game), there are 8 topic categories. Almost all have 7 specific topics. You pick the topic, and the conversation starts and the game gives you an indication of how succesful you were.
You can discuss each topic once a day. A conversation takes 45 minutes and given the number of topics there are, you could spend the whole evening just talking quite easily. However, finding out which topics actually interest her will make this way more effective and leaves valuable time in the evening for other actvities.
My next focus will be to emote Imouto after the conversation. She will already show her general mood at the time before the conversation starts. However, I want her to express herself based on how the conversation went. If you try to cheer her up and it worked, a giggle, if she found a conversation very boring, she might give off a bored scowl.
Discovering High Interest Topics
The whole code for discovering her high interest topics is already there. I’ve still working on finalising the UI for it. You can then access a special app on the smartphone which keeps track of it for you. In early pre-alpha versions, I had a more traditional UI with more typical menus. I’ve opted for the smartphone/smartwatch though, which I think looks crisp and modern. By its design however, screen realestate is more restricted by this choice. I think I made good progress here too, however, and will keep you updated on this in the next Dev Log.