Development Log #11: Know Thine Enemy (and deepen your characters)

Next update of General Practitioner will focus on a day at your relative's house for Christmas' Eve.

While the day will have two major events planned, the second one took many hours of writing because it actually tells you something more about every character, with the exception of the doctor for obvious reasons (one might want to see himself in the Main Character while others would like to imagine a completely made-up backstory for him, so hints about his life will be given while trying to keep them soft).

You will get to know your romantic interest very deeply as personal questions will be askedand different situations will likely to be discovered, even about their past lives before meeting The Doctor.

You will also get to know Bob (your brother-in-law) better and discover that he's not the usual bad guy who does what he does 'just because', from actually being on short terms with her relative to pursuing his hidden agenda with shady people for unknown reasons (won't spoil about him anymore don't worry).

I believe that one of the most difficult yet rewarding things about writing a novel is that every character has to be unique, and in General Practitioner you will often find that a character beliefs, what he/she likes or dislikes, their stories and even the phrases they say while having sex are hardly the same of another character.

This means putting much effort in writing dialogues and scenes, and since many players won't play the game more than once many will also never read some dialogues or play some situations, but I believe that's the price to pay for having deeper characters than most adult productions and this will be a trademark for all of Bruni Multimedia's Visual Novels in time.

Having an 'enemy' which has real motivations and who does what he does for a reason makes it harder to actually hate him or despise him, and I'd like some of the future choices in the game to be hard to take for some players because of that.

That's why 0.0.20 update "Merry Christmas" is the longest one in terms of dialogues ever released yet and, even though it just has two different endings (no spoilers) on its own they will have consequences in the game's future in an unpredictable way.

Have fun with the game!