Completed / Ren'Py / VN

Hopepunk City [v1.1] [dateariane]

August 12, 2024F95

Your character is a refugee of one of those war torn regions who managed to swing a sponsorship to this city. You can play as a previous player character (DA/SITA or AiP) who Ariane sponsors, or you can be a new character who won a sponsorship. Your character can be male or female.
You move into a house with three women: Ariane, Rachel, and Maya. The object of the game is to get a good job and become friends with all three roommates, and if you are successful you can help negotiate a plan to keep the city-state stay alive a little longer.
The game opens up in a refugee holding area. It used to open up with long winded exposition text, until I decided “showing” is better than telling. You deal with an immigration agent in a military uniform, and then the first people you meet are people that hate refugees. The first friendly person you meet is Rachel.
Rachel gives you a tour of the house, then you meet Ariane, and depending on which origin you pick for your character, this is either a getting to know Ariane section, or a getting caught up section. There is a key point where Ariane asks what you are interested in, which is a key choice in the paths you can take.

Thread Updated: 2022-09-29

Release Date: 2022-09-14

Developer: dateariane Patreon – Website – Itch.io

Censored: No

Version: 1.1

OS: Windows, Linux, Mac

Language: English

Other Games: Date Ariane – Something’s in the Air – Rachel Meets Ariane – Ariane in Paradise

Genre:

3DCG, Male protagonist, Female protagonist, Lesbian, Sci-Fi, Adventure

Installation:

1. Extract and run.

Changelog:

v.1.1

Bug Fix

Demo 0.3

Third release.

Developer Notes:

Hopepunk City is my next game, and even I admit it is a strange one crossing multiple genres. I have released a demo on my Patreon page.

My first post about this game was about the genre of the game. My REAL first post about this game was about art trends in 2020, with the theme “I don’t care if it is popular or not, I’m just doing it for me.”

Hopepunk City was made in 2020 during a global pandemic, racial riots, and a very contentious election, and I had all that in mind while writing it.

I’ve decided to release a demo version of the game consisting of the mostly complete first third of the game on my Patreon page. In testing, I’ve come to realize that this portion of the game is a bit dark.

In fact, revisiting my 4 previous games, none of the games have been as dark as this game currently seems. What the hell am I thinking?

At the same time, I am looking at what I have left to work on in this game. I have about 18 or so scenes left, that I have been kind of avoiding. As it turns out, these scenes demand to be fun and lighthearted to reverse the gloominess of the game so far.

In other words, I spent a good part of a year perfecting the dark parts of the game while avoiding writing and illustrating the fun parts of the game. I am starting to question my own sanity.