Hello and welcome to my very first postmortem devlog! 

I don't usually do these, but since Roped In was such a special project, I felt like it'd be great to come back after a couple months and discuss some background of what went into this game!

First and foremost, I need to thank you all again for the absolute outpouring of love I got for creating Roped In. What started as a little idea flourished into one of my greatest accomplishments. Now let's get into the nittygritty...

It all started one day as I was looking around at visual novels on itch.io. I casually put out this tweet which garnered a bigger response than I expected. It was a done deal at that point- I knew I had to make this game. When I make games its always a story centered around a character. I meet the cast, then the story grows around them. Boone Bennett was ready and waiting to come out to the world. It only took a few days until Boone was "born" and I began writing.

I pondered the perfect title, finally settling on the first choice- kindly suggested by my boyfriend, Roped In. We thought it was great, alluding to lassos, but also the more NSFW-side of the game. Soon everything seemed to just fall into place. Writing took me only a month, with Snakkiez and Joy joining in to cheer me on, I practically steamrolled through the script. (Please check out their projects! I am a huge fan of both of them!)

That's another thing Roped In brought me, two new friends. They were beyond excited, offering me help and giggling with me at all the fun NSFW scenes. I am forever grateful to have met them and am proud to call them my friends. 

The game was almost making itself at this point! I have never experienced such a fluid development for a game before.

I was happy to use my knowledge of horses, the outdoors, and most importantly- cowboys, while writing. I even went to the lengths of making the default name of your horse after my own personal irl horse, Corky! 

Now you may be wondering, "Lacy, why did we get to name our horse?" Why not! I wanted this game to be as flexible as possible and allow the player to change whatever I could offer. This was also my first time offering pronoun options, which was a great feeling and I will be looking into offering this choice into all my future games as applicable. I focused heavily on inclusivity for Roped In, writing to make sure all genders, sexualities, and races felt comfortable with Boone. All sex scenes: optional, anything to do with appearance: open-ended. Roped In is for everyone. Boone loves us all. 

Now why cowboys? Why the Wild West? What makes you feel so intrigued by it to the point where you needed to make your own game?

Easy: I grew up in a country enviroment with horses. I always wanted to add them to a game of mine, but in context I know (western riding!) AND my even bigger inspiration, a little game called Red Dead Redemption 2. If you know me, you know I adore this game, spending hours in it with the gang, hunting, going through the story again and again. RDR2 holds such a special spot in my heart, that I needed to create my own slice of the Wild West. I needed to tell my own story. In Red Dead we see so many lives in the Wild West: we got John, Arthur, Dutch, Hosea, Lenny, Sadie, and the list goes on and on, but we needed Boone Bennett too. I created a game for others to make them feel the way I feel in Red Dead- at home, free, comforted, and safe. Roped In is there to be like a warm blanket, Boone welcoming you with open arms.

All in all, this may be the longest devlong I've ever written, and I hope that goes to show how much this game I created means to me. I love talking about my cowboy, speaking about the romantic (or NSFW!) scenes at length, joking about Boone with my friends and hearing from others how the game made them feel. I am happy leaving it here, focusing back on my fantasy amare/otome, Ardency: HotR, but there is one more thing left to be said.

Boone Bennett's story may be finished, but I don't think you've all been Roped In yet. 

Perhaps the Wild West calls again.