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Date, create, and share!

Assuming the role of a male high school student in Japan, the player will meet, interact with, and date a number of female characters with the goal of winding up with one of them at the end of a 101-day calendar. Yeah, you've seen this all before...or have you?

In other romance sims, there's little reason to replay the game again once you've pursued all the characters you're interested in. But Heartache 101 allows for a variable female cast. The number of characters in the game is completely open-ended!

You can create new characters and add them to the game, share them with other users, and add characters created by other users. You can create the images for custom characters from a template, or use images you created yourself, or images from any source. (only "standing" images of characters can be imported; there is no event CG in the game) A simple scripting language is provided for writing story events. You can also customize some of the music.

The game system itself is in part a visual novel interface with gameplay that include conversational decision-making, board game-like mechanics, stat management, financial management, and more.

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New game forthcoming, some might like to know



Since I've been asked many times if I would ever make a sequel to Heartache....

Well this is not a sequel. In very many ways it's radically different. But some might find that it partially retains a bit of the same feel?

So I'm posting the first public screenshot here, and whoever is interested, look for a game page up in the next week or two with the title "Where One Citizen". Game is not complete yet, but after 10 years of development it's about time to start showing it!

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On 2nd thought I do have a few ideas why the game didn't work when you copied the files to a thumb drive ...

(Disclaimer: I don't have a MAC and never had one.)

First: a mac has different notions of how to end the lines in a textfile. Maybe by copying the files were somehow converted from "PC style line endings" to "MAC style line endings"?

Second: as far as I know Mac OS manages quite a few additional attributes for each file it deals with. Normally those are hidden from unaware programs like wine. But to my knowledge Mac OS emulates those attributes by writing additional files to non Mac OS formatted drives (like most USB sticks). That files could be confusing wine ..

And a third possibility: ancient DOS formatted drives where limited to 8 letters for the filename + an extension like .TXT. If you used something like that, the names of all the files would be mangled and thus game.exe might be unable to find stuff.

But that's just guessing ...

Interesting ideas. But I have practically no knowledge on this subject so I can't really comment further on it.
Luckily it isnt hard to open the character TXT files and change their status to whatever you want so I had quite a bit of fun with that.

I do in all seriousness enjoy the game though. I played a few routs and still going! Its impressive how well the board-game like play style works to as that was one of my favorite mechanics of the game. I do wish the game was a bit longer but most likely thats just me.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
What to you mean by "longer", exactly? The game has a "151" mode where players get 151 days rather than the default 101.
Did you play some of the custom content routes? There's enough of them for dozens of playthroughs ...
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Extra special challenge: Make a custom character whose story requires 151 Mode to complete. I don't think we have a single character that does this. To be fair, it makes sense that having enough active characters means that the stories start running into, or otherwise interfering with, each other, and 151 Mode needs to be active to have a chance at them all. However, I'm not sure what that number is before it starts getting ridiculous.
I tried a few weeks ago to complete as many routes of WingGirl, Pathways and Nadeshiko in one playthrough as possible ... you're almost certain to luck out on a few of them and thus need much longer then 101 days.

*EDIT:* completing more then ... say ... three routes of the original content in one run without activating 151 mode, easy mode or cheating is challanging too.

Not to mention finding all those cute hidden bonus scenes where you run into two or more girls while exploring the town.
Hey guys i'm new to this site but since i enjoy Hearache so much i wanted to give ya all my opinion on the base game story as well as the custom girls so hope you look forward to my little reviews or that you at least like them
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
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Any review, miniature or otherwise, about what custom content was played, would be welcome. Though, the thought occurs to me that you may want to consider the "Add review" link at the top of the page rather than do it through a post. I suppose that might depend on how much you care about Makerscore (the "M" at the bottom-left of posts), and how much you have to say about the game otherwise.
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Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
It's not working? What do you mean? Does the text appear grey? Does it come up with an error page?
author=Marrend
It's not working? What do you mean? Does the text appear grey? Does it come up with an error page?
Well... It working. Somehow i remeber it not.
EDIT: Homepage wasn´t... what? Are that already cam 3.0 version...
Someone said get girlfriend just 30 days that game.... Even easy it take me at (maybe) too long, not say to me at that edit actual these girls "easier"?!
Or use thinks of them at help self...
Edit2: It is actually ALLOWED put them all at "love" at player?? I not think.
Or put all thinks at know. Or something??
At Q: Sakura isn´t allowed, but Nerota is allowed?
author=Marrend
It's not working? What do you mean? Does the text appear grey? Does it come up with an error page?

Uchioniko at with errors. although game works nice...
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Guardian of the Description Thread
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The link to the official page... I kinda think we should remove the link in the description. It's never been the most consistent of sites, even when flowerthief was active. It also seems to be that it's unavailable more often than it's available. I'd like to hear some opinions on this, though.

Edit2: It is actually ALLOWED put them all at "love" at player?? I not think.


It might be possible to put multiple characters into a LOVE state, but, keep in mind that the Heartache meter's maximum value at that level is, like, 3. To maintain that state, players would probably either have to get into encounters with those characters during school-phase, or upgrade the phone to be able to call more than one character during phone-phase or use the built-in cheat codes.

Or put all thinks at know. Or something??


Put all things at known? Authors can do this through NAME KNOWN, SIGN KNOWN, PHONE KNOWN, YEAR KNOWN, and RELATION KNOWN mid-story. They can also set these properties in the profile.

At Q: Sakura isn´t allowed, but Nerota is allowed?


The only Sakura I can recall off-hand is an off-the-camera NPC that's in Emiko's content. She isn't a character that can be pursued, nor is she meant to be. As for the other character you mention, I think you're talking about Nemoto Mayu, which is a character in the "Uchioniko" content?

Uchioniko at with errors. although game works nice...


I'm aware that Uchioniko can throw an non-critical error message if Masako's content is not present. That's probably what you're experiencing, but, if not...
As for the link: I liked some of the texts over there. Especially the loving description of "the cast" of the built in stories.

That aside: there's no real point in linking a site which seems to be down 95% of the time (or worse).

About persuing more then one girl:
It IS entirely possible to get more then one girl to "LOVE" during one playthrough. You'd have to be very observend for this or at least know them very well, tho. And getting them to "love you" isn't all it takes to make them into girlfriends.
author=Garage
As for the link: I liked some of the texts over there. Especially the loving description of "the cast" of the built in stories.

That aside: there's no real point in linking a site which seems to be down 95% of the time (or worse).

About persuing more then one girl:
It IS entirely possible to get more then one girl to "LOVE" during one playthrough. You'd have to be very observend for this or at least know them very well, tho. And getting them to "love you" isn't all it takes to make them into girlfriends.

Well... Rathed than "LOve" is her story important... Urfh.. Some "events" need open at before at daynumber/ or something else "event"... So, it was dificult get all at just 101 time, but one or two was possible...
Ouch... i don´t even go get i end at non generig end any playtough i are...
Well... Just try get one end, sometimes youre seen youre get more than your goal...
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
As for the link: I liked some of the texts over there. Especially the loving description of "the cast" of the built in stories.


We can probably get that text via the Wayback Machine...

Miki Nakajima. My gosh, when did she become so annoying? We attended the same elementary school, the same junior high, and now the same high school. It seems like just yesterday that we could be playing a silly game one of us made up, or racing each other through the neighborhood streets, or pulling each other's hair...and both be laughing about it together afterwards. But now it's as if every race we have is yet another opportunity for Miki to try to prove she's better than me. She really gets my goat sometimes! When did our relationship begin to sour?

In my more naive moments I get to thinking that her best friend, Keika Ikeda, might have something to do with it. But despite an occasional devious streak inevitably thwarted by her own air-headedness, Keika is herself a brilliant example of canned naivety. Miki says that coming from a rich family is to blame for all of Keika's faults, but clearly the two of them both care about and confide in one another. There are times it appears as if Keika might actually be on my side, but I'm never very sure about that.

At any given time I'd rather be thinking about this girl: Shihoko Kaneshiro. The popular star of the girls' tennis team is one year my senior, and although it's cliche, and although I've barely ever spoken a full sentence to her, and although the competition for her attention in this school is as heavy as the pile of unopened books on my desk tonight, I can't help feeling that somehow there must be some way to get close to her. But how??

I'm not quite sure what to make of her younger sister, Riho Kaneshiro, who is in my grade. She seems to hate me for no good reason. Did I step on her cat's tail or something? Is that such an unforgivable thing? Schoolwork and activities always have her stressed, but beyond that, Riho seems to have a chip on her shoulder that I can't quite figure out.

However, I do not know of a soul more unhappy in outward appearance than Akari Sato. This girl gives me weird vibes. And where there are weird vibes, weirdness can't be far below the surface. Yet trumping my sense of hesitation at her abnormal behavior and general aloofness is a sense of curiosity...which is itself trumped by an odd sense that somehow, very subtly, she might be crying out for help.

The disposition of Akari's friend, Hinami Hiraoka, could not provide a greater contrast! Right from our first meeting she seemed to show quite a lot of interest in me. Of course how much of that is me and how much of that is her boy-craziness when it comes to upperclassmen is a debatable matter. Due to the overprotective and violent tendencies of certain relatives of hers, it's hard to spend any time around Hinami without feeling a constant fear for my personal safety.

If girls are a mystery to me, then Tsubasa Onishi is not going to be the one who solves it; her cool, rational demeanor is broken from time to time by the loudest of personality quirks. She'll solve everything else though. Every mystery which crosses her path.

(These are only the built-in characters. The game can accommodate any number of characters created by anyone!)


...like so. As for where to put that information, maybe a new sub-page? Finished Content, maybe?
Yes, that's what I was referring to.

Hmm. If there's more stuff that seems worth salvaging from the old site ... how about making a sub-page of it's own for it?
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Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is the FAQ I wrote on setting up ZIP files so that they could extract to the proper directories. I snagged the text and associated images around October 2016. However, I'm not sure if that's worth it with the advent of the OCCD.
Hmm. At least some of custom content creators (CCC) here have required some guidance in this field ...