Drama tic tac toe club (Tentative title)

Origins

In 2017, someone suggested as a joke that I should make a narrative tic tac toe game. I had already considered the idea of making a visual novel that was like a sports anime, so doing that but with the sport being the game of tic tac toe sounded cool. I considered it seriously for a while, at that time as a short and cheap parody game made by myself in a few months, but ultimately decided it would be too much effort for a joke I wasn't that passionate about, and at a time where I should be focusing on something with better prospects to be financially viable, if I wanted to be able to keep making games.

My long-term goal since I started making games has been to make meaningful contributions to interactive storytelling.

In 2021, after releasing pureya, I was planning a mystery romance visual novel as my next project. I ended up sidetracked into making The one who pulls out the sword will be crowned king and Pineapple on pizza, but I still thought that would be my next serious commercial project. However, when I started to try and write the story, I realized I probably didn't have the skill to write a serious full-length visual novel, so I thought I should probably start with something smaller or at least with a story genre that's easier to write. I started considering sports anime again, since their stories are simple and formulaic, and I recalled the idea of the narrative tic tac toe.

This time I considered it as a serious commercial project, not just a cheap joke. I figured the ridiculousness of the premise would make it more attractive than a real sport, and it would allow the game to work even if I fumbled the storytelling. If everything worked out well, I planned on making a second sports anime visual novel, this time based on an actually interesting game.