aurelim

[aurelim]

zamn caught the update so early its still 5/15 for me, aw hell yeah. i love time travel

I’m actually from the future prophesying the release of this update 😎

[aurelim]

Genres: Slice-of-life, coming of age, comedy, drama, romance, parody

Status: public demo here, updated as of 5/16/25 and includes episode 1 + 2 with 40k words, outline written

Rating: 15+

Content Warnings: Violence, language, bullying, depression + depiction of other mental illnesses, manipulation, tba

Inspired by those Disney Channel movies (you know which ones) and The Parent Trap.

As a 17 (soon to be 18) year old senior, you are anxiously awaiting for the day you graduate, pack your bags, and ditch Sunnyview, the sleepy, incredibly boring, town that you have grown up in all your life. It has been your dream for as long as you can remember—sometimes you can almost taste freedom on your tongue, so close yet so far away.

But one day, all of that changes when the filming for a movie is announced near your hometown. Not only is it a Stephen Zuckerberg, but it stars the recent award-winning actor Taylor Victory. Their presence stirs great interest and excitement in your small town. You did not care much about the actor beyond your keen interest in Stephen Zuckerberg movies, or at least, you thought you did not.

Until you have a chance encounter with the one and only Taylor Victory, and you notice the eerie facial similarities you share with them. Thus, a deal is struck between you.

You will swap places with each other—Taylor will experience a normal week of high school as you, and you will live the life of an actor in their place. Plus, their offer of money doesn't quite hurt, and with it you would have enough to leave Sunnyview.

Oh, how little did you realize how much trouble you were about to get yourself into.

↬ customize your name, nickname, gender, looks, personality, etc.! however you will think of yourself as a "regular, ordinary" person living a boring life.

↬ taylor's gender, pronouns, and looks will be identical to yours (with a few modifications)!

↬ take the place of a famous teen actor and perhaps get to film a few scenes. lie, cheat, gaslight, manipulate; whatever it takes to convince others that you are who you say you are. otherwise...

↬ fall in love with your best friend, the popular kid (aka your crush), your "co-star," or no one. break or make your relationships with them.

↬ celebrate your 18th birthday as taylor and all by yourself.

↬ attend prom as yourself. or taylor? you aren't quite sure what it is yet.

Taylor Victory (gender based on MC) → The Identical Twin

The actor who became well-known for their lead role in the romcom movie Swipe Right and won a Cinny award for it. Ever since Victory entered the entertainment industry at the age of 5, they have never been able to live a "normal" life. Until, that is, they meet you. They are charming, suave, and everything that you imagine an actor to be. Especially their cockiness.

Maxie Yang (gender selectable) → The Best Friend

You have known them ever since you were in diapers; your sweet, quirky, and incredibly reliable best friend since forever. They have always cherished you and you to them, acting as your shield when you used to be heavily bullied in middle school. They have a remarkable passion for art and is a total geek for mythology. Years later, Maxie remains the same as ever, though sometimes you catch their adoring gaze at you. Do they...no, probably not.

Tropes: friends to lovers, unrequited pining (on their part)

Kelsey Lovelock (gender selectable) → The Crush

Kelsey Lovelock is one of the popular kids at school...and has also been your longtime crush since 8th grade. You don't remember when it first began, but they have always treated you nice enough even if their friends are assholes and made your life hell the years before and during. Charismatic and currently in the running nominations for Prom King/Queen. They likely do not feel anything for you considering how little you have talked to them in your final year of high school…and they are dating someone else.

Tropes: acquaintance to friends to lovers, unattainable

Peyton Ryans (gender selectable) → The Co-star

Taylor's co-star in their upcoming movie together. And for whatever reason, they seem to hate Taylor with a passion. Unfortunately, they play as the protagonist (that's Taylor)'s love interest, so you often have to make contact with them. Perhaps you could try to persuade them to see a "different" side of Taylor and change their view. It all depends on how you play the game—just hope they don’t find you out.

Tropes: enemies to lovers, coworkers

FAQ

[aurelim]

Episode 2 release :)

ok it’s finally out now! episode two of swapped is now available on itch.io. in it you finally meet Taylor and make the Deal. There are two new entries in the info of people, three new achievements (though one is really hard to get compared to the others), a quickstart menu to episode 2 and a guide for beginners that was originally meant for my friends who don’t know what IF or CYOA stories are.

let me know if something goes wrong. otherwise I hope you enjoy!

[aurelim]

Trailer for Swapped

Contains flashing images and flickering text! (Sorry for the terrible quality.)

Music: First Rate Town by Good Kid

[aurelim]

I know I said that I wanted to get the update out by the end of April but will have to wait a few days for my beta readers to respond! But it will be out soon :)

[aurelim]

how come nobody told me how difficult it would be to painstakingly edit large chunks of my draft to the point of rewriting everything……..

my creativity is dwindling, I need random movie names ASAP and I’m drawing blanks 😭

[aurelim]

FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE SECOND EPISODE!! I wanted to get it done before the end of the month, so now it’s just editing and adding entries (and maybe starting the third episode while I’m at it). With any luck this episode should be out before the end of April. Wish me luck!

[aurelim]

My progress so far:

[aurelim]

finally figured out how to permanently remember achievements in Swapped even after restarting it! likely will not implement it until there are more episodes but wanted to share since it took me HOURS to figure out (pray for my sanity, i am never getting it back now).

[aurelim]

Is it just me or is the library not working 😔😔 I finally found time to try and read the new short 💔

should be working! Here is the link :)

[aurelim]

If it's not spoilery, how long has Maxie had a crush on the MC for? Was there an event that triggered it or was it more of a gradual thing?

Gradual—even I couldn’t tell you when it began. But Maxie has liked MC for a really long time.

[aurelim]

hey! if anybody can share resources on how to get sugarcube games on twine to remember certain achievements have been triggered i would greatly appreciate it :) and especially if there is a way to get around it without creating individual variables for each achievement. thanks!

[aurelim]

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Just wanted to wish you all a happy Valentine’s Day! …still lonely and single so I guess I’ll be playing IFs again this year… 

I updated the library to have a little short of Peyton a few hours ago. I was too tired to make a post about it then, but I just wanted to let y’all know it’s up now! There’s no music or content warnings, but I might change that in the future.

As for life updates, I’ve been sick the past three weeks and have really low energy. I’m tired constantly so not a lot of things have been written as of late. Though in other news I got into Our Life: Now and Forever AND Beginning & Always - I’m almost finished reading both and I HIGHLY recommend it, if you haven’t played it yet! It’s my first time reading a visual novel and actually making choices vs watching others play, so it’s been a lot of fun.

Stay safe!

-Aurie

[aurelim]

progress so far :)

hello! Feels like I have been silent for a while, so I just wanted to give updates on all of the games.

I’ve been working on ST4RDOM for the first time in a while. I think I finally have an idea of what direction I want the chapter to go in - now I need to execute it.

Swapped has also had steady progress - currently working on some convos and extending interaction w mc and Taylor! It’s taking everything within me to not erase it all and restart since there are some things about this draft that I’m not exactly happy with, but those issues should be fixed with some edits.

I also could not help myself to writing something for Swapped, so that is planned to come out on Valentine’s Day! It is short but sweet and full of fluff and teasing so I’m excited to release it :)

And that’s pretty much all I have! Hopefully the updates for Swapped and ST4RDOM are soon - fingers crossed!!

-Aurie

[aurelim]

19/1/24 CHAPTER 9 RELEASE.

5 endings at 3 different locations you can end up as your companions all split into different sides.. getting lost. Metaphorically or quite literally? What decisions have you made in the past to either bring chaos or calm into your so-called hideout..? Who will celebrate to see the long-awaited dawn, who will weep at the rising insanity of the leader carving down a bloody road to victory, and what painful truths will you finally discover?Where will you end up, who will you save, and who will you be in chapter 9?

133 303 words in total for ALL branches!

Between the 18k and 21k for a single playthrough!

Romance lock-in scenes for Ash and Ha!! Although they are locked behind one of the three exploration branches.

Specialize in your essence! If you are strong enough and are within the right branch for it, you can pick one of the few elements to focus on and develop your essence further.

Death

Angst

Depression

Screaming and crying people all around

Lily with a lighter

"Who gave Ha a gun?"

Two new annoying little brats to look after

The chapter is split between three different greater exploration areas, and you can end up depending on various variables and choices. Only one path contains all the companions while the other two may differ depending on decisions made.

~~ Updated dashingdon link (will be removed by the end of the month) ~~ NEW cogdemos.ink link ~~ Discuss the chapter on the forums! ~~ Coffee on Kofi!

That. Was an unbelievably long road. This chapter is easily the most branchy one. A few WIP scenes are locked, but they are nothing big and I may still decide to scrap those before the chapter gets too overwhelmingly brancy. Aside of that, some more balancing I might have to do still regarding personality traits and stats, but I want to delve deeper into that once I've got more results in on my online feedback form, so right now you may not really notice alotta stat changes throughout chapter 9. But yes. Here it is!!

I really hope the returning readers of RBU will enjoy this one. It's an 130k word long apology letter for the hiatus!! Go and give Ha or Ash a kiss or two, play catch with a fireball with Lily, question your entire reality with Amethyst, and connect some dots regarding the final revelation. Again, I thank anyone who has been around here with me since the start and all the new readers I've been able to tell my story to (and who managed to get through the messy first few chapters). I really hope the long wait was worth this all.

Feel free to report bugs in the forum thread c: and I shall try and fix them asap. Also whenever you suspect of the game pushing you into the wrong branch by checking the wrong variables, or if you see any typos and misgendering.

The ASK box is open! For questions, guides, character asks and etc.

Have fun c: I am hoping to keep this flow going for chapter 10 as well, seeing as the end of RBU is nearing and 10 won't be a very long one. Here is hoping I may actually reach the epilogue before I slip back into a 50 year long hiatus <3

[aurelim]

Heyy aurie!! Im a writer with a head packed full of ideas and I wanna try making an if!! Previously, I have written poems and snippets but never a whole story. I've alr downloaded twine and everything but ITS SO CONFUSING?? if you have any tips i would be so grateful omd 😭

hii! I am honored you asked me to help, but really before trying to do anything you should look into trying out the different formats on Twine! You basically do that by creating a new game and go to Story, then Details, and check it out (type something into the empty passage to at least see something and what the font looks like). By looking into them and seeing the designs of each one, you can figure out what works best for you. I personally love Sugarcube because it uses CSS, HTML and JavaScript to work, and there are currently a lot of resources for it!

I feel like I would do a better job if you had any specific questions to ask about how to start designing a game, so feel free to DM me. I can also help with coding as well ^^ though my JavaScript knowledge is nonexistent.

I can throw out some resources to look into as well:

Sugarcube v2 Documentation

100% Good Twine Sugarcube Guide

Megathread of Resources

Also, I’d be interested to know just what exactly you want to write, since you have so many stories. I know I have a lot, but I began working on each one at different times, so it would probably be best to settle on your favorite one for now. Maybe read it in the future too lol.

[aurelim]

Hey, I just saw a post that dashingdon may be going down soon, you may have to transfer the game somewhere else, sorry to bring bad news.

Guess it’s a good thing I never got into Dashingdon! Fun fact: I actually thought of learning it for Swapped but it seemed too complicated so I gave up and stuck with my strengths.

Though this is especially worrying since I have a bunch of WIPs I still have to play that are on Dashingdon…I’ll just be right back-