Happy Valentine's Day 2012

We wish you all a happy Valentine's Day! Kurara loves you, whether you're dating or not, and there will always be a cupcake for you. Blog updates have been scarce because we've been working behind the scenes on quite a bit of stuff for the summer. As a little thank you for your patience, here's a gorgeous image by Deji and sample loop from Every Sunrise by Marc: >Download<

In other news, we're already gearing up for con season! Mini A-KON is this Saturday, so if you're in the area, come by and say hi. It's free! Tell us you're a sakefan, and we'll give you a free prize.

Flower Girl

I lifted the above image from Deji's twitter. >.> This is Natalie, the heroine of Winter in Fairbrook (name subject to change), a spinoff of The Flower Shop. For those not familiar with the game, it's a dating/farming simulation I wrote for Winter Wolves. The game received a lot of good feedback, but there were also a lot of requests for a "girl's side" version of the game. The good (and kinda old by now...) news is that Winter Wolves has indeed started production of an otome spinoff. The same team will be back, with Deji doing art, and Jack Norton programming some fun mini-games. There are going to be some interesting new things related to the mini-games that I'm looking forward to seeing.

The heroine, Natalie, is a college freshman who desperately needs a job for winter break. Thankfully, her roommate, Clara, knows a certain flower shop that could really use an extra pair of hands. And so Natalie heads off to Fairbrook to help with the holiday rush of orders that are pouring in. Unfortunately, she's kinda lazy, completely scatterbrained, and this is her first job ever. Not really the best combination. Maybe the residents of Fairbrook can help her figure things out.

You can find plenty of images and production sketches at Deji's blog, and some teaser info at the Winter Wolves blog. Although this game has a certain amount of continuity, I wanted to make a standalone story so that anyone could leap into the game without needing to play the original. The writing so far makes a few references to the original game, but you don't actually need to play it to figure out what's going on. I'm having a lot of fun working on this project. Fairbrook is an interesting place, and I think Trent and Jacob deserve a lot more attention and story than they got in The Flower Shop. I'm looking forward to being able to flesh them out. And yes, Steve, is also a datable character, so if you liked Steve by the end of The Flower Shop, here's your chance to chase after him. Oh! There's also a new guy named Ryan. Fun for the whole family. I'll blog my thoughts on the guys as I work on their respective arcs.

Asami

Meet Asami, the heroine of our otome/mystery game, Oneiro. As you can see from the image, she's a pretty fit girl. She practices judo because it helps her focus her thoughts. She's the sort of girl who likes to think a lot, and sometimes she winds up over thinking things rather than taking action. Having worked at her parents' sushi restaurant for as long as she can remember, she's very mature and responsible. Her most hated chore is washing dishes, probably because it's the one she has to do the most.

Two New Projects

Why am I starting two new projects? Don't I have like a million projects already? Yes. Yes I do. And they are all very important. In fact, Flower Shop is near completion, so I'm aggressively testing it right now. I'm also working very hard to finish up some editing I promised would be done by now. D:

After Flower Shop and this game, it's on to editing and writing another game that should have been done awhile go (but this one isn't my fault >.>), and seeing if I can actually finish writing Moonsong sometime in the first quarter of the year.

So what the herdy gerdy is this? Well, first off, I am happy to announce that my first visual novel ever, Ripples, is getting a remake. Ripples was a game I made in the course of a week, but now that I look at it, I think a little spit and polish would do it justice. So I will be re-releasing it with updated writing, all new art (courtesy of the lovely and talented Deji), and original music composed by someone who isn't me (this is a good thing). So basically, it's the same story, but a complete remake of all the elements in it. The writing is already done, so this really won't be much of a time eater for me.

And the second project is called Re: Alistair. It's for a two-month challenge on LemmaSoft, and I planned out the writing to be on my "personal project" day (every Sunday). There's not much more to say about it, but updates will come as we progress.

Wandering Monk

Just finished coloring this. His name is Umi.

First Post

First post in my dev blog. I'm hoping to update daily - we'll see how that goes. I guess I'll start with my most ambitious project, Plat du Jour (working title). It's a pretty standard visual novel: one guy, multiple girls. Light romance. The theme is cooking. Here's the character card for the lead character, Trian.

Statistics:
The game contains 558 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 4602 words,
for an average of 8.2 words per screen.
The game contains 5 menus.