Thursday. Curses! I was so close to Wednesday, too. I've been doing a lot of catching up this week, updating the site, putting together a con schedule (coming soon!), and finally putting the coveted artbook up for sale on Lulu. The book features art from the game, along with several original pieces illustrated by tooaya, some guest art from others, and a short story about Rui and Fiona. It's $20 USD, so it's like buying a set of art prints for less than a dollar apiece. Use the code HOLIDAY305 by Dec.12th (2010) to get free ground shipping in the US.
Get the RE:A++ artbook now!
I'm so happy~ This is one of the things I was super excited about yesterday. Eeee~ MAN, I get so excited about like...everything. Seriously. AHHHHH~ Man, I'm totally babbling right now. XD These were made by the lovely renealexa. She's very talented, so do stop by her dA (and fave this deviation) if you are so inclined.
Hey sakefans! As if these eight reasons weren't enough, a ninth reason to plug RE:A++ has appeared! The lovely new website, indieDB is hosting a couple of really fun contests right now. You could even win $150 just for telling the world about your favorite indie game! Now, I don't wanna put any pressure on you or anything, but wouldn't it be great if you won by promoting a sakevisual game? (I am not a subtle person.) Not only would you win $150, but sakevisual would also be awarded $150, which would go towards developing more free games.The rules are simple. Post somewhere (anywhere!) on the web about your favorite game and link to the game's profile on indieDB. Then email a link or screencap to awards@indiedb.com for a chance to win.The two games we have on indieDB are:-RE: Alistair++-JiseiAccording to the rules, "entries will be judged on popularity, originality and creativity..." I know you guys are some of the most creative people out there, since I've already seen some great fanart and even a youtube video about sakevisual. Draw more fanart, make videos, write a haiku about how RE:A++ changed your life, or do something completely different! When you're done, post it here so the rest of us can see how cool it is too.Remember, this contest is hosted by indieDB (not sakevisual), and that you have to link to the indieDB page for the game of your choice (not the sakevisual page, although you could do both), in order to enter. Go here for the complete rules.
Be popular like Derek! Tell your friends about RE: Alistair++!
And a week later, I'm finally getting around to posting this. Haaaa... Anyway, hey! For those of you who didn't know, sakevisual was at A-KON last weekend. Amidst the crowds of thousands of people, we shared a booth with the Japanese doujin circle, Zero Zigen. It was a pretty small affair for us. We had a demo computer where people could play the Jisei demo or RE: Alistair++, we sold Jisei, and we gave away lots of RE:A++ stickers. We also met a lot of cool people, and had a lot of fun.
We had a special Koenchu premiere panel where Zero Zigen and Sakevisual fielded questions about Zero Zigen's bilingual release of Koenchu Sora, what visual novels are, and how you (yes, you!) can make your own visual novels. Discussion ranged from comparing various engines (Zero Zigen uses Kirikiri and sakevisual uses Ren'py) to recording voices in person versus over the internet. In case you're wondering, I'm the one with the long black hair and striped glove, completely clueless to the fact that someone is taking my picture.
Lots of love to my booth girl, Tsayan, for holding down the fort while I went to the Zero Zigen panel and later galavanted off through artists alley in search of fresh blood to hire. And yes, she's dressed as FionaWings.
Fact: Real men play otome games.
Bonus shot: Ayu dressed as Mikoto from Zero Zigen's Koenchu Sora.A video showing off the stuff that we sold and gave away at A-KON.A huge thanks to everyone who came by the booth, bought a copy of Jisei, went to the panel, or just said hi. We had a great time, and if their latest blog post is any indication, so did Zero Zigen. I hope that we can make it to even more cons in the future so that we can meet all of you~
I made a new logo. I'm actually going to KEEP this one instead of make a new one every two days.Anyway. Time for an update. Now with word counts!RE: Alistair++Finished writing for the extended edition. Some new scenes, some updated scenes, hopefully fewer bugs and typos...Final word count: 23,254Card SweetheartsFinished Carla's arc, and getting close to being done with Lisa's. Hers is fairly linear, so it's a little easier to finish. It's a lot of fun, though. After that, one more arc to go and yay!Current word count: 24,344Happy MemoriesWrote a few more meeting/intro scenes with some of the characters. This game is pretty varied in terms of how things change based on your actions. There are many different ways to meet the same character, so each time you play, things are really different.Current word count: 1,970Ripples RemixFinished recording for Kuu and had someone in (ha, if you know me, you know who I brought in), to record for Koda. All the vocals and music are now in place. Woo!Final word count: 1,947
I should update more often, but I don't because I'm usually busy working on the visual novels that I should be updating everyone on. But here's a list of things from the past week or so that make me happy. I'll post word counts later, in case anyone is actually interested in that sort of stuff. XD-Deji is safe. I was seriously freaking out when I heard about the earthquakes in Chile. But she's safe and I'm happy. This matters not because she's a great artist (although she is!), but because she's wonderful friend. ::cue dramatic music and sparkles::-H2 voiced edition is coming soon. The voiced release is long overdue, but it's finally coming. I had a lot of fun working on it, and I truly respect and admire the other members of the cast, so I'm looking forward to hearing everything come together.-RE:A extended edition is going smoothly. As much as I love RE:A, it's nice to be able to clean all the things we had to cut corners on for our first release. It's not going to be a huge upgrade, but it'll be nice to feel like the game is full polished.-I'm writing again! I love writing!-I finally made my own custom yes/no screen (see above). Well, I did make one a long time ago when I was working on Plat du Jour, but it was a makeshift one with messy art, and I didn't actually have a full understanding of the code at that time. But this one is pretty, and now I know what I'm doing! I'm also happy because I figured out how to make decent looking water stains on the paper. I know this is probably the least important of all things that make me happy, but it still makes me happy. So there.
As the release date for RE: Alistair approaches, it's time to introduce the third and final fellow in the story. This is Derek. He's the school's vice president, the highest scorer on the basketball team, and a total flirt. You would be too with looks like that. He was the most difficult to write because he's such a flirt. It doesn't take much for him to offer to be your boyfriend, so he clearly is pretty relaxed about relationships. But that makes it harder for you to develop a REAL relationship with him instead of a shallow one. Difficult, indeed. Good luck.
Well, lots on the list of things to do right now, but I'm going to write out a gameplan so that I get everything finished in good time.February:The deadline for the two month challenge fast approaches. RE: Alistair is doing okay, but we're seriously in crunch time right now. A couple thousand more words, at least, hopefully done by the end of this week so that we can spend the last week testing and cleaning up any emergency issues.March:Crazy insane writing month. I intend to actually finish writing both Card Sweethearts and Moonsong this month. That's a lot, especially seeing as both have several tens of thousands of words to go, but I really want to get these done ASAP. They've both been sitting around much too long, and they'll get stale if I don't put a rush order on them.April:If my March plan works out, start writing three new games. Yes, three. A sequel to a game that's currently doing very well, a horror/otome game, and a personal project that I hope to be able to release commercially. @^@In the meantime:Ripples, Plat du Jour, and hanami x 2 will move along at whatever speed is appropriate based on the schedule and workload of the artist.
Next up on the list of boys! Shiro~ The nice guy. Because nice guys ROCK. He's your classmate, and generally just a nice guy to hang with. He's pretty shy, though, and he tends to keep his personal feelings to himself. It might be easy to get along with him, but you have a long way to go before you can get him to open up.
It's been awhile since my last update. I've been working pretty hard this last week, but it's all been boring stuff like "I edited more stuff today," so it hardly seems worth mentioning. But I figured now would be a good time to spill a few more beans on RE: Alistair. It's moving along very smoothly, but I like being enigmatic about stuff. owo But hey, I'm not THAT mean. And since the hard and fast deadline is the end of February, it's not like I'll be making you wait that long after showing you all this nice stuff.And with that, here's the first boy from RE: Alistair. I was going to save my favorite one for last, but I actually don't have a favorite this time around. I'm very fond of all of them. As you may have guessed from the first image, this fellow's name is Travis. He's the president of the computer games club and he doesn't like casual gamers. He considers them to be all very "low level." In terms of personality, he's wonderful and friendly with people he gets along with, but don't expect him to even bother to look at you twice if you're not a friend. He gets irritated easily, too. So don't irritate him. owo
Well, it's been a week already, and the team for the whatever the snet this thing is (I honestly still have no clue what it is, but hey I've got a cool team and we're making a game, so it doesn't matter) is doing that thing that we do. Namely, art, writing, and programming. We've been clipping along at a pretty good pace, so now is probably a good time to start dropping hints. The name of the game is Re: Alistair, and it's an otome game. As for whether or not it's an otome romance...well, that remains to be seen. owo Here's a sketch of our lovely heroine, Merui (although she prefers the name Rui). Her hobbies include shopping, procrastinating, and playing Rivenwell Online. Aaaaand I think that's enough information for one day. owoStatistics:The game contains 269 screens of dialogue.These screens contain a total of 2693 words,for an average of 10.0 words per screen.The game contains 2 menus.
With two projects close to completion, it's time to buckle down and start writing again. Real writing. So that we can have more games. Because games are fun!Moonsong:Statistics:The game contains 929 screens of dialogue.These screens contain a total of 9706 words,for an average of 10.4 words per screen.The game contains 7 menus.Re: AlistairStatistics:The game contains 126 screens of dialogue.These screens contain a total of 1230 words,for an average of 9.8 words per screen.The game contains 1 menus.
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.
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