#norvale

[alchemil-studio]

Devlog #5 – August 2024

Hello! It’s been a while but we’re still alive! And we’re still working on Norvale!!

Life kind of got the better of us this year but we’ve still been working towards the full version of Norvale!

We’ve been taking into account the feedback we received from our updated demo’s player survey and have been fixing and improving the game accordingly, such as players encountering some issues in regards to the audio which has now been fixed.

We’re always looking for feedback and ways to improve so please do try out the new demo and fill out the survey if you haven’t already!

Now onto the updates:

STORY

We’re happy to announce that writing for the story is done~! The story for Norvale is roughly a little over ~16,000 words. It’s a nice, short story for when you want to just play a quick visual novel to relax. We’re still doing a bit of fine tuning here and there, mainly just double-checking things like continuity and typos and the like but the overall story is finished!

The candy store route has also gone through some reworking so it’ll be a slightly different experience compared to the demo version!

ART

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been working on designing and finalizing the remaining cast of Norvale!  Sprite work is finished for all characters so it’s only a matter of adding them into the game.

Here’s a peek at the characters you’ll meet in the third route, Louis, Sara & Lathika!

(We will do a proper introduction for them on our social media at a later date.)

Now that character related artwork is finished, we’ll be moving to designing backgrounds. The current plan to overhaul all the backgrounds from the demo and try to start from scratch again since we’re not too happy with how they turned out haha ;;

It’s a short update but we thank you for your patience and continued support!

---

Links

Carrd: Alchemilla Studios Carrd

Twitter: @Alchemil_Studio

Instagram: @Alchemil_Studio

Itch.io: Alchemilla Studios Itch.io Page

[nana-egaki]

【OC | Norvale】

Morgan

The player character for a visual novel I'm currently working on~! You can find the demo and where you can keep up with updates regarding the game over here:

I really hope you'll give the demo a try and take the survey at the end to let us know what you think! I'd really appreciate it ���⁠(⁠Ӧ⁠ｖ⁠Ӧ⁠｡⁠)

[yourdailyqueer]

Norval Morrisseau (deceased)

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Bisexual

DOB: 14 March 1932  

RIP: 4 December 2007

Ethnicity: First Nation (Ojibwe)

Nationality: Canadian

Occupation: Artist

Note: Widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada

[hitku]

by Norval Morrisseau

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Norval Morris and Gordon Hawkins - The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control - The University of Chicago Press - 1970

[paintings-illustrations-art]

Norval Morrisseau

Canadian artist

Loon Family

[arthistoryanimalia]

Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation, 1931-2007)

Bear Father, Bear Son, 1989

Acrylic on canvas, 121.9 × 91.4 cm (48 × 36 in.)

on display at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

https://collections.mfa.org/objects/696834/bear-father-bear-son

“Morrisseau once described this painting as ‘Bear Gives Knowledge to Man. Man Gives Knowledge to Son,’ pointing to themes of kinship, teaching, and transformation. Against a symmetrical, yellow background, curved blue lines weave together humans, animals, insects, and orbs. Bodies filled with blocks of color slip into each other, obscuring where one figure begins and the other ends. The bear, related to Anishinaabe cosmologies and family organizational structures, has wide eyes, pointed teeth, and a strong back that supports the other beings. Bears were significant to Morrisseau, having personal connections with them through religious experiences while growing up at Sand Point reserve near Lake Nipigon, Ontario.

Now recognized as the most influential First Nations artist to work in traditional Western painting, Morrisseau invented a style, visualizing Anishinaabe histories and powers of the natural world. His flowing black outlines, swelling circular forms, and vibrant colors have inspired generations of artists.”

[vizuart]

Norval Morrisseau - Demi-God Figure One (1970)

[siryl]

"Animal Spirits" by Norval Morrisseau.

[three-red-horns]

Norval Morrisseau (1932 - 2007) "Manifesting from within childlike simplicity" (1979) Acrilic on paperboard

#3RHcameraroll at the art gallery

[arcxnumvitae]

Booooo!

[alchemil-studio]

Devlog #4 - October 2023

Hello~

Time flies doesn't it? It's already the end of October! Before we start on the updates we've made since the last devlog, we would just like to mention that last August marked the one year release of the Norvale demo!

Time really does fly…

Anyway, on to the updates

GUI DESIGN

As mentioned in a previous devlog, we have decided to redesign the GUI design. So we have changed the visual aspect of the GUI, though the theme technically stays the same.

*for now, Music Volume & Mute All is disabled

In addition to this, we revamped the quick menu and MC name input! 

We had an idea to create a quick menu that appears on hover, and through trial and error, we got it to work. 

And with the MC name input, based on feedback, we added a "Confirm" button for better user experience and interaction.

DEMO FEEDBACK 

Based on feedback we got during the first release of the demo, we have adjusted and changed the font as well, and the text size of the dialogue in-game. We've also adjusted other functionality like adding a "Test Sound" option on the settings screen, adjusting the Auto Save (currently, we removed the Quick Save and Quick Load options), and as mentioned above, the MC name input. 

We've also fixed a few UI bugs like how the dialogue textbox would be bigger when the MC speaks. 

And for story script understanding, we added parenthesis to when MC has inner thoughts, instead of leaving it italicized and removing the confusion that it may be a narration or an actual dialogue.

DEMO V2 + MOVING FORWARD

With this, moving forward, we plan on asking a few of our friends to test the new GUI design. This will be using the same story as the previous demo gameplay (candy wrapper route), and depending on that we'll discuss whether to upload it to our itch.io page or not for more feedback/participants. 

We still don't have BGM, as we are focusing on the story, art sprites and GUI, but once we're done we hope to spend more time fixing the sounds/music for Norvale.

In the demo feedback, we received feedback about the text size. Currently, we just made it so that the text is large enough to read and the font to be readable/understandable. However, we do plan on making the dialogue text adjustable and hopefully will be implemented by the full version or in future versions of the full version. There are also a few other issues we have yet to fix in this version, but we'll tackle them one by one.

And that is all~ We've made a lot of progress this year and we are grateful to those who continue to support us.

---

Links

Carrd: Alchemilla Studios Carrd

Twitter: @Alchemil_Studio

Instagram: @Alchemil_Studio

Itch.io: Alchemilla Studios Itch.io Page

[portraits-of-iris]

Norval Morrisseau

1998

[oldsardens]

Norval Morrisseau - Loon Family

[monkeyssalad-blog]

1927 illustration by Marshall Frantz by totallymystified Via Flickr: For the story And It Was So by Norval Richardson. From Good Housekeeping magazine.

[miyagi-hokarate]