#writing these as actual novels so not a sim story

[kissyck]

meet eldon, cyrus, fianna, cymbeline, puff, grizelda, & fenris !!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

To elaborate more on the Pesterquest stuff -

Alternia is a hell world. It's shitty to live in, even if you're a highblood, unless you fit a very specific mold of person AND are lucky enough to be born of a high caste. Every troll character we care about is, in some way, fucked over by their relationship to their society; Eridan and Vriska get it the worst, having been forced to participate in the murdering side of things since they were young, but every lowblood is screwed and every highblood is made worse even just by their passive participation. Kanaya becomes less sympathetic because she seems completely at peace with the society she grew up in, and Feferi wants to enforce casteism, even if it's of a different flavor. Gamzee and Equius both hold genuinely casteist beliefs and attitudes, which slip out and alienate them from the people they care about.

Putting a friendship simulator into the middle of all this is... a choice, I guess. I'm not going to begrudge anyone for wanting that or liking that, but it's going to be inherently at odds with what Alternia is and is meant to represent, and thus, fundamentally at odds with many of the characters' arcs and even basic personality traits, so heavily are they influenced by the shit society they grew up in.

For a non-Eridan example, Karkat loathes himself in massive part because his society loathes him. He's kill-on-sight and lives in daily terror of death. He wears a symbol at all because not having one marks him as even more of a freak, even though he knows that that symbol is connected to the empire's biggest rebel, whose footsteps he is expected to follow. The reason he's so obsessed with being leader-y and earning his teammates' reapect, or the respect of anybody, is because he's so deeply insecure about whether or not he even deserves to exist.

If you soften Alternia to the point you can write a lighthearted friendship simulator in it, then that characterization... goes away. Karkat is no longer motivated by deep, overwhelming insecurities, which drive him to idolize the society that deems him unworthy, mistakenly believing that if he can find validation in that society, he'll feel less bad about himself. Instead, Karkat is just kind of an asshole!

It's the same way with Eridan. He and Karkat are equal and opposite in this way - while Karkat is marked for death by his society, Eridan belongs to the extremely privileged caste of sea dweller royalty - even moreso than Feferi, as Feferi is slated to be murdered by the Condesce as soon as she comes of age (and her ridiculous optimism is likely something she cultivated in outright defiance of this fate). But it turns out that being a sea dweller sucks shit, too, if you aren't the extremely niche type of person that society deems "correct."

Eridan is not actually casteist and genuinely likes his land dweller friends - and this is unacceptible. Not only that, but smaller "unacceptible" offenses are wrapped up in big ones - despite not liking murder and feeling guilty about it, murder is objectively the correct thing for Eridan to be doing, constantly, to the point of it being "all [he's] ever done practically," because if he doesn't fulfil the duty of his bloodline to be murdering lusii (and by extension, their charges, who are culled when their lusii die), EVERYBODY dies. The constant push-pull of trauma, societal expectations and obligations, the fate of the species, and the fact that he is inherently not the "right" kind of person for his society, are pretty much his entire character. He's basically a walking ball of anxiety and emotional turmoil.

So, again, if you soften Alternia to the point where you can write a story about Eridan wanting to see Shrek in a public theater (something he would not actually be able to peacefully do in canon Alternia - at least not without taking off his cape, hiding his fins, and going anonblood - as sea dwellers are considered ridiculously hostile to the point even Gamzee's nervous about being on the beach for too long), Eridan ends up being just kind of an asshole!

Pesterquest!Eridan is, and I cannot stress this enough, fundamentally not the same guy as canon Eridan. They have practically nothing in common, from the fact that PQ!Eridan is willing to do something for leisure, to the fact that he isn't widely feared and the movie theater doesn't empty out in a panic when he turns up, even down to the fact that he likes femme fashion (canon Eridan goes to Lengths to lean into masc fashion) and Shrek (canon Eridan is a hipster). Hell, even the fact that PQ!Eridan SMILES is a massive deviation from canon!Eridan, who has never once been depicted smiling, and probably hasn't for many sweeps.

Also that he has that much beef with Sollux when, canonically, the two had a lukewarm mutual dislike and didn't even bother interacting until Feferi was added to the mix and Eridan became mad that Sollux was dating her. He wasn't even casteist about him until then, and after, even Sollux and Feferi don't think he's casteist, they just think he's ashenflirting so he can get into a quad with Feferi. Like come on, if you're going to feature another troll in Eridan's route, 1) make it be Karkat, and 2) have Eridan cheat on you the whole time with Karkat like he does to Feferi.

Eridan is just overall a wild choice in a friendship sim - I can't even blame them for just writing an OC and putting an Eridan skin on top - because societally, Eridan isn't even supposed to have non-sea dweller friends. The sea dweller/land dweller race war is something the Condesce deliberately put into place in order to keep land dwelling nobility in line, and Equius cites it as one of the reasons he never got along with Eridan. Like, the very fact that Eridan talks to two land dwellers on friendly terms (Kanaya and Karkat) is a MASSIVE deviation from what he's "supposed" to be like, and a huge hint that he's not as casteist as he'd like to appear. You are genuinely hundreds, if not thousands, of times likelier to end an encounter with Eridan either orphaned or dead than as his friend. He's an unstable maniac, and there's a reason so many members of his team don't like him even though he's legitimately not casteist and they mostly seem aware of it (nobody really complains about or even notices Eridan's casteism by the time they're on the meteor - his contradictions are really obvious, and it's likely that they've more or less realized that he's full of shit).

Again, I don't begrudge anybody for wanting or liking PQ. Who cares, really. I'm just saying that as a canon discussion blog, there's not really any place for PQ because it's so far removed from canon that, like, there's not really anything meaningful to discuss about it. The setting and characters in PQ are fundamentally divested from canon, and not even in an AU way. And it's totally fine if that's what you like, but, yeah, like.

Was Eridan written well (where "well" = accurate to canon): no. Maybe he's fine as an OC with an Eridan Minecraft skin slapped on, but that's not my beautiful son, that's not my baby boy.

What did they get wrong about Eridan (where "wrong" = inaccurate to canon): all.

What route would I have written for Eridan: he shoots you with a gun and you die. And then maybe cheats on you with Karkat

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Dazai Osamu and the Dark Era: the visual novel (a fan project)

On a whim, I've decided to finally just publicly release this project that I've had laying around for two years at this point, for Dazai's birthday today. It was originally made for my very dear friend @letmereachforthestars , when I first introduced her to the series and wanted her to be able to read my favorite BSD light novel in an easier-to-read format. You need a computer to be able to play. The details and links are under the cut:

If you've never played a visual novel before, it's basically a novel in the form of a video game. Text will appear line by line, one a time on the screen, and it will be accompanied by relevant background visuals, music, and sound effects, to make the reading experience more immersive, and more stimulating than just reading from a book. Some visual novels have actual gameplay elements to them, and some are just books and nothing else (oftentimes dating sims/choose-your-own-adventure novels), the latter of which this is. If you've played the mobile game Bungou Tales/Mayoi, the story sections of that game are basically mini visual novels.

This game was made with screenshots and music from the anime, sound effects from the anime and Bungou Tales and free sound effect online sources, as well as graphics and fonts and other assets from Bungou Tales and other official BSD art (particularly the official anime soundtrack cd covers). The script is taken entirely from the official Yen Press translation of Dark Era, with the exception of about two or three iconic lines that I used different translations of because I felt like they had more impact. Additionally, at the very, very end, I added on the original ending scene from the Dark Era stage play and wrote a few fanfic lines of my own to accompany it you can tell because they are very cringe and don't match Asagiri's writing style.

Before playing the game, there are a few very important things to keep in mind; PLEASE read all this:

I am not a professional in the slightest. I took some coding classes in high school, and have some photoshop skills (when it comes to the design elements of the menus), but for the most part the former wasn't much help here; this was my very first time ever using the Renpy engine, and I made this entirely from scratch. I used my knowledge of playing other visual novels to emulate the kinds of effects and timing that is typical for these games, and I think it turned out pretty well all things considered, but it's still very amateur. This is most evident in the sound effects. The sound effects have no volume consistency between them, and some of them, particularly the gun/battle sfx, can come on very suddenly and be loud. I highly, HIGHLY encourage going into the settings and turning down the sound effects volume (the music should be fine), so that you're not startled by certain sounds when they happen, and for a lengthy time. I wouldn't blame you if you decide to turn the sfx off entirely if's too distracting, honestly 🫠 I am no expert in sound files equalizing and making sound files loop seamlessly, so this was by far the most tedious and frustrating part of the process of making this for me. Hopefully it doesn't ruin the game or break immersion too much if you decide to leave them on (I hope you do, for the rain and clock sounds at least, but again I wouldn't blame you if you can't).

Dark Era is the most faithful light novel adaptation in the anime, but there are still a handful of scenes, mostly fight scenes, that got shaved down significantly. Because of this, there are numerous occasions where I had to simply linger on a black screen or the same screenshot for a long period of time, while tons and tons of narration happens, because there's simply nothing I can show to accompany said narration. This is not ideal, but unfortunately I didn't have much else of a choice in those instances, so I hope it's not too distracting. There are also a few instances of straight-up inconsistencies between the novel and the anime (ex. the fight between Oda and Akutagawa happens in the woods in the novel, but in the anime it's still right outside the art museum), so sometimes what you're reading won't quite match the screenshots I use. Fortunately it's never anything major, but it does happen.

There will sometimes be long, unchanging black screens. Don't worry, the game isn't broken; just wait long enough and it will continue.

Sometimes, a character will get cut off when speaking, and when that happens the dialogue will auto-force to the next line. If you didn't get a chance to see what was said before, check the text backlog/history (in the menu or the H key).

Last but not least, this game was made with the default text speed in mind. Meaning, that when it comes to certain specific scenes, the mood/tone of them, made up of the timing of music, transitions, sound effects, etc, all of it was arranged around the speed at which things progress when using the default text speed. I completely understand if you can't, but if at all possible, please try not to change the text to go too much faster or slower, especially faster, because certain scenes will lose a lot of impact otherwise. If you already know Dark Era, you probably have an idea of some of the scenes I'm referring to. At the very least, during the more high-stakes/intense scenes, please try to play through those all at once without stopping, for the greatest impact based on how I designed the game, and only pause/quit during the slower scenes. There are specific moments that I'm really proud of how they came out, and I'd like for them to have the maximum impact that I intended :') (also note that if you make the text appear instantly, the cut-off dialogue mentioned above simply will not appear at all, and you won't even know to look back for them, so please refrain from making the text instant at the very least)

Ignore the cringe sappy final message

...I think that's everything. With all that out of the way, here are the links for both PC and Mac:

Download the PC version

Download the Mac version

This was a passion project for me for a good many months back in 2022. It started out just as a gift for my friend, but in the end I was really satisfied with how it turned out, despite how tedious and frustrating it was to work on. I've been hesitant to share it with the fandom for all this time because I kinda doubt anyone would really be interested in something like this especially since it's not stormbringer or beast, but someone on discord who tried it told me that I should share it, so here it is. I'm sharing it not just because I'm proud of my work, but because Dark Era is a truly amazing light novel — underrated, in my opinion (yes, I said what I said) — and far better than the anime adaptation, as good as that is, and I want more people to read it. If reading the books is hard for you and you've never read Dark Era before, if I can help just one more person to read it with this, I'll be happy, and consider my job done. 💖

I so desperately want to make more of these visual novels for the other light novels, but sadly, some of them simply aren't possible thanks to how many scenes are missing from the anime, like with Entrance Exam in particular. I've also been waiting with vain, thin hope that Bungou Tales will eventually reach seasons 3 and 4, so I can use their Fifteen and Untold Origins title screens like I did here, if those ever exist. However, I'm also held back thinking about certain scenes that would require some redrawing/drawing additional details to match what's written in the novels. If anyone has any ideas on things I could do to possibly get around these issues, or just thoughts in general about how the other light novels might be tackled, or if you're an artist who can recreate the anime's style and takes commissions/knows someone who does, I'd absolutely love to hear from you! As well as any advice/help on how I can smooth out/improve this project here!

Anyway, sorry for the long wall of text. Thank you for reading all this, if you did, and if you do try the game, please let me know your thoughts; I crave any and all feedback. 💙✨

[thankskenpenders]

It's a bit late, but I figure I have to touch on the big news from today, which is that for an (early) April Fools celebration Sega went and released a free visual novel about Sonic getting murdered

Here's a thing you should know about me: I am deathly allergic to ironic visual novels, and the related trend of announcing dating sims (which are synonymous with the medium of visual novels as a whole to many people) on April Fools

Aside from an incredibly small selection of titles that have seen wider success, it feels like much of the game industry is only willing to acknowledge visual novels as a punchline. And said jokes about dating sim stereotypes have been done a million fucking times by now. They're parodies of parodies of parodies. Even when these prank dating sims actually go and get made rather than just being a few fake screenshots, it feels like it's just because VNs are seen as cheap, disposable entertainment compared to "real" games. Companies can afford to commission some bullshit like the KFC dating sim and write it off as a marketing stunt. And it works. These games will get widely reported on for being so ~wacky~, while devs pouring their hearts into doing sincere, interesting work with the medium of visual novels are usually out of fucking luck. It's so, so tiring. The fact that this happens like clockwork every year has made me come to dread April Fools Day

So imagine my surprise when The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog drops out of nowhere and it's actually one of my favorite Sonic games in years

Aside from the intentionally tongue-in-cheek, attention-grabbing title (and Sonic doing the Family Guy Death Pose), there isn't an ounce of irony here. It's just a straight up whodunnit VN set on a train, albeit a lighthearted and pretty easy one. It's still a Sonic game, after all, and Sonic games are for kids. But it's so clearly made out of a place of love, both for the characters and for murder mysteries, rather than being a parody that's constantly winking at the camera and going "haha, isn't this absurd that this even exists at all?" Forget that. This wants to tell a genuinely good little Sonic story. Not to mention how gorgeous all of the artwork is throughout, with character illustrations from IDW cover artist Min Ho Kim (AKA deegeemin)

Like, for real. I've wanted the Sonic games to explore the supporting cast more for years, and I can't believe the game to finally do it is a murder mystery visual novel released for April Fools. This might be one of the best showcases of the cast... ever, in the games? The script from Ian Mutchler is so, so great, with fun and cute moments for everyone involved. And, smartly, you see the cast through the eyes of a new character (I named them "Blorbo") who isn't necessarily familiar with things like Blaze being a princess from another dimension, making this a surprisingly valid way to introduce people to the supporting cast. I'd say more, but it's a short game, so I think everyone should just go out and play it if you haven't already

There is still part of me that wishes a Sonic visual novel like this could've been greenlit for release any other day of the year, rather than being yet another April Fools visual novel. But regardless of the excuse they used to make it, I'm extremely happy that this exists

[herecirmsims]

Questions For Storytellers

I have (I think) finally caught up on my list of poses to make, so I wanted to do something a little fun (for me, not for anyone else LMAO) and entirely self-indulgent. I read stories and tell my own over on Instagram, but of course it's harder to post long-form text like this over there.

Special thanks to @freezerbnuuy as I'm copying their post. ❤️

What’s the last screenshot you’ve taken for your story?

This is from the middle of my last post, but it's the last screenshot I took because I went back and added this scene in after finally caving and making my own stupid poses for it hahah.

2. Describe your story in three words or less: Needlessly long tbh

3. Describe (insert character here) in three words or less: Uhhh I'll pick Saxen since he's my MC... wet cat energy (which I think is something @nefaricussims said actually??). Or "90s cocaine chic" as @southernsimmin so beautifully described him. 🤣

4. How did you choose the name of your story? It's called The Cottage because it's... based in and around a cottage. 🥲 I have a very imaginative mind!! 🤣 But also, the cottage plays an important role throughout the whole story and especially in the upcoming finale.

5. How do you choose your characters’ names? My Sim story is based on a novel I never had the confidence to finish - in that version, Sax is an ælf based on Anglo-Saxon belief. I made him a vampire in Sims because that was the only pack I owned at the time, besides base game, and for gameplay purposes I thought vamp put him close to how I imagined him. I now realise I could have easily used CC and my own damn imagination to make him an ælf but I didn't know much about CC at the time, either. 🤣 Because of this, the original story leant into fae lore and the stuff about never revealing your true name. Saxen isn't his real name anyway, but for an added layer it also isn't spelt how you might imagine if you heard it spoken. The same for Thom and Jac who are also characters who came over from the 'original'.

6. How long have you been working on your story for? A little over three years! I have learned soooo much in that time.

7. Whats the biggest risk you’ve taken with your story? Did it pay off? I dunno that I've taken any risks, other than putting it out there in the first place.

8. What about your story are you proud of? I think the fact it exists at all. I've been writing stories since I was a kid, but at some point I lost confidence in myself and have never finished anything/wanted to share it with people because I end up overthinking and deleting it. So I am proud of myself for having maintained a continuous story for three years, and for having other people read it. I think because there was no pressure with a Sims story - with a novel I kept thinking, this has to be perfect and polished so that I can publish it someday. With a Sims story, I'm free to just write the silly tropes I enjoy and allow myself to suck and learn and get better at it.

9. What about your story are you looking to improve on? I read a fantastic article about ma - including pauses in your visual storytelling, space for the characters to sit and breath and reflect. It's ma that makes Ghibli movies so wonderfully distinctive. Being able to make my own poses means that I can show a character's expression or body language in response to a situation, without the need for overlaying text. I'm trying really hard to move away from the "talking heads" style that reads more like a script, and letting the visuals tell the story for me instead. I'm not very good at it because I enjoy my blah blah, but it's fun to try!!

10. Is your story fully planned or are you still working things out? Is there a definitive end? I'm approaching the end of it now, which has been planned for the last three years, so yes - I know pretty much everything that's going to happen. Sometimes the characters still throw a little surprise for me though.

11. Why have you decided to tell this story? Are there any messages or meanings within it? When I got the Sims almost 4 years ago, I had absolutely no idea that there was a) a whole community around it or b) that people used it for storytelling. I'd already made Sax, Thom, and Jac in the game, because I'd wanted to see them come to life during gameplay. Then I discovered poses and started sharing random staged screenshots on Instagram, and became friends with the exceptionally talented TheSimmerKay (now making machinimas!) who showed interest in my silly little characters and suggested that I try telling a story too. I owe her a lot!! As for messages and meaning... I'm very interested in what makes people do the things they do, and how the hero of a story often depends on whose POV we're hearing the story from. There's a fine line between hero and villain sometimes, and a hero acting out of love can cross from protectiveness into control.

12. Do you actually play the game or do you just use it as a storytelling medium? Yep - I have a designated story save, which is the one I take all my screenshots in and which never has gameplay. Then I have a Happy Ever After save for Sax and Fen and another save for for my Globetrotter Challenge Sim, both of which are gameplay only. I think it's important to have that outlet; I can work on my story, make poses, or just play the game, depending on what I fancy.

13. From basic planning to a finished post, how long does that take you? 2-3 evenings. I tend to get everything laid out and text added, then let it sit for a day because I inevitably think of a way to do something better if I give it chance to breath. 🤣

14. Do you have any regrets about your story so far? If you could go back in time, how would you fix these? Not regrets, really, but there are some threads that I put in - fully intending to complete them later in the story - but never did, due to them just not fitting with the story or wanting to try and bring things to an end sooner. But similarly, there are times when I was going to put in a little hint or foreshadowing in and didn't, and then later in my story have wished I had! The tricky part of serialised storytelling is you have to just live with what you have (or don't have), you can't go back and remove or add scenes like you would with a drafted novel.

15. What have been the highlights of creating your story? I've met so many incredible people due to it, oh my goodness. Truly extraordinary Simmers who've shared their time and knowledge with me. We have a little mutual reading group on Insta where we all read and geek out over each other's stories and it's just wonderful. I was honestly shocked when i went to other platforms and realised how much drama there can be in the Sims community. 🤣

16. What about the process do you enjoy? Not that I don't enjoy the process... but I mostly love it when it's finished and I can share it, hahaha.

17. What about the process do you hate? I don't hate any of it... it's a hobby and I do it because I enjoy it. That being said, it does fuck me off when I have multiple Sims in a scene, everyone is in place and has poses queued, and then MCCC Dresser FREEZES MY GAME NOOOOOOOO WHY

18. Choose a song that reminds you of your story:

This is the unofficial theme... specifically this version in Old English, which is Saxen's first language. "It's our destiny then to find love again / Where we failed once before now we'll win"

19. Choose a song that reminds you of (insert character here):

Another one for Sax I guess because he's special. 😌🤣 "But you, a cinder of the fire that's yet to come / Will you just sit and mourn this fragile thing that you've become / Or instead will you consume the very things you can't outrun / Until you finally see all of the strength that you draw from?"

20. Choose your favourite shot from your story so far: Hmmm I think this one, which was me being lazy and reusing a screenshot from an older scene during a flashback-style narration. 🤣 I was trying to achieve something else with the editing but did this by accident and liked it.

21. Choose your least favourite shot so far: Too many to pick from LMAO

22. Choose a favourite character from your story so far: Sax, obviously, he's my lil chew toy/punching bag. But then there's also Idris, for whom I only wish the best. She's going through some trouble right now and I don't enjoy it. It's much more fun to bully Sax.

23. Choose your least favourite character so far: I don't have one! Although Vlad makes me deeply uncomfortable tbh. I find him to be a really creepy villain, and unlike any of my other villains, he's not in any way misrepresented or redeemable. I'm using a makeover version of him by WistfulCastle (I would link, but I don't think he's available anymore?)!

24. Are there any characters who remind you of yourself? No... well. Whenever baby El randomly info-dumps on a niche subject, that's mostly me taking advantage of a captive audience to tell them about karkadanns or medieval torture items or dead bodies on Everest. 🥲

25. What inspirations have you drawn on for your story? I honestly don't know - I can't name anything that I've consciously drawn on, though I know for sure I must have. Funnily enough people have told me things like "oh that's like in Vampire Diaries" or "that's like that part in the Harry Potter films" and I haven't watched either of those, so I think what's happening is we're all drawing from the same well of folklore and mythology and trope. There is occasional story drama about being copied and the thing is... unpopular opinion alert... many of us aren't as unique as we think we are. 😅 What we are unique at is taking a trope and telling it in our own distinctive way. No one else can tell your story quite like you can.

26. Have other sim stories inspired you? I have soooo many talented friends who inspire me to do better when it comes to visuals and storytelling!! @callmedomino is the queen of silent storytelling and a huge inspiration on my journey to discover ma. I really love how well she can tell a story with no words.

27. What genres would you describe your story as? I call it rural fantasy lmao

28. If you could reproduce your story in another medium (movie, novel, comic, etc.) what would you choose and why? I mean obviously I'd say movie because HOW COOL would that be?! Especially an animated one!

29. What would your story’s rating be? (G, PG, M etc.) Ummm probably M because there is the occasional spicy scene. Sometimes three a year LMAO.

30. If you were leaving simblr Simsta and had to choose another creator to continue the story for you, who would you ask? Well tbh I've given Sax and Fen to several good friends already; some of them have them in ongoing cameos in their own stories. I wouldn't ask anyone to continue mine, but I like to think that Sax and Fen could live on in my friend's stories and games if anything were to ever happen to me.

31. Drop some random trivia about your story: When I started I only meant to do short, random vignettes about daily life at the cottage. Somehow it snowballed into a three year epic. 🤣

32. Give a light spoiler: "This is who I am. If I was any other way, I would not be myself."

[myokk]

As someone who is constantly in awe of you, whether it’s art or writing, how do you stay motivated? 😭💙💖 such talent shouldn’t be legal!

Hi😭🥹🫶 I don’t know what I did to deserve such high praise😭😭🥹🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂💓💓💓💓

I only started writing in January & these fanarts I started in April so maybe I’m not the best to answer but I’ll try!!🫶🫶🫶

Short answer: I’m motivated by brainrot & the characters that move into my brain and demand to be drawn/written😭

Longer answer: I’ve always loved and been obsessed with stories & even before I learned fanfic was a thing last year (I live under a rock), I was always creating these crazy stories in my brain. I used to play the sims a lot for example…I would literally delete every premade family & make my own super complex relationships/generational drama and just watch the chaos play out and I always had so much fun coming up with different storylines and thinking about their personalities and how they would probably interact with each other.

I also read like CRAZY !!! 😳 I am a book devourer & am especially drawn to very long books that have beautiful writing and amazing characterizations:

Lonesome Dove (my favorite book of all time with my favorite character of all time, Gus🥺)

The Brothers Karamazov

Anna Karenina

Ulysses

100 Years of Solitude (100 años de soledad)

Rayuela (Hopscotch) & basically every Cortázar short story

Ok basically every Latin American novel/short story from the 20th century let’s be honest😆

The Mists of Avalon

Jane Austen

Donna Tartt

Etc etc etc I JUST LOVE READING !!!!

And so, even though I don’t consider myself a very good writer, and I would never even hope to become as good as the authors I read, I think it’s fun to try and capture some feelings and emotions of what it’s like to be human💓 I always try to write the characters with love and care and maybe it’s my obsession to make them almost three-dimensional that keeps my brain rot strong😆 I might not achieve it but I’m having a lot of fun trying…

As for creating so consistently, the writing part isn’t so hard bc once I get an idea in my mind I just want to write it! I don’t get oneshot ideas often but when I do I’m like😳✍️✍️✍️✍️ until it’s over😆 I think coming up with plot/ideas/characterizations takes me a lot longer than actually writing - I barely edit what I post because what I write down is already pretty polished.

For my art, I just love the human body/anatomy/angles etc and I have a lot of fun trying to make the drawings have a lot of movement and that’s kind of what motivates me. Art is also my job & so I’m just used to doing it all the time & these fanarts are a fun way to cool down after I do my “normal” art. The more I draw the more ideas I get, and I like to draw scenes from either my fanfic, or scenes that I think are cute but will probably never happen. But THEN sometimes the “extra” drawings inspire things, like my latest oneshot🫶

If you’re reading this and you’re a writer or artist too & look at it differently I would LOVE to hear what you think!!! Since I’m just starting out with all of this maybe there are better methods😆🫶 for me it’s just a love for stories and wanting to create all the time!!!

[daily-haley]

This is so embarrassing, but I guess it's not too late (I'm a month late) to formally introduce myself to Writblr/Tumblr.

Hello to my fellow followers (and other who may come across this post) I'm Haley, I go dailyhaley. I'm an 03 baby, so I'll be 21 this year (Leo, if you even care) I've been writing since the age of 9, I started writing (fanfiction) in the notes app on my mini iPad thanks to the lack of romance in the anime series Naruto. Then I graduated to google docs where I posted first on fanfic.net, then wattpad, and finally A03.

I'm no longer active as an anime fanfic writer and deleted all of my stories (and account) that gained some popularity during the pandemic. (I'm not the person I once was anymore)

Currently, I have 1 screenplay written (unproduced) and I'm working on my first novel called Baby On Board. My daily self-affirmation is that I'm a best-selling author because I believe in my capabilities to become one.

What else? Um, I used to write/read romance as a child growing up but my writing and reading preference are now thriller/psychological/mystery/drama

I'm a music lover so here's a link to the playlist I created just to write my book (I actually listen to this on the daily because I'm always in thought)

I'm a sims lover since the age of 5 (grew up with sims 2 and 3) so now I abuse the game when I'm not abusing my brain to write.

I had a kpop phase (still do) and briefly anime (that's also a lie, WATCH ONE PIECE)

I work a front desk job but I'd rather be on the beach writing something or on set (timing)

That's all for now, or at least, what I can remember to type.

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk Game Ideas: Visual Novels + Dating Sims

Okay, yes, I will admit: This list of games for the most part is mostly about putting out some ideas for games that are less slow and more fast paced. Because so far we had mostly very, very slow games in this. Still, I do want to make one post about VNs, because I still think that the VN genre is a super fun one, that is way to underused and undervalued. Also Romance games or Dating Sims, that sadly mostly get hated on for no reason.

The Issue:

Especially on itch.io there are a couple of Visual Novels for Solarpunk and nearly a third of the games on Steam are also tagged for it, but I feel that for a big part this once more suffers from the same issue as the Solarpunk novel writing: People struggle with coming up with a proper conflict, especially here for having the branching paths that often are a big part of VNs. And Dating Sims often are kinda a subgenre of Visual Novels (their origin is from a crossover of VNs with finance games, which is still so wild to me).

Like yesterday, just three little ideas what one could do within this mix of genres.

Idea #1: A Scientific Horror Story

My favorite subgenre of VN is the horror VN. Even though it kinda gets more attention only recently. And as some who follow me for a while know that I love the idea of Solarpunk horror. As I have said before: Horror - especially Supernatural Horror - is perfect for Solarpunk. Because ghosts, demons and monsters do not care whether or not you have an utopian world. They will still haunt you!

So, here is the idea: A group of scientists start their work in some remote location. My general idea is either some scientists for natural stuff (biodiversity?) or something historical (maybe of dead cultures). But while they are there isolated in their small group, strange things keep happening at the station. And it turns out that the area their new station is set up in is in fact haunted.

I personally would probably link the haunting to some sort of dark history. Maybe colonialism, given that Solarpunk is also very anti-colonialist and such. Though I am going to leave it at that.

Idea #2: Murder in a Solarpunk Commune

I think one of the most common genres of VNs is actually the Mystery genre. A lot of VNs are somewhere in the mystery genre. Maybe in crossover with another genre, but a lot of Mystery is there. Which kinda makes sense. And as I said before: Even in a Solarpunk world murders will happen. They will be less, but they will happen.

So, here is my idea. We have a Solarpunk future where most people live either in city or in rural communes. There are also a whole bunch of people who will just travel as a sort of futuristic bards. This is the player character. And this futuristic bard comes to a rural commune to stay for a few days - when a murder happens. And somehow everyone errupts in accusations, because the murder victim has clearly been a bit of an asshole. So now the people ask the travelling main character to be the one to solve the murder. And hence the player needs to talk to people and try to find out what is happening in this place.

Idea #3: Polyamorous Dating Sim

Lastly, let me talk Dating Sim. Admittedly, I have only played so many Dating Sims, but let me talk about the thing that annoys me about them: All of them are mononormative. There is basically no Dating Sim that is polyamorous. Sure, there are a handful indie poly dating sims, but it is pretty rare. Which, yes, I am very aware that this is also for technical limitations. But hear me out.

Just make a sweet little dating game of a person getting into a nice solarpunk setting. Maybe into a rural commune, maybe into a science center, something like that. Does not really matter, but they are gonna date. But this is a world were polyamory is pretty normalized, so some of the people you are dating are actually already in a relationship - at times with each other. And depending on the kinds of constellations you could play around with the outcomes for this.

Again, just have not seen a lot in this direction and man, I would do a lot for it!

And if you are interested in creative Solarpunk endeavors, I would love to invite you into the Solarpunk Creatives community! :)

[catboy-beckett]

So a few months back, I started getting ads for a game called Tokyo Debunker. The ads had WILDLY different tones and genres, not entirely unusual for mobile game ads, and usually I just ignore it when this happens. They want me to be curious so they can get me to download. It's a cheap, common trick, not worth my attention.

This time though, the ads were so bizarre and disconnected that it actually worked on me. I HAD to know what this game was about.

For context, here are all the screenshots I took of these ads:

(no, the bright flash on the second image isn't censorship, it's just a poorly-timed snapshot of a visual effect)

So, we're getting essentially three distinct genres of ads here: Dating Sim game, Horror game, and Cute Casual Cartoon Cat game. I think it's really the horror imagery that put these ads above the rabble. It was too high-effort and offputting. Normal clickbait goes for as generic and appealing as possible.

So, what was the truth? What IS the game, actually?

Well, uh.

Here are the actual screenshots I've taken in-game:

It's not just the ads that are all over the place, that's for sure. It turns out this IS a horror dating game filled with cute cats!

I'll explain further: the main mode of the game is a visual novel (that "story" button on the fourth screenshot) which occasionally has comic panels in the middle of scenes. In the background, you have the "Campus" where you can build facilities that generate currency that you can use to upgrade or build more facilities, and these gradually passively increase your character stats. What are stats for? Why, you can have your characters do battle with monsters or other players' teams! It's an auto-battler sort of thing so it's not very involved, but powering up the characters is surprisingly convoluted. Wait, how do you get "characters"? Oh, there's a gacha too! (The "summon" button.) The gacha is kinda shit to be honest; rates are bad enough but they lumped equipment and characters into the same banners, so even when there's a "rare guaranteed in 10 pulls" it might not even be a character.

It's definitely a romance game, though not the sort with "routes" or even story choices, really--you can get characters' affinity scores up outside of the story by making them fish or taking them camping (oh yeah the fishing is to summon cats to eat the fish and then if you're quick you can take photos of the cats, Neko Atsume style--) but nothing in the course of the story changes.

Honestly, I think this game is great. I've completed all the available chapters of the story so far, and the writing and characters are great. I love the horror too, and I really appreciate that they don't pull any punches with it just because this is fundamentally a game about flirting with eccentric 2D men. I hope in the future they revamp the gacha system to make it less ass.

BONUS:

Lightning round of ✨which aspects of these ads were accurate?✨

Rescue Him-- That artwork is in the game, but the minigame is not, and there is no need to "rescue him". He's fine. That's just Jiro. He's always like this.

Do You Always?-- That artwork is also in the game, though I'm not sure why Jin is labelled "guy from cafeteria". The UI is also not right.

Who is Cheating Whom?-- This one is interesting. Not only is this scene entirely fabricated (and the player is never tasked with solving riddles like this), I can only identify one of the characters. The guy on the right looks like Ren (albeit wearing another character's earring) but I have no idea who the guy on the left is? Rui or Towa are my best guesses, but I've heard that these ads just sometimes fabricate entire characters. That octopus is in the game though.

Vegetable Ninja-- Not a real minigame. That cat is one of the ones you can get in the Neko Atsume clone guild cat album, and it can indeed be seen slicing carrots.

Cat Town?-- This is real, just with more of the collectible cats added for flavour. (You can even see this area in one of my screenshots!) In the actual game, there ARE cats running around delivering messages, as well as chibi versions of the anime boys.

Eye Monster-- This monster is actually real! She appears in the beginning chapter. The human in front of her however, doesn't look like the protagonist or anyone else currently in the game. You also never see that pixelart style.

Customize Your Crush-- Not a real feature. You can pick which character you want on the home screen and can change their outfit to a limited extent, but you can't freely undress them or mess with their features. That character is named Alan though, and they did just release a shirtless card of him. Hi Alan!

Slenderman, Sadako, and Jeff the Killer-- Breaks my heart to say, they are not in the game. There is an anomaly that kind of looks like Slenderman, I suppose? The "You have been cursed" tagline is actually true though; in the beginning of the game, you DO get cursed.

Bathing in Blood-- Curiously, this scene is in the game... but it's not a horror scene. It's not sketched like that, it's not red and black and white, there's no explicit or implied blood. It's just a brief fanservicey scene of Leo in the bath.

Cat on Rails-- This one is the closest to being an actual minigame! There's an overhead view of a cat running along in the rhythm game "bonus stages" you get in-between some of the autobattler stages. You have to tap the screen to make the cat turn at certain points in time with the music. It's not very good, but it's easy to cheat. The cat is identical to the one pictured but the stage looks different and there's no food.

[mindbrokengirl]

btw for any fellow itchio visual novel fans these are the games ive been playing in my bored and horny afternoons while YOU all are not posting enough (-_-) varying quality and cheesiness but i like them. please send me yours i adore gamified sex and body stats and etc.

Ruin Me: highest rec for a longer story focused game. love the little horrory mysteries, and the conceit about being an academic who writes porny theory monographs on the side and is easily provoked into ranting about the legitimacy of studying sex is so real. does make you take the dom role in the main story which is a little awkward for me but its cute enough that i dont mind too much, side stories mostly have you being the sub. protagonist is body and gender customizable from the start.

2. The Fixer: forcefem city!!!! they updated it so u can be a forcefemmed boy or a forcefemmed girl, this rules but honestly doesnt play into the story much. i am not going to justify liking this one to u guys. sometimes things are just better when they lean into maledom and objectification. lowkey took my online porn girl name from the protagonist.

May I Take Your Order: please play this game. im cheating this isnt porn. its guro porn kind of i guess. its my favorite video game of all time and its only like 15 minutes please play it. these two have lived in my head for years and i love them very very much. the author does actually have a genderfuck porn game but its in development so only on the patreon but thats a later problem right now u need to play this one.

Succubus Stories: cute! girly! sweet music to dumb down to! kinda repetitive but who cares! gameplay is 80% sex scenes! no but rly i love games that make the sex itself the thing that u have to strategize and do skill checks about and unlock new moves its just like real life!! im going to be unstoppable once i level up Cock Lust a few more times!!!!

[mxtxfanatic]

@zykamiliah Ok bear with me because I’m just writing off the top of my head.

I think I misspoke a little in the tags on your post: I don’t think Shen Yuan attributes all of his good deeds and skills to Shen Jiu throughout the novel; I think he attributes them to Shen Qingqiu the Character. Now, walk with me a little:

I like playing video games, especially those in which I can customize my own characters. Two such games are The Sims and Dragon Age. In The Sims, you can create your own character from scratch, meaning you are in charge of their looks, their personality, their backstory, their narrative, and life progression. You are in charge of everything if you so choose to be. Dragon Age, however, is not like that. You get to decide what your character looks like (to an extent), but you don’t get to create a backstory. You can decide romance but you are not in control of the story beats of those romances, just the choices you make in them. You can influence certain aspects of your character, but they will always go through certain events and always arrive at a predestined conclusion. How does this apply to Shen Yuan? Well, he’s just been stuffed into the character of a seemingly Dragon Age-type narrative.

Shen Yuan doesn’t get to decide Shen Qingqiu’s backstory. He doesn’t get to decide what his story designation is; he is automatically assigned the “scum villain” role. He doesn’t even get to decide Shen Qingqiu’s personality until he unlocks the ooc function. Shen Qingqiu is already a teacher, he is already a powerful cultivator with a renowned name, sword, skills, and he is already Luo Binghe’s abuser that will eventually throw him into the Endless Abyss, all story points that are unchangeable. And Shen Yuan is fully aware of this—uncomfortably so, in fact, with how the system exists to monitor his every move in order to keep him “on track.” It’s not unreasonable, therefore, for him to believe that this predestination applies to everything and everyone else, so much so that he believes that his small acts of kindness can only serve as pockets of reprieve for the “characters” before the predestined hardship arrives, nothing more.

But, as we find out, these “small acts of kindness” are narrative-changing—much stronger than the so-called predestination—and it is the formerly stated awareness and surveillance that leads Shen Yuan to be unable to see this, disregarding the tangable ways that his style of playing Shen Qingqiu has altered the narrative written by the author and upheld by the system. This applies to as early as Ning Yingying’s bolder personality and as late as Luo Binghe’s corruption by Xin Mo. It’s probably very significant that just how much the world of pidw had diverged from the original book is revealed to Shen Yuan only after Shen Qingqiu the Character self-destructs and Shen Yuan resurrects himself using the plant body. From that point on, he has to contend with how his actions have changed things, how Luo Binghe has been changed by him, enamored with him—not Shen Qingqiu the Character—and how, actually, the book he has transmigrated into doesn’t have a predestined ending because he has broken everything wide open.

And this isn’t to say that Shen Yuan doesn’t fully see himself as Shen Qingqiu, but it’s the difference between seeing himself as a part of Shen Qingqiu vs. seeing Shen Qingqiu as a part of himself. “Luo Binghe can’t love me because Shen Qingqiu is his scum villain.” “I can’t love Luo Binghe because Shen Qingqiu is his shizun.” “PIDW is destined to be a stallion novel, and Luo Binghe is guaranteed happiness with his harem.” These are the “predestined facts” that Shen Yuan has been shaping his pidw experience with, until they stop being facts and he has to actually look at the changes he has wrought and what he wants out of them, not what Shen Qingqiu would want or expect or react to. And I don’t think he ever fully divests himself of this mentality (we can still see him being casual about his skills even in the extras), but he is much freer in his actions and desires at the end of the story without the weight of Shen Qingqiu the Character dogging his expectations and even more so in the extras without the system acting as enforcer to his thoughts and behaviors.

[miukki960]

Okay, so I just finished Love for Love's Sake and..... I have so many thoughts. I could wax poetic for hours about how much I loved the show, but right now what I really want to talk about is my theory on the ending and the whole concept of the "game."

Please bare with me as I don't make posts like this (or any at all for that matter) often. Please forgive me if it's incoherent, my thoughts tend to run faster than my fingers can type lol.

Here we go!

First, who is the author sunbae? I think he's the embodiment of death. When Myungha wished on the shooting star for 1. Someone to care for him and love him and 2. To disappear,he was wearing what I'm pretty sure is the same outfit as when we first see him in the bar back in episode 1. This leads me to believe Death heard his wish, so when Myungha decides to end his life and regrets his decision in the last moment, Death decides to give him a chance to change his fate.

So he creates the "game" based on a novel he supposedly wrote. I believe this is a false memory he gives to Myungha so he will willingly play the game and try to change his fate. Which leads me to my second point...

Myungha is the author. The show did a very good job at keeping this subtle at the beginning. We as an audience are led to believe he is simply transported into the videogmae world and is at the mercy of the dating sim, but they show us multiple times that that's not the case.

Once, when Myungha mentions that the missions are written in his handwriting, a second time when we get a flashback of him actually writing these missions in a notebook at the bar, and a final time when we see him pen the shows Ultimate Mission using the Author's Pen, "Please make Cha Yeowoon Happy."

I started to get the idea that Myungha was the author back in the first few episodes when we started to see the side missions. Every mission he got screamed to me "this mission is actually for you, not Yeowoon." What was the first thing he did when he was supposed to get Yeowoon more friends? He befriended Kyunghoon himself. Save 3,000,000 won? For himself. Get Yeowoon followers? Using HIS Instagram. Which leads to point number three....

The game Myungha is sent to is actually a reenactment of his senior year of high school. All the characters he meets are actual people in his earlier life, his grandma, Kyunghoon, Sangwon. But in his original "playthrough" he didn't bother to befriend or interact with them, so they went about their lives unaffected, and he forgot they existed. I say all this with the exception of Cha Yeowoon.

Cha Yeowoon is a mirrored reflection of Myungha created by Death and inserted into the game. Myungha said himself at the beginning that Yeowoon was his favorite character because he reminds him of himself. Later on, we learn that their backgrounds are almost identical too. Yeowoon lost his mother, has an absent runaway father, and was raised by his grandmother. Myungha has a dead father, absent runaway mother, and is being raised by his grandmother. So at the beginning when Death asks Myungha if he will change Yeowoon's fate and rewrite his story, he's really talking about Myungha.

Adding to this, I also noticed something rather spectacular narratively in the second half of the show. The whole show, we watched Myungha try and (mostly) succeed at making Yeowoon happy. But suddenly I realized, as we watched him get happier and happier, Myungha was falling deeper and deeper into a sadness rivaling how we saw Yeowoon in the beginning. We stopped seeing the calculations of Yeowoon's affection level, and instead saw error messages and system malfunctions, representing Myungha's emotional state.

Which begs the ultimate question on everyone's minds to be answered. If the whole point of sending Myungha back to his 19yo self and giving him Yeowoon was to get him to love himself and be happy, why were the system malfunctions so devastatingly awful and cruel? Answer: because Myungha is the author, and he's depressed and self-destructive.

He begins to feel happy with the changes he's made, he sees Yeowoon happier and he feels like he's succeeding, yet the countdown message to his death still appears. It's ominous and impending and a constant reminder that he's failing. So as the author, he tries to revert back to factory settings by getting rid of the major changes to his life, Yeowoon and his grandmother. The two people who love him most, and the two people he thinks he deserves the least.

Sangwon said it the best. Myungha's main issue is that he refuses to receive love, both from others and himself. Which is why he fails the game and dies a second time. He followed the missions for Yeowoon and refused to let them break down his own walls like they were ment to.

But Death does see the change in him through Yeowoon. Being Myungha's mirror, Yeowoon represents the change that was supposed to happen to Myungha. So when Myungha (the him he hates) deletes himself in order to make Yeowoon (the him he loves) happy ("please make Cha Yeowoon happy"), Yeowoon is able to go full-meta, breaking through the game and rewriting the mission to "Please make Tae Myungha happy."

Thus saving Myungha and allowing him a third chance at a happy life, where he receives just as much love as he gives.

Don't ask me about the "he comes back disjointed from Yeowoon's timeline" thing bc I don't understand it narratively but it sure does make for a visually pleasing ending.

[arimiadev]

Developer Interview — Making A Date with Death

6 months ago, a brand new self-insert romance visual novel hit the market called A Date with Death, created by visual novel veterans Two and a Half Studios. Coming off of the success of The Divine Speaker, they dived into the chat sim space in visual novels with a huge splash. A Date with Death is currently sitting at over 5,000 positive reviews on Steam with a Kickstarter for an after story launching this week.

Read the interview on my blog or read it below.

Arimia: Hi Gabby, thanks for sitting down to talk about A Date with Death! Both of us have been into visual novels for quite a while, but what got you into them?

Gabby: I feel like my introduction to visual novels was probably similar to a lot of people my age…. and that was being on Tumblr too much and being introduced to Dramatical Murder much too young, and installing the fantranslation for myself and all of my friends, hahaha. From there I played the rest of the N+C games, and then moved to things like No Thank You! since it had a translation. After that I moved further to Japanese games that didn’t have a translation. These were 95% BL as well – I’ve played one or two otome games in my time but never really been super into them.

Actually, when I first got into development, I hadn’t played any Western visual novels yet. It was only after I started in game development that I tried more indie visual novels in general.

As for my favorite VNs, I have a few favorites! My first favorite and it’ll always have my heart is Lamento. It was kind of the culmination of a lot of different things I love in media, and I still love the game. There’s another untranslated game I really like called Pigeon Blood. I actually helped with some editing of translations for some of the routes a looong, long time ago. A more recent favorite, and probably my favorite overall, is MAMIYA! MAMIYA is a Japanese indie visual novel by KENKOULAND which I will happily shill over my own games (LOL) about a group of people at the “end of the world”. The way the story is presented, I don’t think I’ve ever played anything like it, and I found it very inspiring. I was lucky enough to work with the creator Kokoroten on an animation for my own game Dreambound, which was fantastic.

Arimia: Would you believe I’ve never played DMMD? Definitely cut from the same cloth though about being exposed from too much Tumblr time and hearing about all of these Japanese VNs that would never get localized over here, but now Fate/Stay Night is coming to Steam in a few months…. the visual novel landscape has changed so much.

You’ve worked on several boys love and girls love titles before A Date With Death that are more in the fantasy historical realm – how did you come up with the idea for ADWD?

Gabby: Well, we’d actually been wanting to try something more modern for awhile now, despite our love for fantasy settings, and we only happened across a screenshot from another developer’s chat sim and I kind of fell in love with the format. I’ve been really wanting to try my hand at something “cozy”, and though A Date with Death doesn’t really sound cozy on the box, we have a lot of features that I think set well with that crowd. I’m a very big fan of the informal aspect of the writing. I think even in my more serious games, I always lean into humor a little bit and I really enjoy writing banter, so the chat sim format was perfect for that.

(I styled my MC after my character Rose. he’d probably wind up in a shady chatroom like this)

Arimia: Having played some of A Date with Death, I can definitely see how it’s more “cozy” than some of your other games, and I think a lot of the player reactions I’ve seen have shown that too. The overall scope of the game is also on the smaller side, despite the player customization. How did you go about deciding the size of the game? Were there any parts/features you wanted to include but didn’t?

Gabby: Actually, the size is a lot BIGGER than we originally planned. Being our first free to play game, it’s always a little bit of a risk to put a lot of money into something when visual novel development is your livelihood, and obviously with a free game there’s no guarantee of a return. We originally planned for each “day” of the game to be only around 2000 words, for a grand total of 14,000 words for the game. Very short and sweet. Over the development we realized we had a lot more words than originally planned that we wanted to tell, and part of that is owing to just how many choices and options there are. There’s some conversations in the game which people are honestly surprised about because they’ve never managed to get them on any of their playthroughs. The game actually ended up being around 60,000 words, and this should be near doubled when Beyond the Bet releases.

We also included a lot of other things that weren’t originally planned when we concepted the game. We knew we wanted character creation and some degree of room decorating, but we also added a lot of small missable content – like interacting with your pet, watering your plant, reading books on your bookcase, minigames and websites on your computer, eavesdropping on your neighbor… the one thing we had originally planned but cut was voice acting. It’s something we really wanted to do, and we wrote Casper’s character with a very talented voice actor in mind, but it was a bit too much of a risk with the price of it and the unknown of releasing a free game but still making money on it. We don’t believe in having people work for us for free, even on free projects or jam games, so it wasn’t something we were prepared to have someone do for free even though I’m certain we could have.

Luckily, in the end we decided to hold a Kickstarter for the project, and that allows us the possibility of adding voice acting if it goes well!

Arimia: Yeah, it’s definitely a risk to spend so much time and effort on a free project, but I’m glad it worked out in the end. When announcing the game, what was your strategy? Did it differ any from how you announced and marketed your previous games?

Gabby: It was a little different! This is the first time we’ve had TikTok as one of our platforms when announcing a new project, and we knew we wanted to focus a lot of our attention there. Video content is very strong performing we’ve found, but it is definitely a skill in and of itself. We spent a lot of time honing down on our hook and how we could make people get it in a single line. On a platform like TikTok, you have a split second to catch someone’s attention.

We also had a much shorter amount of marketing time than our usual multi-year projects. We knew we wanted it out within a few months of announcing it, so we needed as much impact as possible in a short amount of time. We knew we wanted to get an animated opening since it can be a very powerful piece of marketing material, and I think that was a great idea and we’ll likely continue it going forward.

At the time of announcement, we had less than 10,000 followers on Twitter. Twitter is probably my favorite platform, but it was kind of falling off for us a little when we were ready to announce A Date with Death – but it just took off after we announced the game. We had a multi-month document with marketing beats and announcements we’d make over the few months we had, but with everything taking off much more than we expected we added to it a lot. I think you always have to be ready to adapt to change quickly in this field.

We actually never planned to market the game as “tease the babygirl”, but it’s something fans latched onto, and you can’t make that kind of marketing yourself, I think. We really leaned into our audience and what THEY thought of the game, and used that to our advantage in a way. I’m very thankful for whoever first asked if he was a babygirl.

Arimia: Twitter (was) probably my favorite platform too, mainly because it’s so easy to just make a quick post or update. TikTok has so much reach but it’s just so much easier to tweet a meme out somedays.

A little side question- with the name having the word “death” in it, were you worried about SEO / being censored on social media, or did it affect you? When I was creating Drops of Death years ago, I was worried social media platforms would suppress posts about it but ultimately went with it because it fit with the serial killer theme.

Gabby: Actually we weren’t too worried about that – we’ve definitely used words like death, kill, murderer, etc. in relation to our other games before and haven’t have much trouble. There ARE certain words especially on TikTok that it’s best to censor, but I haven’t had any problem using the name anywhere and we were prepared to risk it to use the name we wanted.

Arimia: It’s definitely a catchy name that summarizes the experience well. Back to the part where when people were first getting exposed to the concept and came up with Grim being a babygirl— how would you advise other devs to understand what keywords and pitches work better for their games?

Gabby: My first suggestion is to look at similar games to yours and the words they use. Look at the concept of your story and try to boil it down to a paragraph, then a sentence. Look at what makes your game unique, or how you can lean into what fans will get out of your work. Give your players elements that they can recognize instantly without a lengthy explanation.

“A romance chat sim where you flirt with and/or bully the Grim Reaper��

“Compete against the Grim Reaper to keep your soul… or die trying”

“Create your custom MC and flirt with the man trying to take your soul”

I use all of these in our marketing, because even though there’s a lot more to the game we’re not talking about, this is a hook that can capture someone’s attention straight away and then you can funnel them to your game.

Arimia: Getting hooks down can be such a difficult part but it’s so, so important. What do you think helped you most marketing-wise?

Gabby: It’s a tough question. We did a lot, and had huge amount of attention from all over the place and it just snowballed more, and more, and more. I think honestly what started the snowball was TikTok. Once we had one video go big, we were having multiple a week go 30k-400k views. We were getting 500-1300 wishlists per day for months. A lot of people joined our Discord from there and went to follow us on Twitter. TikTok is hard and the format is a lot to handle when you’re new to the platform, but it was absolutely worthwhile for us. Another thing I’ll quickly note – reuse your content. I just repost my TikToks to Insta Reels and they get a similar, if not more views, for no extra effort.

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Arimia: Yeah, it’s wild how quickly TikTok can blow up for someone. I’ve had posts get 100k+ views and then a few posts later they’ll struggle to hit 1k.

Side note: Gabby has written about her experiences with TikTok on her blog. You can also read about my discussions on TikTok marketing for visual novels here.

What do you think was the least effective thing you did for marketing?

Gabby: I suppose Steam events this time around kind of paled in comparison to our own marketing efforts. They’re always worth doing though – any Steam events you can get into, participate in them! You’ll always see some kind of return. But for us, an event giving 200-300 wishlists was just a drop in the water. Not at all not worth doing, but certainly it wasn’t a huge focus for us this time around.

[A]ny Steam events you can get into, participate in them!

Apart from that, I posted also to some other social media sites like bluesky, but I didn’t find it very worthwhile and stopped rather quickly. There’s only so much time in a day, and as the only person handling all of the marketing, it just wasn’t worth it.

Arimia: For newbie devs, what would you recommend they focus on? TikTok, Twitter, or something else?

Gabby: I think TikTok is the easiest platform to hit it big on “fast”. I say “fast” because it’s not guaranteed that you’re going to hit it big, it really depends how well you adapt to the platform, but your content there has a chance of being seen, even without any followers at all. That’s probably why I recommend it as a platform for new and old visual novel devs alike.

I think you’ll also find that once you pick up the format, it can be pretty fun to make. I think platforms like Twitter are easier to use, but getting started on them is hard. VNs are so visual heavy so we already have so much content that works well on TikTok. Of course, there could be problems in the future with using TikTok in the US, so we’ll see how that goes.

It’s best to focus on a few places though, and not to put all of your eggs in one basket. When you’re putting your audience in places that can go away, it’s always a risk, so it’s good to spread them between places like TikTok, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Arimia: Yeah, I think one thing devs forget is that these social media platforms are ran by big tech that don’t care about the little guys – if your account gets banned or falsely flagged, what are you going to do if you can’t get it back? Always best to have more than one site you’re posting on, but you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.

At what point in ADWD’s development cycle did you start marketing it? It was a pretty short development cycle to begin with.

Gabby: We started working on the concept of A Date with Death January of last year, and announced it on the 5th of July. This wasn’t really 6-7 months of dev time though – we were working on two of our other games at the time. By that point, we’d finished maybe half of the game and announced the game in time for the Steam Visual Novel Fest a month later.

This was actually pretty successful for us, and gave us a decent boost to start from. We then released the demo at the end of September in time for Steam Next Fest, which was a bit more meh for us despite going in with a high wishlist velocity. We then released the game at the start of December. But, like I said, we were working full time on Dreambound and The Divine Speaker: The Sun and the Moon, so I think we could have made it in much less time if we didn’t have other games on our plate.

My suggestion is to announce the game and start marketing early, but not so early you run out of content you can post. My strat is usually announce the game at the same time the Steam page is ready, so you can use the announcement to drive people straight to it. A trailer can be another marketing beat, and then lead up to the demo release. Going in with a solid marketing plan is a great idea, too.

Side note: despite the short amount of time to market the game, they were able to enter it into at least 2 different Steam-ran festivals! That’s a great boost to wishlists and they usually don’t require much work from yourself.

[A]nnounce the game and start marketing early, but not so early you run out of content you can post.

Arimia: Once you’ve worked on a few games it’s a lot easier to gauge when that sweet spot is, but when you haven’t it’s definitely hard to figure out. I usually go with how much progress I have towards something playable like a demo. When ADWD was ready to release, how did you reach out to press?

Gabby: Actually, I didn’t sent out any press releases for the full game! I can’t tell you exactly if this was a good thing or not – but the way I’ve done it for all of my other games is that I send out a press release and streamer keys for the demo only. Especially for A Date with Death, we already had a lot of press and streamer interest naturally, so we decided to use our time for other forms of marketing and polishing up the game instead.

For the demo though, we curated a list of ~70 people to send out early keys to. I think this is quite worthwhile in hyping up the demo release, and it’s quite easy these days with tools like sullygnome.

Arimia: What lessons learnt from your previous games did you bring with you when making ADWD?

Gabby: We’ve been very lucky to work with our amazing artist Fuyuure for over six years now, so we came in with a great team who worked incredibly well together. I think that was a big bonus – working on something like a big character creator can be a difficult task for many artists, because of the sheer amount of assets you need. So, I would say coming in with a talented team who were ready for their tasks was a massive boon.

I think working on so many games beforehand prepared us to make the game in the time we did. We usually work on bigger, multi-year projects, and this was our first proper commercial endeavor into a smaller game. Our experience helped us to pinpoint exactly what we would need, which is a lot less than our other projects. The game actually only has 5 CGs, which is less than usual for us, but I think we managed to do it in a way where it doesn’t feel lacking, either. Getting scope right is a difficult thing and it’s easy to want to include anything and everything, but we were very particular about what we wanted and how long it would take.

Arimia: I can definitely see how that helped – working with people you’re already comfortable with can alleviate a lot of stress. For the A Date with Death: Beyond the Bet Kickstarter, how did you prepare the marketing campaign for it? How long did that pre-planning take you?

Gabby: We really started planning the new DLC the day A Date with Death launched last December. We knew we wanted to make more content, and with Dreambound nearly complete it was a good time to start thinking of running a new campaign. I would say the preplanning took a couple of months – working on a good date, working with lots of artists on new merch, setting up the page, getting the page to our graphic designer to make some images up for it… running a Kickstarter is definitely a lot of work! Even organizing the tiers takes some time.

We prepared mostly by getting the prelaunch page up as early as possible and getting the word out on all of our socials – Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok, Reels, Steam itself, Discord, our email list, itch…. basically, did a big blast out everywhere and we had a huge amount of people come and prelaunch straight away. We also really enjoy doing countdown images the week before launching – it lets us work with a bunch of amazing artists, and we use the art for rewards during the campaign too (as prints). Being our third campaign, we came into it knowing what we had to do, which is a big timesaver. For new developers, I’ll say don’t sleep on the prelaunch time – it’s not a good idea to put up a Kickstarter and instantly launch it. You need to bring an audience with you and get as many pledges lined up on that first day as possible.

Honestly, the support so far has blown our mind. With a similar amount of prep, Dreambound launched with less than 300 followers on the page, but as of writing this we’re already over 4500 on A Date with Death.

[I]t’s not a good idea to put up a Kickstarter and instantly launch it. You need to bring an audience with you and get as many pledges lined up on that first day as possible.

Arimia: Even though I’ve helped run and advised several Kickstarters before, there’s always something I forget or push off until the last minute. Was there anything you learned from the Dreambound KS that you used/did differently for the ADWD KS?

Gabby: Oh, for sure. I learned a lot about my tiers and page organization from our past Kickstarters. We actually have a lot more tiers than usual on this Kickstarter and I don’t think we’d be able to manage that without our past experiences.

If I had to pick one thing from the Dreambound Kickstarter that I’ve changed for A Date with Death’s, we decided to have all of our stretch goals viewable from the get-go. I enjoyed the “unlocking” of stretch goals we had before, but with the amount of attention I think we’ll get, it’s just easier to lay everything out for everyone.

Arimia: Yeah, I imagine you’ll probably be hitting stretch goals pretty early on with how many people are excited for the KS. Aside from social media like TikTok and Twitter, how do you keep your audience interested?

Gabby: I think one of the things that mobile games have as an advantage is continuously adding more content and patches. That really keeps people interested and coming back to your game and characters. Obviously we don’t really have a big enough team or enough time to be adding more and more content, so keeping people interested can be quite tough. We were very conscious of this when deciding WHEN to hold a Kickstarter in the first place – if we wait too long, people will move on. It’s already been 6 months since the game released, after all.

There’s multiple ways we’ve kept people interested during these months. One is that we funneled a lot of people to our Patreon, where we have exclusive art every month from the game, as well as behind the scenes stuff about the new DLC. We then can tease these on social media too, and drip feeding content works pretty well to keep people interested.

Another is we now have near 8000 members in our Discord, and these people become some of your core audience. We encourage interaction with each other and the game by weekly game questions that players can answer. If you had enough time to organize it, I honestly think even doing daily questions would be a really great idea. Anything to kind of keep people chatting and thinking about the game.

Arimia: To wrap this up – what advice would you give to other visual novel devs?

Gabby: There’s so much I’d like to say, but I’ll just give a few pieces of advice that I think could help newer developers. Don’t think of marketing as a bad thing, or an annoying thing. I see a lot of new developers come in and say “I won’t market. I feel like a shill and my game will speak for itself”. I think this is a huge mistake, because people won’t play your game if they don’t know it exists. Marketing can be fun! Share your little stories with the world proudly, don’t feel bad about that.

If you want to do game dev as just a hobby, then that’s absolutely fine – but it’s totally possible to do this as a profession, too. My partner and I have been working on visual novels full time for over two years now. A lot of people tend to think that’s there’s no money in visual novels, but I would say that’s not true at all. It’s hard work – like all small businesses are – and not every game is going to be wildly profitable, but it’s totally possible with a good game and good marketing. Keep making the games you love, doing market research to see what other people love, and you might be able to find a good crossover.

-------------------

And there you have it, some insight into the development and creation of A Date with Death! If you haven’t already, check the game out – the base game is completely free to play on Steam and itch.io. You can check out their social media here:

Twitter – TikTok – Tumblr

Support their Kickstarter!

[riceacolyte]

Have you ever considered writing a visual novel? I just ask because I think you’d be really good at it! (And also I personally adore visual novels and would loooove to see one of your stories in that format :3 )

thank you so much!! i actually did try to make a dating sim VN back in 2017, but i didn't really have a handle on long-form writing at the time (arguably i still do not have this lol) and it never got finished.

now that i've pulled up the folders i'm realizing i actually completed like... almost all of the art for it..... so i'll take the opportunity to dump them here since i don't remember if ive ever actually posted about this project before

the basic premise was that the protagonist was a workaholic flower seller whose little sibling (sprout seller) just really wanted them to take a day off, and you spend a day with one of your fellow vendors

it's definitely a story i've outgrown so i don't think i'll ever go back to finish it but seeing all of these together is pretty nostalgic ^^

[drchenquill]

Writerblr Interview~

Thank you @thecomfywriter , @nczaversnick , @the-golden-comet for the tag!

Short stories, novels, or poems?

Well, if we're talking about writing, then short stories and novels. I love both. I mostly focus on my novels, but sometimes a random scene or idea pops into my head that I need to write down, but it's not developed enough for a full fledged story, but I just need to write it down, so a short story is born.

What genre do you prefer reading?

Romance and fantasy. I'm just a hopeless romantic and I love magic.

What genre do you prefer writing?

Again, romance and fantasy. I'm not that good at coming up with lore and stuff, but I'm happy with my smol magic system.

Are you a planner or a write-as-I-go kind of person?

I wish I was a planner. I have the idea, sometimes I already know how it will end, but the rest is just a gaping hole of nothingness that I have to fill out. So, yeah, I'm a write-as-I-go person.

What music do you listen to while writing?

Every kind of music. There's no real type of music that I seek out. I just need something to accompany me on my writing journey.

Fave books/movies?

Currently: Favorite book is probably Born A Crime by Trevor Noah. It's a biography and not actually what I usually read as stated before, but it's such a good book. It's educational, interesting and filled with humor. It's a good read.

While movie on the other hand it has to be Pride and Prejudice (2005). I don't need to explain why.

Any current WIPs?

I'm currently focusing on "Daisy" and "Him and Me - Bound by Fate" because, you won't believe this, but I actually have them somewhat planned out.

I want to try to finish "Foliè" as well and write on "The Memories of The Future" more, but that is more difficult because the gaping hole of nothingness is staring at me everytime i open the file. I have some scenes, and the general idea, but the rest is just "okay, great, and now what?"

If someone were to make a cartoon out of you, what would your standard outfit be?

Ooof, okay. Hair in a braid with a fringe a little too long. An oversized hoodie with long sleeves to fiddle with. Dark bell bottoms and some sneakers. My favorite black feather earrings and my four old as hell rings. (Very important, they are on the thumb and index finger of each hand. No other fingers).

Create a character description for yourself

Oh boy...

Painfully introverted girl with a lot of insecurities (thanks to school and people she never asked for their opinion👍) that made her socially anxious with the social skills of a rock. (I bet the rock can hold a conversation better than she can though). If you get to know her, you'll find out what a sarcastic yet sweet (not her words) person she actually is. She tends to overthink every interaction she has and has cried several times because she misinterpreted something.

A very gentle and hopeless romantic at heart (which doesn't play well with her social anxiety). Tries to be helpful when she can, but will shut down if put on the spot. You'll find her in a corner praying to whatever entity is playing Sims with the world that no one comes to talk to her. Will wear a smile most of the time and laugh at all your jokes because she doesn't want to be disrespectful. She can be a total bitch when you get to know her, but her snarky and sarcastic remarks mean that she feels comfortable around you.

Names every stray animal she sees. (Recent addition: a male cat now named Maestro)

Do you like incorporating people you actually know into your writing?

Nope. If I do, I don't do it on purpose.

Are you kill-happy with characters?

I do kill off the "bad ones", although not always. I will and have traumatized my characters (I'm so sorry Leon) but I would never kill a character. I just can't.

Coffee or tea while writing?

Water baby~

Slow or fast writer?

Used to be fast, but now I jump from WIP to WIP so technically slow because I'm not far ahead with any of them, but I work on multiple.

Where/who/what do you find inspiration from?

Anywhere!

If you were put into a fantasy world, what would you be?

Good question. Probably one of those characters that lives secluded, in the middle of the entchanted forest, that talks to mythical creatures and everyone thinks is a witch or something.

Most fave book cliche?

Soulmates. I- Listen! I love romance, and soulmates with a bit of good angst. *chefs kiss*, you know? Anything "fated" and i'm sold.

Least fave book cliche?

I'm sorry, but enemies to lovers. (I can enjoy it only if it's written good). I just get too invested and then pick side, which leads to me not even wanting them to get together.

Fave scenes to write?

The angsty/fluff/romantic scenes. I love a good cuddle scene, a good kiss scene, or a good crying scene.

Most productive time of day for writing?

All the time! But as i'm writing this, I would pick the evening, because the mornings are so fucking hot right now, even writing makes me sweat.

Reason for writing?

To be able to share with lovely people at least a bit of my heart, because I pour it in every word. I also write because I genuinely enjoy it~

~~~

Tagging with no pressure @theink-stainedfolk , @paeliae-occasionally , @finickyfelix , @leahnardo-da-veggie ,

@oliolioxenfreewrites , @inseasofgreen and open tag

[dylanobrienisbatman]

Saw video today of a young boy in Gaza, no older than early teens, sobbing as he prayed with his community over the bodies of his entire family who had been slaughtered by Israel. His entire family.

As we watch the most gut-wrenching scenes, the most horror filled images filling our screens every second of every day, I know I personally feel helpless and devastated and lost on what to do. We may not feel as though we have much power in these moments, but there are things we can do to make our voices heard and to help as much as we can. Here are some important ways you can help the people of Gaza:

purchase e-sims and send them to this email, where they are distributing the e-sims for free to people in Gaza. This ensures that they can stay connected, both to the world at large but, more importantly, to their families and communities. As Israel continues to cut off all internet in Gaza, this is crucial. This account on tw*tter has more information about their efforts to distribute the e-sims.

Share what is happening wherever you have a platform and, most importantly. Speak out what is happening with the people in your real life community. For 75 years Israel has convinced the world that the situation is "complex" and have managed to dissuade "normal" everyday people from speaking out on the atrocities they have been ceaselessly carrying out. Don't let them undermine your intelligence and don't let them try to convince you that what you are seeing isn't actually a genocide. Share posts from Palestinians and Gazans and be vocal about your support for a ceasefire and a free Palestine.

Boycott!! BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) has released a list of companies to boycott who are profitting from or contributing too the genocide in Gaza. There are, unfortunately, so many companies that profit and contribute to Israel, but BDS has put together a list of targeted companies to ensure we can narrow our focus and make maximum impact. The most commonly known right now are McDonald's, Starbucks, and Dominoes, but this link has more information and a list with different categories for us to be aware and use our most powerful tool, our money, to make an impact.

Read!! There are dozens of book lists out there now that contain different kinds of writings for every kind of person. Novels that tell the stories of the Palestinian people through fiction-style writing. Academic texts. Historical non-fiction works that tell the history of the occupation. Find something that will be of benefit to you and READ. An informed populace is a powerful populace.

Protest! Find a protest in your area and GO! Not only does this help to show the world and our governments what it is the people stand for, with more people attending sending a stronger message, it will also help you find community and support with people who understand the devastation we feel.

Reach out to your elected officials!! Call, email, fax, or even write letters! This is a huge way that we as individuals can change the policy positions of our elected officials. The more people who tell them "this issue matters and will effect my voting decisions in the future", the more likely they will be to change their position. And even if it feels like you're just yelling at the wall, it will feel good to say what you feel and what you believe to someone that you KNOW has the power to change things. It won't be automatic, and can be disheartening, but it is important.

I'm sure there are even more ways to help, and please share them below if you have any! Keep your head up and keep going. Don't look away. The people of Gaza have asked us to bear witness to the atrocities being carried out against them, to speak out for them as they lose their voices, and to pray for them and hope for them. Don't abandon them, and don't abandon hope. Hope is the strongest force we have in times of such darkness. Together, we can and we will see a free Palestine.