News, updates and…. stuff
It came out of nowhere, but today MangaGamer put up an All-ages version of Kira Kira on their website.
This is an instant get for me. I have heard good things about Kira Kira, and I truly want to support a company that is finally exploring the possibility of releasing both H and non-H versions of their games.
Bad news is that I haven’t even finished Fate/Stay Night yet, and I hear that Kira Kira is a long game too… well, hopefully it won’t slow my own development down too much 
I felt inspired to do something silly.
Now I will walk away and act like this never happened. For now.
Everyone else is doing it! ™
So here is a few words on my 2009. Well, the one related to my creative endeavours at least.
2009 saw my first release of a visual novel, Angelic Orbs: Broken Memories. It had taken me two years to make, and it was finally time to get it out of the door. In the end I couldn’t do all I wanted with it, but this seems to be a general problem to vn creators, and I’m still pretty happy with the result. Hopefully I can pull myself together and release the version with fixed english some time in the near future.
I also had a second release out, the small short story My Eternal Rival, which was featured as a part of the Cute, Light and Fluffy project. MER was very short and non-serious, and most of it was written on small pieces of paper while at work. But I still got very attached to the project, and I don’t regret taking part in it at all.
And so came to tough decision of what to work on next. I had a few ideas on hand that I was very interested in doing, and even started one of them. But in the end something (I’m not even sure what) changed my mind, and production began on the script for a new game set in the same general universe. An otome game. Something I thought I’d never make. But I’m taking up the challenge, and will hopefully succeed in making something interesting for girls to play, without it sinking completely into useless fluff. But that is for this year. Back to 2009.
Apart from the two mentioned VN’s I didn’t manage to much else of my own out there. My comic is still lying dormant although I constantly wish to return to it, but life has been too busy for me to work both on my game projects, the several new commissions that I received this year, and the comic at the same time. Hopefully I will be able to get something done on that soon.
That’s right, there is something else that I had released. The very first TCG cards with my illustrations on them.
All in all I think I came a long way this year when looking back at these achievements, along with my amazing 2-month long stay in Wales. But enough talking about me!
As Hime mentioned, there has also been a lot going on when it comes to translations of Japanese visual novels. Most of it something that the majority of VN fans thought would never happen, like Higurashi getting an official release in english, Jast partnering up with Nitro+ and visual novels released on the iPhone/iTouch.
But you probably already knew that.
So here’s to a great 2010! (Hopefully)
So, I’ll make a post for once that doesn’t just revolve around my own little project.
Lately there has been some attention surrounding a new(?) way to release books here. Recently I saw this kind of project named in the media for the second time, a so-called “2-dimensional novel”. A well-known author here released a book which was part ordinary text, part graphic novel and with a soundtrack. So the point is to listen to these songs as you read along certain parts of the book, making text, pictures and music create a whole.
The whole time I couldn’t help thinking, “but that’s just a visual novel without a computer, isn’t it?”.
Also, both the author, artist and musician are pretty well-established names in my country. Apparently even the musician is the one who came up with the idea, having the story created around the tunes. And the artist is pretty well known for being manga influenced…
So, what is my point with this? I don’t really know. I guess I just find it really interesting to see how other authors and artists are trying to make all these things – art, music, stories – come together as something special. And, who knows, maybe this kind of storytelling is actually becoming more than a niche. And in the future, it could be something more than just a way to lure kids into reading books too.
Of course no one says that they succededed yet. It could just be a novelty, disappearing into obscurity – time will tell. I guess I should check out this book myself. After all I own another series of books by the same author, which were all really good.
For those interested, the mentioned “book” is called “Sirene” by Leene Kaaberbøl. I don’t know if this book even exists in other languages than Danish yet, but it probably will at some time.
For the first time, a glimpse of two male characters.
Hello everyone, have you all had a nice christmas so far? I certainly have.
Since my Christmas Eve was dealt with yesterday, I have spend most of today playing Galaxy Angel, which has proven to be a really nice experience. Forte is awesome.
Apart from that I have managed to write through one more important scene for Blue Rose. And I must say, looking at the pieces of text that I have written for it today, Blue Rose is turning out to be a bit darker (and bloodier) than I initially thought <_<;; Oops.
I’ll need some cheering up after those scenes. Maybe another round of Galaxy Angel is in order – at least I’ll put on some cheerful music for now.
After finally finishing that part I will be able to begin on some more relaxed scenes again, some that don’t involve any jumping around or fighting. Action can be a pain to write.
Have a great day!
I finally got myself a light table! I’ve been wanting one for years and years, and finally it was possible thanks to my awesome boss.
This is great. I’ll be able to do a lot of snazzy stuff now that I’ve wanted to do… and it inspires me to try it out and get some real work done on the art side of Blue Rose.
Apart from that I have reached the point in the script where Lena and co. are going on their Great Mission in the mountains. I spent some of my time at work today making small map sketches with arrows, planning how the battle is going to be handled.
Mmmm maps with arrows…
Hopefully I’ll be able to write the action scenes properly.
Work on Blue Rose is slowly progressing. As with Angelic Orbs I’m mainly focusing on the script at this stage – only a few design sketches here and there are made on the art front, and I try to ignore the future programming problems that will inevitably come up.
And I have come quite a way with the script already. Because of the (annoying) event system that I am going to use in this project, it is mostly written in a program that lets me branch out the story as I write. Other portions of the story are scattered word documents, mails(!) and paper notes. But exporting what I have in my wiki program lets me count up to 16673 words written so far. Of course some of these are notes and jump directions, so the real number is a bit lower than that.
But yes, these events are proving quite a pain to organize. I don’t have any trouble keeping track of where the story is going so far, but organizing my scripts and making them connect the way they’re supposed to is a pain. The more linear branching of Angelic Orbs was a lot easier to control…
I’m also lying about the coding – I actually did code part of the system already. I think I mentioned this in an earlier blog post, but the map is working! Hurrah! Unfortunately there is a lot left to be coded in order to make the game’s system work. Those are the parts that I am ignoring so far. First things first…
As for the sketch above, yes that is another picture-in-progress of Lena, protagonist of Blue Rose. You’d think that seeing the faces of the main guys in an otome game would be better, but I don’t have any sketches of them that I want to show off yet. And getting Lena to appear the way I want her is hard enough.
One of the many things that came out while I was away was a few english language visual novels for the iPhone and iPod Touch! Which is amazing for me, since I only just got myself an iPod Touch.
Two of these are Gift and Kira Kira, a game already released in english by Mangagamer. I bought both the moment I got home, curious about how this works out. So far I have only played a little of Gift, since I want to save Kira Kira for when I have better time – I hear really good things about that game, and I’m really happy to be able to play a non-h version of it.
But just to clarify some of the questions about these iPhone games, here is a run-down about what I know about the Gift game for now:
Gift is playable on both iPhone and iPod Touch. You can get it in both english and japanese versions, and there are also free “Lite” versions (demos) that you can get to try it out before buying.
I heard somewhere that it isn’t possible to save or load in Gift – this is not true! It is definitely possible to both save, load, skip text and so on. So don’t worry about missing out on these features if you consider buying the iPhone version. I don’t know if the people mentioning this were playing the Lite version, since I haven’t tried that. The Lite version may be missing these features, but the full version does not.
Then there is the translation… well, it’s not impressive. You’ll be able to know what is going on, but I personally can’t help but laugh out loud at the strange choice of words that appear from time to time. I mean, even I can do better than that…
Considering that this is an iPhone app, we can all hope that some sort of update for the translation will be released some day. But it’s still playable, I guess that works.
Art looks nice, although a little generic/boring to me. Story seems to be pretty ordinary too so far – the main character is reunited with his not-really-his-sister after several years, while also being courted by a shy, clumsy and very smitten friend. The setting is a city with a rainbow that never disappears, no matter the weather, and one of the heroines is researching this rare rainbow along with something called “Gift”.
I hope this answers some questions for people interested in getting this app. Maybe I’ll be able to do a better review if I finish Gift some day. Hopefully Kira Kira makes use of the Mangagamer translation which should be really good, because that would make me a happy bunny.
Finally back again!
Was nice to get away from everything for a little while, but now I can’t wait to get back to work on my projects again. Also got a lot of new ideas and great inspirational photos for my next game. Amazingly enough, I even got a title too. For now my mystery otome visual novel project will be called “Blue Rose”.
And so much has happened while I was gone, too. Will take a while to catch up with everything.
So, I’m off tomorrow! I’ll be away for 9 weeks, most likely without any chances of posting in this blog or any other websites/forums/etc. Hopefully I will still have some time to spend on my next game project during the evenings, and maybe I’ll be able to return home with a load of new inspiration.
See you all again in December 
