ravenstargames - Tumblr blog

[ravenstargames]

What ROs would you recommend for what kinds of people?

✦ What ROs / LIs would you recommend for what kinds of people?

If you like cute, feel-good, first-time romances, Xal is the one to go.

For people who love a cup of drama —and maybe a lot of pinning to have you growl in frustration sometimes— with their romance, Gael and Raeya.

Now, people who like ANGST? SUFFERING? DO YOU LIKE SUFFERING FOR LOVE? Pride and Envy.

Spice? A lot of spice? Fast-paced, intense, chaotic, funny—SEXY! Amon and Ara.

We hope the demo gives you a better idea and gets you to know the characters better! For now, I hope this is helpful! 💜

Also, every route will include trigger warnings for you all to read—as funny as Amon and Ara's route may be, all routes touch on more serious topics! I wrote those down in the Masterpost if anyone wants to check some of them!

[ravenstargames]

In other news—our second key art is ready! 💜✨We are excited for you to meet this family of seven very very soon in our demo! 👉👈

[ravenstargames]

Please support the team at Best Laid Plans and their amazing game! Beyond the gorgeous visuals and the great premise, there's a lot of heart and effort put into this! 💜😭

Please sign up to support Save the Villainess, our otome isekai roleplaying game, during our Kickstarter campaign pre-launch!

Our Kickstarter campaign will soon open along with new goodies. Beyond a revamped demo, we’ll offer several new ways to visit and learn more about Carcosa, the country where Save the Villainess takes place.

With your help, we will create the best possible version of Save the Villainess!

Interested in a fully animated black comedy murder mystery game with unique love interests that may or may not want to destroy you?

🦋Join Save the Villainess' Kickstarter Pre-Launch.

🦋Wishlist Save the Villainess on Steam.

🦋Follow Save the Villainess on Itch.

🦋Sign up to the Mailing List for exclusive character cards every month.

Credits: Edited Video by Sokei, Music by JunbugP, Vocals by Saki Rose, Characters by Somate Studio; Animal & item art by @arodude; Backgrounds by @arodude, Karel Kok, Son Huynh; Logo by Yan Moe.

[ravenstargames]

IT'S HERE IT'S HEREEEE!!!

Alaris: A Story of the Stars

Enhanced Demo Out Now

Enter a world of magic—of Fae and Dragon.

A global crisis that only continues to escalate. A dangerous run-in with a shadowy stranger. And a mysterious word that won't stop gnawing at you. How does everything tie together? And what role could you possibly play in all of this? 

Features

Aside from my blood and remnants of my soul, the New Alaris Demo contains:

A Customizable Protagonist: Choose your name and pronouns (including a whole new Expanded Pronouns system)

Personality: Shape your personality with four different traits and watch how the world interacts with it. Punch people, scare people, live your life how You Want!

Free Time: Choose from four locations and go on a date of your choosing with any of our love interests.

Affection & Stats Screens: Check how much the LIs are interested in you and what your personality looks like!

Communicator Interface: Improved messaging and calling features

Energy Vision: Tap into one of the MC's special abilities to see the different auras of the cast.

Memories: Revisit free time dates and let our love interests woo you as many times as you'd like.

Extended Music Room: Listen to the custom Alaris OST

Partial Voice Acting: Hear the characters come to life through the talented cast for the LIs

Updated Art Assets: All new sprite, CG, prologue, background, and GUI art (basically Everything looks Different).

If you played the old demo, the new one is Very Different! While the general story is the same, many features have been revamped to create a New Player Experience.

❝ Not all mysteries... ❞  

Some mysteries, beyond man, have no logic, have no fate. In the face of such, keep your wits close, but do not trust them.  Trust not yourself, nor your senses. Your time, nor your wit.

For where time has stopped, but its flow has no end.  For when passion calls, but hate runs deep.

Heed this warning, and do not wait.  For laws of nature and laws of man.  Have no logic, and have no weight."

❝ ...can be explained by the logic of man. ❞

[ravenstargames]

Trouble Comes Twice: Bonus Stories is out now!

An optional DLC to the base game Trouble Comes Twice, Bonus Stories is now available for purchase on Steam (PC-only) and itchio!

FEATURES

Love Interest POV: Ever wondered how the love interests view their romance with Hazel and Jace from their perspective?

Wedding-themed Stories: These one-thousand word stories focus on wedding-themed scenarios for every couple, e.g. the proposal, sharing wedding vows

Beach Episode: Spend a day on the beach with Hazel, Jace, and the love interests!

Includes eight new CG illustrations and 2 new chibi CG illustrations

Increases the overall playtime of each romance by 20 to 30 minutes

[ravenstargames]

he is indeed traumatized miserable and old

original post here!

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #10 | 04.01.24

And just like that, March is over! We are heading into a very busy April, but as nervous as we are about it, we are also pretty excited. This month has been full of newly accomplished goals, new challenges, and wonderful milestones! Let's jump into it, shall we?

<<There’s not much information about the figure that greets you in a mysterious occult shop. The only known thing is that they were the beginning of everything…and also the ending.>>

This month we finished the rework and the sprite of the first character you'll meet in the demo! They're as mysterious as they're charming, which makes them specially dangerous...

Also, we finished March with a boom! We opened a casting call to add some voiced lines and soundbites to the demo. We have received a lot of wonderful auditions, more than we expected! It has been overwhelming (in a good way) and so exciting to finally get to this stage of the demo's production! ; v ; Also, as always, Raquel has outdone herself with the artwork—just look at these two! 💜

Another background finished by our wonderful Airyn! 💜 This is one of my favorite ones (I'm afraid I'll say this about every background Airyn works on, but oh well), so now the only step left is to animate it! There's three backgrounds left (all of them in progress), so we hope this month we can make good progress on them!

Coding-wise, the script is almost fully coded. Almost. Ten pages left. Then, I'll start polishing everything—transitions, animations, sprites, some finishing touches on some screens...But honestly, seeing everything finally come together is quite moving. Being super positive, we'll start looking for beta testers at the end of the month for windows and mac. Sadly, I'm not sure if we'll be able to test mobile at the same time, but we'll see! I'm going to work so hard to achieve it!

We are soon starting the legal process to make Ravenstar Games official. We have been looking for information and professional advice these past months to make sure we do the whole process right, as it's a huge (and scary) leap for all of us. As you may or not remember, we started this as a passion project to be able to work the job of our dreams. Everything we have is either made by ourselves or paid with our personal savings, as only one of us has a steady job. It's terrifying to think we are going to do this, to invest what little we have in something we are passionate about but that could sadly not bear any fruit. Of course, we are staying positive and will work as hard as we have been working to make it happen, but doubts and fears arise every now and then! 💜

Also, our masterpost has been updated! Now it matches our itch.io page. There's more info I'd like to tweak here and there, but the important stuff (the premise, duh) has successfully been updated!

We have also started to think about the Kickstarter, as we are getting very very close to the demo release and we want to take as much advantage as possible of the momentum the release may give us. I don't dare to give a date yet, but we are very, very close ; v ;!!!

What a wonderful month! I'll never get tired of saying that. Everything is going great for us and the success of the casting call has given us the little confidence boost we were lacking. Well, at least when it comes to me—blame it on the OCD! As the director and the one who manages all social medias, I'm always worried of my performance, but the team has been there for me whenever I have doubted my abilities. I can only hope April proves to be as fantastic as March has!

Thank you as always for reading, for supporting us, for being there. It means the world to us. Take care, stay hydrated and healthy, and let's see each other next month! 💜

[ravenstargames]

It's #screenshotsaturday over on Twitter and we have screenshots to share for the first time! The coding of the game is going great—more on that on our devlog, coming Monday!

Raeya and Gael have very different personalities, but that doesn't mean they don't love and respect each other deeply! 💜

[ravenstargames]

soon

[ravenstargames]

Super nitpicky on my part, but wanted to let you know you should probably say a black AND/or Arab candidate is preferred for Raya, since there are Black Arabs (and I don't just mean Afro-Arabs or mixed kids: there are actual Black Arab countries like Sudan, Mauritania, etc.). Just makes it more inclusive and accurate for those who have both identities :). That said, I'm so happy to see a Raya is a Black Arab 😍. I was wondering because of her name, but now that I know, it's 💕. Send her all my love, I'm so excited to see who voices her, Black, Arab or both <3.

Not nitpicky at all! 💜 Thank you so so much for taking your time to write us! As I always say, we do our research to be as inclusive and stay as educated as possible, but there's just things that we don't think about or we completely miss! People like you who are not afraid to educate us our correct us help so much, I mean it! ; v ;

It's already corrected and the doc has been updated! We are so so excited to pick a voice for her :'))

Again! Thank you so much, and please don't ever hesitate to send us asks or emails pointing out these things! THEY MATTER!!

[ravenstargames]

We are looking for voice actors! [PAID]

The time has come! 💜 We are looking for eight voice actors to bring to life our main cast and a secondary character for the upcoming demo of Lost in Limbo, a dark fantasy-romance visual novel!

DEADLINE: April 10th!

Reblogs are extremely appreciated ; v ;! Thank you all as always for the unending support you give us!

⭐Check the audition info here! ⭐

[ravenstargames]

Howdy, fateful friends! Are you an artist or illustrator with an interest in visual novels?

If so: Moirai Myths, creators of the visual novel The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe), are in need of guest artists! More specifically, we're looking for up to two artists to help us with the content graphics ("CGs") for Maeve and Shae's upcoming routes. All of the details will be listed on our application form (linked below), but here is the gist:

This is paid work with 20-30 business day deadlines per piece!

Complicated revisions in the post-sketch phase are compensated!

You will be prioritized for future guest artist opportunities!

You will be featured/credited on Moirai Myths' website and in the game itself!

Sound interesting? If so, apply here:

Click under the cut for some F&Q 👇

Who are you? (I'm new here!)

Hi! We're Moirai Myths: a small, newish visual novel company based out of Canada. We're making a game inspired by mostly Irish mythology, which was funded on Kickstarter in 2023! Our game's got fairy politics, a diverse cast, a Gaeilge-to-English translation tool, and routes that can be played either romantically or platonically! Also horses. An ungodly amount of horses, really.

If that odd pitch sounded intriguing, perhaps you'd like to play our demo! It's free on Steam & Itch.io.

Why are you looking for guest artists?

When we originally launched our Kickstarter, the plan was to have our three in-house artists collaborate on the CGs in the same way our header image was. However, we quickly realized that adding CGs, even if they're done collaboratively, onto the existing duties of our artists was a tall order. Add to that the departure of our original sprite artist (who has since been replaced by our graphic designer), and we determined that having our in-house team work on CGs was simply not possible if we still wanted our first release to happen in 2024. So, rather than omitting CGs or adding them in at a later time, we came up with the idea of hiring guest artists. Overall this means our CGs will be a bit more varied in terms of art style, but we like to think of this as a positive! NDM's development will take a number of years to complete in full, so we hope our CGs will allow us to feature a lot of artists either within the VN/indie dev community already, or artists who aspire to work in gaming and are looking for entry positions.

How long will applications remain open for?

This application will be open until Sunday, March 24 at midnight (EST)! If we intend to extend past that deadline, we'll make an announcement about it.

I can't apply right now. Will you look for more CG guest artists in the future?

Definitely! As mentioned, NDM will take a while to develop in full, so this is by no means your only opportunity to apply. That being said, we suspect we're going to end up shortlisting a number of artists over the course of this application period, and we intend to keep a list of all the runners-up. So, even if you won't be able to participate this time, it might be a good idea to apply anyway just to remain in our contacts! Either way, this will not be the last time we have apps.

Will you be looking for guest artists outside of CGs?

Maybe! We already have two guest artists (Nefukurou and Madi Funk) working on sprites and CGs respectively, so it's always possible that we'll have other artistic needs later down the line. Likewise, we may also reach out to past guest artists for future work with us, whether it's on this game or something else!

You say we need to sign an NDA. What does that entail?

The non-disclosure agreement essentially means you will be legally unable to publicly disclose any confidential information you become privy to as a result of working with us. This would include personal information about the developers, as well as spoilers from the game itself. In addition do this, you will be expected to sign over the IP and copyright of any artworks you produce for us.

Can I still use my artworks in portfolios, even if I don't own the copyright?

Yes! We'd only ask, if your portfolio is a website, that you wait to do so until after your art has been made public by us, either on our social media or via the publication of the game. Our first release is anticipated to happen later this year, most likely mid-autumn.

How do you guys feel about AI? Do you intend to use it, or would you ever train an AI off of the artworks whose copyright you own?

No.

Making a game is expensive and time-consuming, but AI is no replacement for human artistry. We fundamentally believe that any advancements in AI should be used for the purpose of giving people more time to make art, not take away opportunities for it. Moirai Myths will never, ever use AI or train an AI off your work.

***

If you've got any more questions for us that we didn't think to include here, feel free to send us an ask!

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #9 | 02.29.24

What is this?! Two devlogs in one month?! More likely than you think! This February has been very productive for me and the team, so let's dive right into it!

Ooooh boy, Raquel keeps knocking it out of the park! She managed to get done every expression for every LI, and I coded them all! Now we have our wonderful characters ready for their debut. We have been using the wonderful Image Tools for Ren'py made by the talented and hard-working Feniks, whose tutorials and resources save a lot of dev's lives every day! This tool has made everything a bit easier for newbies like me, hehe.

Here's a taste of our edgelord's expressions! 💜 They're kind of a cutie when they put some effort into it!

We also had our second valentine's day celebration art piece thanks to Kayden! Sadly with the reworked version of the demo, you won't meet Vycar yet, so we thought we could ask for his forgiveness by giving him a beautiful bouquet and reminding him how much of a sweetheart he is! 💜

Also, Raeya got a hair update!

So, we weren't completely satisfied with the way we portrayed Raeya's hair, so this has been a rework we were sure we wanted to make. At first we were just going to render it again, but we ended up working on it from scratch to better represent what we envisioned for her. We hope you like it as much as we do! ; v ;💜

As always, we are open to any critique or advice; we are white people who have the luck to be able to ask POC friends for their advice as we work, but the more the merrier! Don't hesitate to send us your opinion to our ask box or even our email, gamesravenstar@gmail.com!

When it comes to the background department, we have been making great progress thanks to Airyn, who is honestly leaving us with our mouths hanging open every time! Thanks to her, another background has been finished and another one is in the making, leaving only two backgrounds to be revised and approved!

I personally can't stop looking at this WIP! She understood perfectly what we wanted to portray just by looking at an old WIP we had, and this is what we have so far—and it's already amazing!

Allie has been OBLITERATING the script. As of today, I think we have almost gone through everything that needed to be corrected and discussing, and lord if the script doesn't look a 100% better after we put it in Allie's hands. The way she writes, the way she understands everything I want to say even when sometimes I don't even know myself—what a talented, inspiring and amazing writer they are. I know I may sound annoying at this point singing her praises endlessly, but if the script is in the state where it is now, it's thanks to her!

My programming adventure of the month has been a success, if I say so myself! I've coded the characters with aaaaall their layers, their expressions, the blinking animations, made some videos, and started coding the script. Step by step as they say; I've coded 18 pages, and there's, uh...142 more to go. Haha! *sobs*

BUT WE ARE GETTING THERE! We can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I can finally click 'new game' and read the script and see the stuff going on! YAY!

Some extras of the month—we are preparing a Casting Call to choose the voice acting talent that will hopefully give voice to our characters. The demo won't be fully voiced (it's impossible with the funds we have, which are...zero), but if we are lucky we'll use some of our personal savings to pay for at least a few lines for each character so you can get an idea of how they'll sound if we get funded! Raquel is preparing an art piece for the announcement, and I'm getting the document ready and asking fellow VA friends for advice :3.

Also, we have a new member here at Ravenstar Games! Some weeks ago Astro and I formally adopted our first kitty, 8 month old Riki, fulfilling one of our dreams. We got him from a feline association that works with volunteers and fosters cats who have been abandoned, cats they find on the street, and so on. Riki has been living with me since January, and he's a happy, long big boy who loves playing, cuddles, and sitting on my desk while I try to work!

Say hi to the Ravenstar family, Riki! 💜

A productive month full of accomplished milestones, excitement and new challenges! The team has worked so hard, and I've done my part too! We still don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but we have done a lot of stuff we were sure we wouldn't finish yet, and look at that! We are doing so well!

As you can probably tell, my batteries are starting to run low, so I'm going to leave this devlog here. Thank you all like always for cheering us on, for being here in this journey with us, and for all the love you send our way. Let's hope March is as amazing as February has been, for us and for all of you! 💜

[ravenstargames]

They are already selling data to midjourney, and it's very likely your work is already being used to train their models because you have to OPT OUT of this, not opt in. Very scummy of them to roll this out unannounced.

[ravenstargames]

Could you explain what lost in Limbo is?

*JAZZ HANDS* ✨ AHEM!! Glad you asked, anon! I will assume you are not familiar with visual novels (for the sake of answering the question as best as I can if anyone else stumbles upon this ask), so let's break down Lost in Limbo to its basics! If you have any more doubts, you can always send another ask! 💜

*Also friendly reminder that English is not my first language and I also suck at explaining things, so I'll do my best ; v ;

✦ Lost in Limbo is a dark-fantasy romance visual novel...

As the title says! A visual novel is a videogame genre mostly defined by its interactive nature and for heavily leaning into its narrative aspects. It's like reading a 'choose your own adventure' book but seeing 'everything' that is happening on the screen. Interactive fiction, they also call it!

You basically play through a story, reading it, having visual depictions of the characters and the places as the story happens*, and you can usually change the story's outcome or some other aspects like relationships via choices or other forms of interaction. There's usually a couple of different endings to the 'same' story!

*Not all visual novels have choices, or have all their characters / scenarios depicted, etc. There's a lot of ways to do a visual novel!

Lost in Limbo is focused on the romance / fantasy genre, and the story takes place in a fictional world you'll explore as you play. You'll be able to experience the story through seven different 'routes', meaning you'll have to choose a character to romance and find more about the story and the cast through that very same romance. This kind of visual novels are often referred to as 'otome', 'amare', or 'dating-sim'. Each term has its differences so if you are interested, I suggest doing some research on them!

To keep this short, you can learn more about LiL in our Masterpost! Which needs another update!

If you are curious about this kind of games, you can check out different 'otome' games / dating sims on itch.io, Steam, and even the Nintendo Shop! OR TUMBLR!! Here are some personal recommendations of fellow indie devs that are working / have worked very hard on their projects!

✦ Alaris and Intertwine by Crescence Studio

✦ Made Marion by Velvet Cupcake Games

✦ Trouble Comes Twice by Foxglove Games

✦ Save the Villainess by Best Laid Plans Productions

✦ 3 Seasons by Hamilton Hour

So yep! A game. Interactive fiction game. You romance some hotties. You play through a story. You can die a few times and things can go downhill in numerous ways. You solve some mysteries and hopefully immerse yourself in the story. And a few more things!

[ravenstargames]

Raquel has been working non-stop this week to get the expressions of all the LIs done. Xal is not too enthused about it 👍 but damn he looks cute

[ravenstargames]

✦ Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's day! 💜 As our main cast will get the spotlight in the upcoming demo, we thought Vycar was worthy of his own art piece for today!💜 Please have a nice day, do it for him!