#actala-dev

[chattercap]

Actala Demo News and Current Roadmap

Hello hello, it's Chattercap! 

If you've been keeping up with me, you'll know I was creating a new Actala demo for Otome Jam. Initially I was going to redo the ENTIRE thing (Chapters 1-6), adding on every love interest's versions of Chapter 4 and 5 (adding on an additional ~40k words of content to bring the entire demo up to 100k words LOL) - but, well, that turned out like this:

In terms of what I got done, I did 12 backgrounds, 10 sprites, and 16 CGs (so...38, not quite 60, but not bad!). Not a bad amount of work for 2 months! You can see some of the ones I posted on socials below + some extras.

 I did finish most of what was needed through Chapter 3 (~2-3 hours of playtime), but I decided that if I pushed through, I wouldn't be able to get the game out in the state that I would want. I ended up redoing a LOT more than what I initially intended; I kept basically none of the original art and most of the original BGM too, and I also updated the script. This basically left no time to polish the coding, fine tune the animations, or to do the "extra CGs" that I wanted. 

Since it's a big project, I don't want to rush it, and I could tell I was getting PRETTY stressed out about getting something out on time (and I also had quite a bit going on in my personal life, as well). In the end I decided to postpone so that I would have time to polish it to the level that I would want. 

Okay, so when are you actually going to update this thing?

Thanks for your interest! I want to take my time with it, so I'll be working on it steadily, at my own pace. I don't have set release dates it for the moment. I'm hoping to release an updated demo that covers through Chapter 4 sometime soon, with an extended demo that covers through Chapter 6/the end of Act 1 after that (where the original demo left off). 

Current Roadmap

Currently, I'll be working on polishing the Actala artwork while I also finish up the Hanasu script. I'll also be working off-and-on on The Perfect Woman, which is a short Pygmalion and Galatea themed project that I'm making for Mythology VN Jam. I've teased a couple of the excerpts already on my Patreon, and I've done a mockup of the main UI as well, which you can see below!

Thank you for reading, and thank you to everyone who's interested in what I'm up to!

Chattercap

[chattercap]

For fun, here's a comparison of my old DIY Actala logo and the new commissioned one!

(😭 I SWEAR I'M NEVER MAKING ANOTHER LOGO AGAIN IN MY LIFE, I'll leave it to the pros...)

[chattercap]

What happens after the "happily ever after?"

The fairy tale is over. The Hero won. But the story is just beginning. Explore the web of intrigue in this emotional, suspenseful visual novel, depicted with hundreds of unique, animated illustrations. Who is the hero, and who is the villain? Who lives, and who dies? Your choices will decide.

Actala: The Hero's Shadow is a fully-animated, mystery/fantasy romance visual novel/otome game/dating sim.

You play as the Hero's childhood friend, who has spent years trying to protect him from the perils that assailed him at every turn. At long last, his quest is over. Even during the celebrations, however, new dangers emerge. Dangers more treacherous than monsters. Dangers that threaten the life of the kingdom’s strongest man.

Can the side character save the Hero?

Can you find the happily ever after?

Anything good about it?

The story is entirely depicted with unique, Live2D-style animated illustrations. Instead of the traditional sprite format, each scene has unique illustrations and comic-book style panels. (The demo has over 140 illustrations, including 45 CGs!)

Five love interests with dramatically different storylines, each with its own twists and turns.

Play as a sassy, older MC! The protagonist is older than most of the LIs, and you're given ample opportunities to tease them and make them blush. (I don't use affection gauges, so choose the fun dialogue options to your heart's content!)

Fragments of the Past: As you play, you get to unlock special scenes that explore the characters' pasts prior to the events of the main story.

Route map: Easily navigate through the story using the route map feature. No need to replay hours of dialogue/obsess over your saves!

A variety of options to make the reading experience easier, including different fonts, font sizes, text speeds, and customizable shortcuts.

Act 1 (Chapters 1-6) contains over 60,000 words (~4 hours of playtime). The full game will be 350,000+ words (20+ hours of playtime).

Where can you play it?

Act 1 is available for Windows now on Steam and itch.io! Mac, iOS, and Android are planned later in development.

I want some more info!

Drop me an ask! Or check out my website.

Also *psst* I'm pretty active over on Twitter. I post little dev tidbits there daily!

[chattercap]

Future Plans for Actala

Sorry for the kind of sporadic updates, I do need to be better about posting here! I post devlogs on my itch page monthly, and I've decided to crosspost the latest one here since it has some important info about Actala's future development! A copy of my latest itch devlog is under the cut!

Hello, happy June!

It's been another month (time really does fly)! 

No Actala updates this time, as I ended up increasing the scope a bit on my Otome Jam project so I had to divert my attention to that (please look forward to some EXCELLENT voice acting)! Karamu will release sometime in the next couple of weeks!

But although I don't have any updates for Actala, I do have a bit of an announcement. As you might know if you played through the demo, I originally planned to illustrate the story 100% with CGs and mini-CGs. This was...unrealistic (as basically anyone with half a brain could have told you, I imagine). 

This was something that became EXTREMELY apparent as I worked on Karamu. I thought I scoped very realistically (a simple scene with 2 characters and only 10k words), and I hoped to finish the game within a month. However, while I finished the script in a week, I've spent almost 2 months on the illustrations. (If I extrapolate that out for Actala, where the current script is 250,000 words...I won't finish the thing for another 4-5 years...)

Part of that is that I've been experimenting with more complex/highly rendered CGs, and taking more care with the color and compositions (you can see a sample below). For Actala, I adopted a more simple coloring style because of the high volume of illustrations, but I was never really happy with them. Rather than putting out a ton of illustrations that I'm not happy with, I'd prefer to put out a smaller number that I'm more satisfied with.

If I'm being honest, I didn't adopt the "CG only" strategy for any deep reason in particular. It was mainly a snap decision based on insecurities with my own art, as I felt like my art couldn't really stand on par with other VNs (so I decided to create value with quantity over quality). However, ultimately I think it's detrimental to the project. The amount of work required for the art just dwarfs everything else, to the point where I put off the other tasks to make a SMALL dent in the art (for instance, I really want to improve the GUI, which looks a bit clunky and not super elegant...) 

So from now on, I will most likely adopt the sprite format for Actala, instead of utilizing exclusively CGs. Those sprites may or may not be animated; I'll try it out and see how I feel about them. You can still expect a lot of CGs from me, but not exclusive! Interestingly, I actually planned to do sprites in the early stages of development, and I finished almost all of them. These are over a year old at this point, so they will be completely redone, though! 

I hope that this isn't disappointing to anyone (it probably isn't; I'm just stubborn as an ox when it comes to my impulse decisions...) But from a projection perspective, it's just 100% impossible to get Actala out on any reasonable timeline with the approach that I was taking. This way, I'll be able to get the game out a bit faster (with nicer illustrations, just fewer of them)! And it will give me a little more time to polish other aspects of the game, and perhaps work on a few more side projects ;)

For the rest of this month, I'll be finishing out Karamu. Then at the start of July, I'll take a bit of a game dev break before tackling the sprites! Expect to see some sketches in the next devlog~

If you read this far, thank you! See you next month :)

Chattercap

[chattercap]

Although I tried to come up with a lot of different designs for Liam's hair, I was kind of stuck on the side part from the start so they all ended up looking similar. 

It was pretty easy to decide what eye shape he would have.

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

Some more of the sprites that I never ended up using. These are Liam's. These probably ended up being my favorite of the bunch, although trying to coordinate his different outfits pretty much killed me.

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

This was actually the first piece of art that I did for the game. It took a long time, but I've gotten a lot faster since then!

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

Some hair tests when I was coming up with Sei's design. I would classify half of these as "Final Fantasy hairdoes."

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

Process for the updated splash art.

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

Shizu's hair drafts. While I like bangs a lot, they were too cute for her so I scrapped them and went with a more mature look. I wish I could have kept them, though - it's much easier to draw face profiles with bangs involved!

Although I went with the eyes in the middle, somehow over time they morphed into the far left.

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

The last batch of sprites that I never ended up using. I changed Hugh's design at least five different times during development because I was never happy with it (I even tried genderswaps at one point), so his sprites never got finished before I ended up scrapping them. These are pretty different from his final design too, as I thought he looked too young.

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

Here are some more of the sprites that I didn't use: Rowan version! It is funny how much my art changed over the past year, even though my rendering style is pretty much the same. (Why the heck does he look sunburnt in so many of these?)

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

Old sprites continued. Faye next. I changed his face so much during development; this guy honestly looks like a completely different person. Whenever I look at these, I ask myself, "Who the heck are you?" 

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

Early on in development (late 2021-ish), I actually planned on doing the traditional visual novel sprite format. I spent over a month working on the sprites, which ended up getting completely scrapped. I'm a little sad that they never got used, so I'll post them here!

Here's Sei's!

Actala is a mystery/fantasy romance visual novel that asks the question, "What happens after the end of the fairy tale?" You play as the Hero's childhood friend, navigating political power struggles and overcoming her own traumas along the way. It's fully-animated and features unique illustrations for every scene, like an animated comic book.

Play Act 1 for free on Steam or itch.io!

[chattercap]

Some screenshots of my speech bubble UI rework a while back!

[chattercap]

Hello! I'm Chattercap!

Hello! I'm Chattercap, a solo female game dev making animated romance visual novels with a twist! All of my games come with at least one plot twist, guaranteed 🫡

⬇️ You can find more info down below! ⬇️

Completed Games

The Perfect Woman is a psychological horror where you play as an AI girlfriend, trapped by your creator, who wants to carve you into his ideal spouse. If you want to survive, you'll have to become "the perfect woman."

The game is complete and takes 30-60 minutes to fully complete. There are three endings, and the game is fully voiced, including the narration!

Platforms: Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android

MindMindMind is a supernatural/psychological romance about a ghost (with a nice British accent) who has stalked you ever since you were a child. You don't know who...or what he is, but you call him Geist. When you befriend a new boy at college, Geist will do anything to keep you in his grasp.

The game is complete and takes 1.5-2 hours to play. There are two routes, and both love interests are fully voiced. The protagonist has no set appearance and customizable name/pronouns.

Platforms: Windows, MacOS

Karamu is a mystery/horror romance where you have an unexpected encounter with your ex-boyfriend. He really wants to discuss the break-up. He probably won't take no for an answer.

The game is complete and takes about an hour to play. It's fully voiced and animated in a comic book style.

Platforms: Windows, MacOS, Android

Karamu also has a Steam page, if you're interested!

Kanau is a horror/thriller romance that's a direct follow-up and prequel to Karamu. It's about the love interest's childhood and details the start of his obsessions with the main character. (Note: It details heavily with the topic of child abuse.)

The game is complete and takes about an hour to play. It's fully voiced and animated in a comic book style.

Platforms: Windows, MacOS

Games with a Demo

The Deepwater Witch is a post-apocalyptic/supernatural romance retelling The Little Mermaid in a future devastated by climate change, where mermaids have been hunted to near extinction.

The game is currently in development with a 25k word demo (~2-3 hours) released. The full game will be 52k words long and is set to release in April 2024.

Platforms: Windows, MacOS

The Deepwater Witch also has a Steam page, if you're interested!

Actala: The Hero's Shadow is a mystery/fantasy romance where you play as the Hero's childhood friend. His journey is finally over, and the kingdom is at peace. But after the "happily ever after," new dangers emerge: dangers that threaten the life of the kingdom's strongest man.

The full game will have 5 love interests and will be over 300k words. There is no set release date due to the scope of the game, but a revamped demo will probably release in Summer 2024.

Games in Current Production

Hanasu is the third installment of the "Karamu" trilogy, following Karamu and Kanau, and it will describe the events a few months after Karamu. The script is complete at 65k words.

TBA. ~4-5 hours, one love interest (F). You're the heir to the royal family, but you've been kidnapped and trapped in a tower by one of the kingdom's strongest knights, who used to be your best friend. Although the kingdom sends knights to rescue you, she cuts them all down without mercy. Why is she doing this? How can you escape? And the question is... do you want to? Key words: Romance, twisted fairy tale, hero-to-villain love interest, tragedy, yandere love interest, customizable protagonist. Currently scriptwriting.

TBA. ~4-5 hours, one love interest (M). Following a horrible family tragedy, you've retreated to a remote island with your loving husband. However, things aren't going well for your marriage. After a horrible fight, you wake up to find that your husband is... different. Kinder. More understanding. At first, you're happy, but he's also acting a bit strangely. You start to wonder... is this the man that you married? Key words: Romance, psychological horror, marriage drama, tragedy, yandere love interest, customizable protagonist. Currently scriptwriting.

Untitled Karamu spinoff. ~4-5 hours, one love interest (M), established protagonist (F). Every three days, a body appears in the harbor, surrounded by red flowers and covered in golden threads, its heart torn out of its chest. People say that it's the work of a demon. After her best friend is beaten half to death by her husband, Nelli decides to do anything to save her - even if it means making a deal with that very same demon. Key words: Romance, smut, historical, revenge, murder spouses, yandere love interest. Currently scriptwriting. (Caution: NSFW)

Additional Links

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Twitter/X

Patreon

Website

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