3rd Birthday!  Thank You, Everyone!

Hello all you wonderful people!

Yesterday marked the third year since I started writing A Very Important Date!

There have been a number of highs within this last year.  We’ve picked up the amazingly talented Geoff Moore as our composer, who has already created nearly half of our soundtrack!  Through @darkenmarr, we made the steps to move our sprites to Live2D!  Our background artists created over 20 backgrounds!  Through the hard work of our programmers, we got our visual novel’s engine to run smoothly!  Justin, Darkenmarr, and I visited our first conventions under the Naïve Sprites name!  We even dipped our toes into Kickstarter!

But with the highs come the inevitable lows.  This past year has been a really rough one for a lot of our team members.  We’ve lost loved ones, new health situations have cropped up, and other unavoidable life events have affected the team, and these have been incredibly difficult for us.  But from those we persevere.  We press on.  We’re still moving forward as best as we can.

One of the main reasons for pressing forward is because of all of you.  When I say that you’re wonderful people in my posts, it’s not just because I’m trying to make an Alice in Wonderland styled turn of phrase.  It’s because that’s what all of you are; wonderful, amazing, understanding individuals that I cannot thank enough.  Thank all of you for sticking with us, cheering us on, giving us feedback, sharing our links, and most of all, for giving this little upstart crew a try.

Right now, after adding in the money from A-kon to Kickstarter, we’re sitting at 65% of our goal.  Words cannot express how happy I am to be at this point.  I want to extend my gratitude to my team, my boyfriend, my friends, my family, and all of our fans and backers for getting us to this point as we turn our eyes to the next year.

We would like to show everyone our promotional video that was made by Sakura Hughes.  We would like to thank her for her hard work.  She’s great to work with and we really appreciate her help! We also want to remind everyone that our giveaway is still going on and ends this Friday night at 11:59 PM EST.  You can find our giveaway here.

Second Birthday and Thank You Giveaway

It's been so hectic the last few days with game work that we (Justin and Noelle) miss the opportunity to write and post this on the appropriate day, but on June 21st A Very Important Date celebrated its second birthday!  

Within this last year we've had many ups and downs, some setbacks, but so many incredible strides forward.  During this last year, we’ve also picked up some invaluable team members like our Character Artist @darkenmarr, our Background Artist Lordless, and our Programmers IchBinJager and our newest addition, @wifiwolf.  Without their programming, A Very Important Date would still be just an idea and not the beautiful looking game that it’s shaping itself to be.  The Art Department has given us such gorgeous work that the strange town of Mimsboro feels like a world unto itself, with amazing characters and a life all its own.  And those that have been on the team since the first year, like @kooriesque and @furude, we wouldn’t be where we are without your phenomenal work and we thank you for hanging around since the early stages.  Even those that have moved on from Naïve Sprites, we thank you for all the contributions you made to our team during your stay.  Working on the game with these remarkably talented people has been and will continue to be a great experience for us.

But even with every team members’ hard work, our game wouldn’t be where it is today without each and every one of you wonderful fans.  New fans and ever vigilant fans alike, we appreciate all of you for following us and making this a worthwhile experience.  Thank you for being with us through the development of our game. And to mark two years and 200+ followers, we are doing our Second Very Important Giveaway!  This time we will have 3 different winners!  The prize levels are:

You will be able to pick which of the prints and charms you want.  Links below provide images of the charms and prints we’ll be giving away.

Chibi Charms Chibi Dessert Charms Chibi Dessert Prints

RULES

Thank you all for a wonderful two years!

Thank you!

              It’s been about a year since I started writing for A Very Important Date.  At first I was writing for fun and dreaming about it becoming a game while talking with kooriesque and I would prattle off story ideas to my boyfriend, who would give me a Gladiator style thumbs up or thumbs down.  About two months after coming up with the main idea for the story, I met bloatedbunny on a Voltage fan group where she had asked if anyone wanted to make an otome game.  Though I was still in the preliminary stages at that point, otome game creation was my goal, so we joined forces and began to plot things.  Our group hit some bumps throughout the year, but things have been smoothing out with our new team additions: papersweetsatelier, furude, and Gabriel.  I really appreciate my team and I'm very happy to be working with them.               I want to thank everyone that has helped read and review some of the writing, helped with ideas, and listened to me babble about character and story ideas.  You all have helped me tremendously over the year and some of your ideas have shaped A Very Important Date's plot and characters.  Thank you so much!               I also want to extend gratitude to our fans/followers.  I know that we're still in the early stages and that we may have never communicated with each other, but I do appreciate what you guys do for us.  I may have originally started this project for myself, but now I want to really create something entertaining that people will enjoy reading.  If it wasn’t for you guys following, liking, and reblogging our stuff, I don’t know if I would be able to keep going.  With this being our first project, to know that you guys are here supporting it and looking forward to something we are creating, means so much to me and keeps me going.               Last, my loving boyfriend… I know that I annoy the heck out of you the most with this project.  You’ve been there since the beginning and got tangled into the editing.  Then, you eventually got pulled into the art department.  Then, when I needed help, you took on a co-writing credit.  You did all of this and more while taking care of me, helping me with school, and going to art school yourself.  We fight and bicker a lot over the stupidest things, game-related or not, but I think this has brought us closer together.  I don’t know where I would be without you.  Thank you for everything you do and for joining me on this crazy, annoying, and lengthy adventure.                Again, thank you, everyone!                Special thanks to: nazhuka, zalanor, cammieluvsotome, ishiphotmen, papersweetsatelier, kooriesque, furude, bloatedbunny, otomesweetheart, Tamera, Justin V, Gabriel, Tan, Casey W, Jason E, Mick H, Adam C, Doc W, Shannon H, and my parents ^_^