Naive Sprites

Thanks for your question.  When we first started working on the game, the market wasn’t as full of Alice content as it is now.  We knew of a few things that had already come out, and that there were a bunch of manga/anime, a movie sequel, and a few visual novels were on the horizon but we did not expect the sheer amount of Alice content that came out within our development period.  However, one thing that we found common in these stories is that number of them take the Alice stories and run with them, making the setting and characters even more outlandish than they were in the original stories.

When we came up with A Very Important Date, we wanted to normalize the Wonderland universe, while still having just a few nonsensical/fantasy elements to spice it up.  Our cast only shares a few traits from their Carroll counterparts as does the world where much of the story takes place. The elements and references we incorporated into A Very Important Date from the Alice stories are almost never over the top, the most prominent being Alison’s and the café’s names, and our callbacks to the books never come at expense of our story itself.  We feel that because of our loose ties to the Alice stories, anyone could pick up A Very Important Date and enjoy it, from fans of that series to those that usually avoid it entirely.

Thank you, we’re happy to hear that!  To answer your question, since A Very Important Date will be released episodically by character we’re releasing each character as separate DLC on Steam.  Steam makes providing free downloads for backers pretty easy by giving developers access to Steam Keys that they can give out.  That’s great for Steam, but that’s not something we can promise would be doable for our mobile releases.  The equivalent of DLC on mobiles would be in-app purchases.  Well, Apple doesn’t allow for Promo codes for in-app purchases, so we wouldn’t be able to give out free codes that way.  Android only allows a certain amount of Promo codes per quarter and by not knowing how many backers we’ll have, we didn’t want to promise something that could potentially make some backers have to wait an entire quarter just to play the final release.  That just didn’t seem fair.

Now, we’re going to try to implement our own coding system into our game with an account system.  But since we don’t know if this will work, we don’t want to promise anything.  If we’re able to get this to work for our backers, we’ll let backers pick between Steam, iOS, and Google Play for their rewards.

If we are unable implement this system, this is what the Mobile 2-Day sale is for.  What if the system works?  What happens with this stretch goal?  We’ll do a poll of feasible ideas and then do a backer only vote.  This could be anything from adding another character to our suitors to adding a new reward item for backers at certain levels.

Justin V., Editor, Co-Writer, GUI Artist, and Background Concept Artist Most fun?  Depends on the context, really.  

If we’re talking most fun writing individual lines of dialogue, then I would say it’s a toss up because each character has their own tics and idiosyncrasies that set them apart.  I like having to write overly verbose sentences for Gwyn and Emil.  I like having to make up innuendo for Rory.  I like having to write out Sven’s panicked lines where his mouth can’t quite keep up with his stream-of-consciousness.  I like having to write more grounded lines for Harlan, Alison, and Julianna.  I like the challenge that comes with writing for the twins, although they can be very time consuming when their together.  They all have their quirks that appeal to me, but the most fun I had with dialogue has definitely involved Rory’s long con jokes and Emil’s long-winded insults.

If we’re talking about which character’s story I had the most fun writing so far, well, that’s difficult to answer since I haven’t got to Sven, the twins, or Julianna’s stories yet.  Gwyn and Emil were fine, Rory has been a problem, but Harlan has definitely been my favorite.  The mediator dynamic he has between everyone, the close ties he has with Gwyn, the bond he has with his croquet teammate, and the connection he has with his brothers makes him such a well rounded character for me.  Seeing him overwhelmed with all of the different aspects of his life, while he tries to hold onto his happy Harlan facade made the character more appealing to me than I anticipated.  I expected to hate writing for him, but he has easily been my favorite.

Noelle Hyzy, Project Director and Lead WriterLooks like Justin and I both agree on this topic.  We love our characters for different reasons, but we have the most fun writing lines for Rory and Emil.

Both of these character types were new territories for me as a writer.  I think part of the reason why Rory was fun to write for as a character was because of the jokes Justin and I would make while we were working and editing him.  We would just slip in-character Rory styled innuendo into the scripts to see if the other would notice. These jokes would often find their way into the finished scripts because they worked so well.  I think Emil might need to go over the sexual harassment policies with us, lol.  

New territory is an understatement for Emil’s character for me.  I had never written anything like him before, but writing for Emil and Alison in Emil’s story allowed me to tap into some pent up anger that I didn’t know I had.  Somehow, writing for Emil was like therapy, which seems oxymoronic to say when you think about it.  But once that unknown anger was gone, it became easier to write his lines because I now understood that mindset.  Now Emil’s little outbursts are more funny to me, especially when put against the reactions from the other characters. After writing for them for this long, I’ve found that Emil and Rory tend to have stronger reactions to the other characters more so than anyone else (so far), with Rory being prone to make a joke and Emil quick to fly off the handle and berate someone.The most fun I had writing for a character’s overall story is pretty hard for me to decide.  Gwyn was the first route I route for, so I feel his has a special place in my heart because of that.  He’s the kind, sweet character that I usually write, but I also liked how his story developed as I got farther through it.  His story also allowed me to develop the others and their backgrounds and the history of Mimsboro.  So Gwyn’s really pretty important to me, but Emil’s story has a special place in my heart.  Again, he was a foreign concept to me, and I even hated the character at first, but the challenge in writing him made him such a fun character.  His story even contains my favorite piece of dialogue in the game.  So it’s impossible to choose, I love them all, but Emil and Gwyn have been my favorite routes to write… at least thus far.Don’t forget to enter in our giveaway on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook!

@furude, Background Artist I wanted to be chemist when I were 5!

@darkenmarr, Sprite and CG ArtistI wanted to be an astronaut flying through space on a magical unicorn. XD

Justin V., Editor, Co-Writer, GUI Artist, and Background Concept ArtistI have said on record that I wanted to be either a Yoshi or a screwdriver when I grew up.  I’m sorry to say that I never became a fictional, long-tongued, multicolored dinosaur or a screw turning device.  A real dream job wasn’t really something that I thought about as a kid.

Noelle Hyzy, Project Director and Lead Writer Mine is rather boring.  I wanted to be an author.  Well, at five years old I probably said I wanted to tell stories or be a storyteller or something like that.  It’s safe to say that that dream NEVER changed.  I didn’t want to just write stories, I wanted to tell them in any medium that I could.  Of course, my parents wanted me to be realistic, so I decided to take business.  Now… here I am, still wanting to tell stories, but using some of the business skills I’m picking up from college to help along the way.

Don’t forget to enter in our giveaway on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook!

This is a question that we get asked quite often and we’ve definitely toyed around with the idea before.  However, because of our current budget and how large our game is (speaking in terms of both word count and file size), we currently don’t think it’ll be possible.  I don’t think we could do it for the main routes due to the number of characters we would need voices for and we would want all lines voiced to add the player’s immersion.  Some visual novels only voice a set few lines here and there, and that works for many of them, but we would prefer to have all of our lines voiced or none of them and at this current point, that seems like an impossibility.  Since we’re also updating episodically, getting certain character’s voice actors back to voice more stories could prove to be another complication.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we’ve fully ruled out the idea of having voices in the game.  Personally, I would love to hear Rory and Emil bickering, Harlan’s laugh, and Sven quietly stuttering his way through an explanation, but voices bring a whole new set of expenses that we’re just not capable of working with currently.  But if our Kickstarter showing somehow takes the game’s budget to far unexpected levels, we would definitely put it at the top of the list for considerations.

Noelle, here!

There have been a number of things that have affected development.

Writing-wise, I know that Rory has been a problem lately.  His story has been rewritten/restructured three times at this point.  With the length of time Gwyn and Emil took to write and how easy it is to write Harlan’s story, we figured Rory would be a pushover, but of course not.  He’s Rory, so he has to be a problem.  If he were real, I’d think he’d take pride in that.

I’m pretty sure @darkenmarr will agree with me on this next one… the sprites can be incredibly annoying to get right.  When we figured out how many sprite poses and expressions we would need for just Gwyn alone, we kind of freaked out.  Hat off facing forward with pouty face, hat off facing right with laughing face, hat on duster off facing down thinking pose… there were just so many different poses that we’d need, so we’re re-working our sprites to make it easier on @darkenmarr while still providing good quality to our fans.

Occasionally the coding gods are also pretty spiteful.  There have been so many times that we think we have everything working right, but then some unexpected bug rears its pointed pincers.  Or worse, they decide to bring a bunch of their friends and the game become some sort of bug party.

However, I think all of these can be summed up as one simple concept: we misjudge how long certain tasks will take when we assign them or take them on.  Allow too much time for things and we’re delayed, speed things up too much and we’re rushed.  Rushing development will (nearly) always bring about subpar work, and we have seen that happen to too many games and to too many developers.  So, outside of life situations getting in the way, balancing on that thin line between rushing and dawdling is easily the hardest part behind the scenes of A Very Important Date.Also to our wonderful fans, stay tune for a giveaway announcement very soon!

@furude, Background ArtistEither jazzy cafe songs or the more upbeat one (read: EDM XD).

@darkenmarr, Sprite and CG ArtistI listen to soundtracks, K-Pop, and Epic network music, you can find a few good playlists on YouTube.  LAUV and OLWIK are some of my favorites.

Justin V., Editor, Co-Writer, GUI Artist, and Background Concept ArtistMusic, eh?  If I want to be productive, music doesn’t help me, but I will say I’m a punk at heart.  From early punk to pop punk to hardcore, it doesn’t matter, but it distracts me too much.  Anymore I use various let’s plays or TV shows as background noise.

Most recent things played in the background while I worked: Achievement Hunter, Game Grumps, PBG, Continue?, Funhaus, Projared, Brutalmoose, Critical Role, RLM, Scrubs, Simpsons, British panel shows, and MST3K.

Noelle Hyzy, Project Director and Lead WriterListening to music while working is a relatively new thing for me.  I would always pay too much attention to the music and not enough on what I’m actually supposed to be doing, but that seems to have changed now.  Lately I’ve been listening to Aruvn’s covers and One OK Rock on Youtube or any one of my Pandora stations, like Hurts, Panic at the Disco, +44, Gotye, X Ambassadors, Poets of the Fall, Digital Daggers, or Billy Joel.  I have a pretty broad taste in music, but if I listen to anything while wanting to be super productive it’s usually fast paced and upbeat or absolutely nothing at all.

Hello!  Noelle here.

Well, I would say a little from column A and a little bit of column B on this.  Right now, our main focus is definitely A Very Important Date and because it’s an episodic game we’ll be working on its stories for some time.  There’s also the issue of allotting enough time to focus on the creation of another entire story.  I’m still going through college (about to finish my Associate’s, and then onward to my Bachelor’s) and acting as a director and writer of one game on top of that already takes up almost all of my time.However, that doesn’t mean I don’t hope to release more otome or visual novel games at some point.  I have ideas for new stories constantly bouncing around in my head.  In the small amounts of downtime I have, I’ve been writing notes for possible future stories.  They’re still in the earliest of story planning stages but they do exist.  From the notes I already have, I can say that the next otome we will do will be a common route, not episodic like A Very Important Date.  This way we can test out a different style of visual novel and allow for a much more choice driven experience.