Moe Muffins Can Go Die, K Thx

So I'm currently playing "Da Capo" courtesy of MangaGamer. I enjoyed the demo enough to want to buy a copy during their big sale. It has some likable characters, my favorites being Mako, Moe and Nemu. Kotori is also interesting. But this girl up here drives me BONKERS.

She's annoying, to put it bluntly. Also the fact that she looks like she's twelve freaks me out even if it's a plot point. Sakura shows up to harass the hero and I'm supposed to find this somehow endearing? Luckily if you manage to avoid her you see very little of this character after the beginning of the game.

I'll tell you one archetype you'll never see in a game I make: the moe-blob. That is, the loli, wide-eyed, annoying uber kawaii baby-doll of a girl. I personally HATE these types of girls, and while I know Japanese VNs are full of them, I just can't stand all the "desus" and "Uwaaaahhs!".

Da Capo has a few characters who do dangle close to the moe-blob edge. I mean, they're all pretty wide-eyed and have been known to make cute, uncalled for noises at times. But at least Nemu has a sense of responsibility that's very likable and anti-moe-blob and Moe's charming if only for her narcolepsy.

I have no problem with a younger character. I have no problem with a cute or ditsy character. But a character who literally behaves closer to a newborn kitten than to a human being? No thank you. I like my women with little to no fluff brain, thanks so much.

What's Attractive Anyway?

Guys.

I'm coming out.

I, Sammy, am a heterosexual female.

Now if you want to go and clicky that little "x" box right up there on your browser or de-follow me or something, I'd completely understand. Just know that your bigotry is not appreciated by the world at large and I don't need your acceptance to love myself. I know that maybe reading the blog of a straight girl who writes games for straight guys might make you uncomfortable. But I hope you can look beyond who I am as a person and see me for my ideas.

All joking aside, it sometimes weirds me out how much I enjoy playing and writing bishojo games despite being a straight lady. I guess the romance novel aspect of it just really hits home for me.

Don't kid yourself, I enjoy playing bishojo games, but hot damn do I LOVE playing Otome games. For ALL the wrong reasons. Read: 1.) the guys are hot, 2.) the guys are hot, 3.) Hot damn that's some pretty art and 4.) the guys are hot.

Now don't get me wrong, I can tell a bad Otome game just as easily as I can call out a bad bishojo game. And I hate suffering through either. But my libido just gets to me when playing super cute games about adorable heroines getting swept up by their prince charmings (or Prince Meganes, as I happen to often lean towards. =3=)

Still, Project "O" is an otome project, while Project "G" is bishojo. (Project G is my first title and is further along at this point). Project "O" isn't necessarily any easier to write than Project G was. Why is that? Shouldn't my perspective as a straight girl make it easy for me to develop some super likable guys that I just know will make girls' heads spin?

Yes and no. There are certain qualities about various characters that certain women find attractive and others consider a total turn-off. For instance, in Yo-Jin-Bo, a bunch of fans went crazy over little Yo, the youngest character in the game. I found Yo to be adorable, but not necessarily hot stuff. His ending, for me was "meh" at best.

So how do I approach making a game where I want each character to appeal to the player? Surely, I can start by making them all appeal to me in some way. But what about diversity? I'm certainly not the final word on what makes any person attractive, female or male. How can I make sure that I'm not just making a cast that appeals to me and people like me?

Well, I can of course pull from the tropes. They're tropes for a reason - they work. And to a certain extent, I've done that. But to make my characters more human, I've fleshed them out more, made them more down-to-earth, a bit more likable. I've also made sure to include characters who may not be super-OMG-hotstuff at first, but perhaps will grow on the player. Each guy is going to be super cute, don't get me wrong. But I want there to be a serious discrepancy in personality. I don't want carbon copies of my favorite Otome character, or anyone's favorite otome character for that matter.

I don't want to rely exclusively on the tropes and stereotypes because I don't want my player to write off my characters as "oh, the tsundere" or "oh, the tortured type" or "oh, the prince". That's not doing them justice. And it might be fun to play a game with your favorite guy in it once again (oh, Megane-sama), but that won't leave an impression - that won't make someone care.

More Writing, Project O

Been a while since my last update. School's been killing me, but I'm currently on spring break, so I think a blog update is in order.

I've been steadily chipping away at my latest project, codenamed "Project O" for now. After making major cuts to the script, I've now got a much more manageable way of going about things and actually have an end in sight. Well, not in sight exactly, but it's on the horizon. At least I know it exists.

"Project O" is comprised of five chapters and an individualized sixth chapter depending on the character you end up with. It's possible to not get a chapter six at all, if you play all the wrong cards. No matter how much you try to screw up your choices along the way, you will get to Chapter Five at least. With a game of this length, I really want to reward my player with an ending of some substance. I hate putting in a dozen hours on a dating sim and getting "too bad you died" at the end of it because I didn't pick the right lunch option back at the beginning of the game.

Right now, I'm in the middle of Chapter Three. Chapter Three has five sections, I just finished the second section and am now moving on to the third. Chapter Three is definitely the longest chapter - Chapters Four and Five don't hold a candle to it in terms of length.

So once I finish up Chapter Three the end really will be in sight.

The problem with each chapter is that there is literally hours of content that the player will not see on a first playthrough. So while there's lots of writing, the actual play time is a fraction of what I've written. I'd like to think that's a good thing in terms of replayability. I love dating sims that have tons of alternative content. That way I can really shape my own experience - my game would be entirely different from someone elses' depending on which character(s) I pursue.

Still, it's a pain in the butt for the writer!

Oh well, Project O is going strong. Hopefully edits on Project G, my first game, will be finished soon so I can move forward on that.

Thanks for the support everyone!

So...Eroge in Academia?

So besides working on my own Ren'Ai games as strictly a hobby, I've also managed to bring them in to my academics.

I'm developing a performance piece (I'm a theater student) that uses Eroge/Ren'Ai games as an element. I won't bore you with the details.

But hey - here are some pretties in progress.

BTW - I SERIOUSLY need an actual version of Paint Tool Sai. I love this thing, but the trial only lasts 31 days. ;_; $57... Well, my birthday's coming up.

This is a picture of one of my actresses as a Ren'ai game character. ^^ She thinks it's awesome, I'm really excited for how it's going to turn out. She really looks like she could belong in any Ren'ai game!

Killing Babies

Not literally, of course. I mean making cuts and edits.

Someone once said that to be a writer, you have to be willing to kill your children. This weekend is definitely proof of that.

I'm working on a project - the script reached 406 pages (the page count of my last project) and was close to 1/3 completed. This, I decided, was unacceptably long. With a page count of 1200 (as would've been the projected final product) the logistics of creating such a monster would be a nightmare. Not to mention the undeniable reality that the game would just be too damn long for anyone to actually sit and read all the way through. I'm not J.K. Rowling - I'm not sure I could get my fans to sit through an 800 page novel.

So after deciding last night that the script was too long, I went about making cuts this morning. Cutting is a depressing process, let me tell you. How many hours of work am I stripping away? How many great pieces of dialogue? There were scenes that I would've rather died than parted with... But then I realized they didn't add to the story I really wanted to tell, so they had to go.

I've found a much more quick and manageable way of writing the rest of the game. I'm hoping that with these cuts I'll get down to around 275 pages before continuing. (I know! Cutting over 125 pages? It's scary). I hope the rest will go much smoother/quicker.

Heh. I guess I could always shove a "deleted scenes" section in the extras of my game. There's some really cute stuff that I'm sad had to go.

Oh well - off to kill more babies.

A. R. T.

Art.

Let's face it - without visuals, you ain't got much of a visual novel, now do you?

Being a one-woman studio, I provide all the art for my projects as well as doing all the writing. And coding, and designing, etc...

For my thirteenth birthday my parents bought me a sketchbook - the Strathmore Recycled Paper Series, size 9x12, retail value $11.75 at most art stores. I now have nineteen of those sketchbooks piled under my computer desk at home; one with a proud "20" sharpied on the front cover is sitting next to me. (And yes, it's the exact same brand and size! Hey, you know what they say: if it ain't broke...)

Along with my writing, art has been one of my most passionate hobbies for a long time. I sketch probably every day and have spent years developing my style. My greatest influences have probably been Yusuke Murata (Eyeshield 21) and most recently the artist for the Otome Game Starry Sky, who uses a pen name that I haven't found out.

I've been drawing for nearly five years, but I've only seriously begun practice in the art of digital coloring this past year. My current weapon of choice is Paint Tool Sai. It's sorta fabulous. :3

These past few days have been very serious studies for me in terms of developing techniques and style for my CGing. I'm still so all over the place when it comes to my style and what I really want to achieve.
That's something I threw together while practicing. Not my most recent - but I'm pretty happy with it. (As for who he is...well, that may be revealed a bit down the road. ^_~)

When it comes to art, I feel like I'm at that frustrating "not quite pro" quality. In terms of my drawings, my coloring, everything. I'm trying my hardest, but it never seems to achieve the beautiful quality of pro artists. I guess I can hack this up to lack of experience and practice.

So I'll keep working! I have a goal of uploading a new piece to my devArt every three weeks (I'm a busy college student, so as much as I'll try to keep up with this, it may eventually fall by the wayside.) Practice makes perfect, as the so overused phrase seems to go! Wish me luck!

These Impossible(?) Projects

So I'll be honest with you all. I've been a fan of Visual Novels since I was fifteen years old. I'm eighteen now. I discovered the OELVN community right before my sixteenth birthday and, of course, set to writing my own game.

I'll tell you this - that game got finished being written in July of last year. That's right - July 2009.

Granted, I took a large break in between there to apply to college and focus on graduating. Other things became more important for awhile. There was probably a whole year there where I did absolutely no writing on my game. It stayed in the back of my mind as one of those "I'll finish that one day" projects. I'm actually a bit proud of myself for really jumping on it in 2009 and writing until it was finished. This was no tiny project either - we're talking a 400 page Microsoft Word document of just script. This is an accomplishment.

Still, I realize that a script does not make a game. There's still plenty of stuff to be done, including but not limited to coding, art, developing the UI and more.

But I'm convinced that the hardest, most arduous part of the Visual Novel development process is the writing. Making yourself sit down and write out all that script takes a lot of discipline. And it's a easy thing to let a story lose its steam.

I used to keep my project entirely secret. Considering I consider Magical Girl Studios nothing but a hobby studio, I really didn't want outside pressure for me to finish and release my game. But showing my script to my dear friend/editor really has inspired me to pursue this hobby until I have a finished product.

The point of Magical Girl Studios is to make quality free Visual Novels for old fans to enjoy and new fans to discover. I want to bring this still rather niche genre to a larger community. And the only way I'm going to do that is with a polished final product. So I guess I've still got a lot of work to do!

These projects are hardly impossible. Just overwhelming. This is still a hobby - a side project in comparison to my real life which requires far much more focus and effort. I'm going to keep going at it as a hobby - something I love.