(Itch purchases come with Steam keys, and the site is much more small-developer-friendly, so please consider buying it there!)
Because We’re Here ~Act II~ follows Elfriede through the next few months of the First Lassallian War, and a large amount of the story takes place in the trenches this time around. Against the backdrop of an upcoming spring offensive, she meets several new characters (many of whom are from ‘enemy’ nations) and struggles with the emotional fallout of Act I’s events.
I hope you enjoy it. A lot of love and care and dedication and anxiety has gone into Act II! It’s full of twists and turns, and it’s the longest act by far at 220k words~
REMINDER: Act I is also 45% off at the moment on [Itch.io] and
[Steam]! What better time to dive into the First Lassallian War and get started on this sprawling, narrative-driven trench opera?
Because We’re Here ~Mohnblume und Blauerose~ is a
story-driven otome dating sim in an unforgiving First World War-inspired
conflict. It’s an episodic visual novel in four acts.
Synopsis
1915, Wesslinger National Calendar. The Great War rages on.
As
neurotic Postal Corps volunteer Elfriede Rauss, you walk the trenches
with the men of a lost generation. And amidst the chaos and brutality of
the front lines, you encounter an obstacle that you are absolutely and
categorically not prepared for: love.
However. Love can be a difficult thing to hold on to at the best of times. And these are not the best of times…
Watch The Breadwinner, and appreciate the film for what it is: This is a beautiful film directed by a woman, executive produced by a woman, voiced by Afghans, and about Afghan women and their experiences.
The game contains 4,120 dialogue blocks, containing 73,336 words and 380,886
characters, for an average of 17.8 words and 92 characters per block.
The game contains 99 menus, 131 images, and 73 screens.
As you can see, not much has been done on the writing front, other than
revising some old dialog, but I did manage to have a major breakthrough
in regards to coding. Had to do a bit of research but I think I’ve found
a way to code the sprites that will go much smoothly from how I was
doing it before. Outfits are easy to change and I don’t have to make
multiple variations of the same conversations between characters to
accommodate seasonal clothes. Only thing that’s missing is the ability
to have different time of day sprite tints to match the backgrounds but
I’m sure I can figure that out.
So now I’m in the process of switching out my old character code for the
new one. Which is taking a while to do. I have to go back and export
each characters’ eyes, eyebrows, mouth, clothing and pose changes from
Photoshop then set up the new changes in Ren'py. So far I’ve got Abby,
Willow, Orion, Remy and Kristian switched over to the new coding style
and imported into the game. To sped along the coding process I’m also
making these handy expression cheat sheets so I don’t have to constantly
look at the broken down sprite files to figure out what each variation
looks like.
One thing I’m thinking of adding is having the sprite eyes blink and
having emotions next to the character appear when they have a
particularly strong reaction to what you say. Maybe not for all the cast
in the game, but at least the major ones since they’re seen most often.
Here’s an example of two emotions, disgust and excitement.
It’s been a while since I’ve made an update to Clearwater Crossing but wanted everyone to know that the game is still in development, but progress is slow going.
This past year has been full of changes. Had a baby via c-section a few
months ago. So not only am I learning how to be a first time mom but
also healing up from yet another surgery. So needless to say, I’ve had
quite a bit on my plate lately! I’ve been dedicating most of my VN
making time to trying to finish up my other two games which are much
closer to being done that this one so progress hasn’t been as steady as
I’d like. But progress is being made!
Q:Just wanted to thank you for the incredible game that is merman's captive! I downloaded it when you first released and have replayed it several times since. It's a great game and I look forward to playing Korcha's route whenever you have time to finish it. You're awesome!
Anonymous
Awww, thanks so much! It makes me happy to hear how people enjoyed the game, even though it’s not completely done. I just sent everything I have off to my co-writer so hopefully Korcha’s route will be finished soon. While that’s being worked on I can finally get to doing the last few CGs missing from both routes.
Q:Are you still working on Clearwater Crossing? If so, can you update lemmasoft forums to show how far you have gotten so far? Even if it's very minimal.
Anonymous
I’m still working on it! If I have time I will post an update this weekend with what I’ve done so far. ^_^
Hi, Kingv here! I'll mainly be using this blog as a means to keep track of my in progress games,"Lunar Lotus Festival" and "Clearwater Crossing".But I also occasionally share other fun things I find online here.
Anonymous
