Red Spring Studio

August 2024: TOUCHSTARVED's Writing Process [Legacy Update]

Added 2025-07-27 23:26:20 +0000 UTC

Here's an old update from our Kickstarter page. We think you'll enjoy reading about the writing process we have here at Red Spring Studio! Enjoy! - RSS Team

Welcome to the August update!

We had a busy month and have a lot to show you today!

Beach Day: SUCCESS!

Is Leander’s nipple piercing canon? Play his route to find out…

Thanks to everyone’s input on the polls, Vere and Leander had a wonderful time at the beach! They moved the bodies, had extra Bloody Marys, and Leander got his goose floaty.

It’s always a surprise to us what you all pick from the polls… Our community is so unpredictable. 😊

Happy Birthday Ais!

Leander has a nipple piercing, but Ais also has a hidden piercing. Can you guess where?

We celebrated Ais’s birthday this past August 18th! Does Ais strike you as a typical Leo? 🦁

Ocudeus gets lonely if Ais is away from the Seaspring for too long, so he always cherishes his time spent with you.

TOUCHSTARVED Writing Process

Like we mentioned in the last monthly update, we wanted to give everyone some insight into our writing process. We take a lot of pride in the depth and complexity of our characters, and that’s where our writing process begins.

Pre-Production

Before we ever started working on art or programming, we began with the characters. We regularly brainstormed as a group, ideating and refining each Love Interest (LI). While we all approached this project with a specific type of character we wanted to write, many of the finer details remained vague; this is pretty common in the early stages of a creative project, but we needed to know our characters inside-out before we could start working! At this point, we created extensive documentation for each LI, looking at everything from the core pillars of the characters to their love languages to their monstrous themes.

Don’t worry about it :)

We also produced our initial route outlines at this point. Each outline is a high-level look at all five chapters of a full route, covering the broad strokes of the plot, the major themes, LI and MC character development arcs, and different endings. We looked for each chapter to have a strong beginning and ending, and a coherent throughline, while avoiding getting stuck in the weeds with close-up detail.

Of course, no outline survives contact with a first draft–but they’re still important roadmaps to give us north stars to aim for, and core themes to stick to. It was also vital to help us make each route thematically distinct, while still being part of a cohesive whole.

We couldn’t figure out a way to show you a route outline with enough detail to give you an idea of what they include without spoiling the route. So instead, you can think of a route outline as working something like the following:

Ais (Clean the Kitchen)

Chapter 1 (Cabinets/Drawers): In this chapter, we are going to clean the cabinets and drawers.

Empty all cabinets.
Wipe down cabinets.
Replace items in cabinets.

Chapter 2 (Counters/Appliances): In this chapter, we are going to clean the counters and appliances.

Clean oven.
Clean fridge.
…etc.

(This is not canon. Ais doesn't clean his kitchen.)

Production

At this stage, all parts of the project begin full production. It’s important to note that we don’t use what’s called ‘waterfall method', which is a kind of production model where tasks have clear start- and end-points, are completed sequentially, and can’t be revisited once they’re finished. In fact, most game development studios don’t use the waterfall method–it’s inflexible and can’t respond to feedback or new problems (or opportunities!). Tasks are completed, but work may be changed until very late in the process. With that in mind, here’s a look at our production process!

Each writer focuses on a single character route, but we meet regularly in writer’s rooms to review our work, talk out problems, and suggest opportunities. These remote meetings are called writer’s rooms, but for us they also include Vika, our wonderful art director. Vika gives us updates on the workload for the art team and discusses ideas for illustrations, character expressions, backgrounds, NPC sprites, overlays, and more!

Chapter by chapter, the draft process looks like this:

1. Detailed Outline

First, we use our route outlines to create a detailed outline of the chapter. This outline includes what backgrounds we are going to use, and roughed out versions of conversations and events that will happen in the chapters.

Using the above example of Ais (Clean the Kitchen), his Chapter 1 detailed outline might look a bit like this:

Chapter 1 (Cabinets/drawers): In this chapter, we are going to clean the cabinets/drawers.

Empty all cabinets/drawers (kitchen background, day).

--> MC takes out all the dishware/glasses.

Ais notices a cracked plate that should be replaced.
MC says he should buy Princess a new bowl while he’s at it.
Princess comes bounding up at the sound of her name.
Choice to pet her or give her a treat.

--> Ais empties the pantry.

MC notices some cans of beans that are swelling. Uh oh, they need to be thrown out!
Ais disagrees. He thinks those beans are fine to eat.
MC and Ais argue about food safety.
Ais reluctantly puts the beans in the trash, and MC adds canned beans to their shopping list.

--> Etc…

(It is canon that Ais can and will eat spoiled food. Humans are so fragile... but is that really necessary, Ais??)

After that, it’s time for a sanity check in the writer’s room: does the progression of events in our detailed outlines make sense to everyone else? Does the pacing and progression look okay at this stage? This is also when we all line up to give Vika our best puppy-dog eyes to ask for necessary or nice-to-have art assets.

2. First Draft

With our detailed outlines set, we begin writing our first drafts. At this stage we begin working in Visual Studio Code, so we can have first drafts playable in Unity. It’s extremely important to be able to start playing our drafts at this point, because whatever we write will look and feel different once it’s actually in the engine!

At this point, our work includes character sprites and expressions, backgrounds and transitions between them, effects such as overlays, the variables that change the progression of the story or unlock special text or choices, and more.

This is how we show different text based on MC’s origin!

However, the writing itself can be pretty rough, containing such gems as ‘(you both get up, Ais heads out first)’ or ‘MC: This f*cker again?’

And that’s fine! In fact, having simple summaries or unserious (but emotionally accurate) lines can help us clarify what we’re planning, without getting caught up polishing our prose or making sure we get character voices just right.

That’s because at this stage, our ideas collide with reality. The nature of outlines, even detailed outlines, is that a lot of the actual experience is glossed over by our imaginations. When we actually have a playable draft, we may find that this scene needs a lot more space to make the emotional progression feel natural, or we need to add a new sequence to foreshadow a later reveal. First drafts are where the largest changes happen, so we try to remain flexible and avoid putting excessive work into the chapter.

We have another writer’s room, to play through each other’s first drafts and give feedback. At this point, we suggest or talk through any major structural problems with the chapters, and brainstorm solutions.

3. Second Draft

At this point, we implement the structural changes we discussed. We also refine dialogue and prose, clean up any messy transitions, fill out conversation branches, add more variable-dependent text, etc. At this point, we each have a solid idea of what the chapter should look like when it’s complete, and it’s all about executing on our plan.

Once we’re finished, we have another writer’s room to see if our changes worked. The answer is almost always yes (and even when it isn’t, any further changes are usually very small). We may also pinpoint areas where pacing can be tweaked, conversations adjusted slightly, writing sharpened, etc, but there should be no major changes after the second draft.

At this point, we move on to the next chapter. We will continue the above steps until all chapters of a LI’s route are at the second draft stage.

⚠️ We are are currently getting the chapters of the initial LI routes up to second draft phase. All steps past this point are planned parts of our process, but they are subject to change.

4. Holistic Playthrough

Once all chapters of an LI’s route, including the branching endings, are at the second draft stage, we plan to go back through each route as a whole. We will play through, making notes about overall structure, themes, character arcs, plot, etc., in preparation for the third draft.

5. Third Draft

Each chapter requires at least two drafts, and those take a long time to write, test, and review. As a result, there’s a significant time between when we write the first and last chapters of our route. However, the routes will be experienced by you, the players, as a cohesive whole, in much less time. We want to make sure that we play these routes just like you will, so we can try to find and fix potential problems and shortcomings, as well as do polish passes on the writing as a whole.

Hopefully, by this point, any changes will be very minor–additions or modifications of specific lines, not entire scenes.

6. Editing

We will then pass the chapters to our wonderful editor, who will suggest improvements. Of course, we can always discuss the rationale behind suggested edits, so this may take a few back-and-forth rounds!

After edits are finalized, we will consider the chapters locked: they’re final, ready to go! Unless…

7. Surprise!

There’s always a chance something unexpected will happen. For example: it’s surprisingly common that a line that looks fine in text, or even sounds fine when the writer says it aloud, turns out to be a tongue-twister in the recording booth; we’ve already had a few instances where a team member has figured out how to create a visual or audio effect, so we can modify or add lines to use those effects; and, of course, we can’t describe backgrounds until the art is final, so currently there’s a lot of lines saying, ‘(Describe the background here)’!

We don’t want to jinx it by naming problems that can happen, but plenty of things can go wrong, too. We’ve budgeted additional time and resources to handle any unpleasant surprises, just in case!

8. ???

This is the biggest mystery step, which is what happens when something is released! We always hope for characters and arcs to resonate with readers, but art is wonderfully subjective. What we can say is that the entire team is thrilled to hear your insights and reactions to what we’re creating. We’re doing it for you, after all! 💌

We hope you’ve enjoyed this writing deep-dive. Thank you all so much for your interest in our process!