Garden Variety: Dandelion Set - Update #1

As we recently announced, a few of our members are doing an internal game jam to make brand new (and free) yuri games for you all in September! If you don't know, a game jam is where developers have a set amount of time to make completely new games - in our case, we have 3 weeks to make new yuri & yuri-aligned games.

Now that over a week has passed since we began, it's time for a small update from each of our teams!

Upwards, Rain!

Hi! I'm caps, the scenario lead, writer and UI artist of Upwards, Rain! The Post Office of Farewells. Our first seven days yielded a lot of progress, so I want to get right into it.

Let's start with the big one: the script for Upwards, Rain! Is complete! Ish. While the entire story has been written, we have one minigame segment still in the planning phases, so it won't be until a little later until I can put pen to paper there. The amount remaining compared to what's done is miniscule, though!

Getting the writing update out of the way was nice and easy thanks to it being… well, done, so how about everything else? First off, sprites are going well! We have a substantial amount of sketches done, with even a few finalized sprites ready to go!

It's not just character art, either. Theo has managed to fully complete a background and started cleaning up another in the past week. I'm especially excited to show the work in progress, as I think it really sells how fantastical of a place our little post office is.

On the UI side of things, I've been busy there as well. Since the start of the jam, the textbox design has been finalized and even partially implemented in-engine, and I've got rough designs done up for the main menus (options, data, etc) as well as the necessary things we'll need for our minigames!

If you missed Mari's stream this past Wednesday, let me give you a rough summary of how our minigames work: as you continue your adventures in Mortem Post, you'll start to collect a variety of stamps. During minigame sections, the current plan is for you to click and drag stamps that are tied to various actions over specific items, allowing you to interact with them in a variety of ways. I'm not personally ready to show off this entire screen yet since we still need to actually get the minigames properly implemented, but I did want to share the first round of stamp designs, at least!

On the subject of Mari's stream, she helped us settle on a hairstyle for one of our characters during the previous check-in! Check out the finalized design for the courier Neve!

Now, some miscellaneous updates. While we still don't have everything we need for papaya to start scripting in earnest, they have been leaving very detailed notes directly in the scene documents on how they plan to have them come to life, so expect them to hit the ground running as soon as they're able. On Sarah's end, she had already composed sketches for four different tracks, and I absolutely can't wait for everyone to hear the finished pieces! We'll be saving those for a little later, but rest assured her work is as fantastic as ever.

And that's where we are at the time of writing! I'd personally say we've made exceptional progress all around, and I'm really excited to see what this next week brings us.

Just for fun, I want to leave you with a quick screenshot mockup using finalized textboxes, character sprites and a background. Keep in mind that this isn't rendered in-engine and the final game will likely end up looking substantially different. Still though, it's already really satisfying to see everything start to mesh together! See you next week!

Yuri Paddle: An Anime Convention Murder Mystery!

Hey everyone! This is Lopson, Yuri Paddle’s programmer. This first week has been quite productive indeed. Let’s go over what the Paddle team has accomplished!

On the writing front, Syon has pretty much written the entire first act of the story. The idea for now is to have three in total, with a word count that doesn’t go over the 10k words. Syon is really confident in the writing of this game and it shows! I may be biased, BUT I think the story is already fun and really engaging! Honestly, I’m just itching to script it all…

When it comes to the artistic side of things, Faerieko is focused on assets for our characters! Lineart for Stella and Kaylee’s sprites is well underway, and the concept art for other (mysterious) characters is close to done. Personally, I can’t wait to see the art and the UI paired together on-screen!

And now for the game itself. Most gameplay mechanics have been implemented! With this being a murder mystery, you can expect to see some of the staples of the genre making their way in. This is my first time programming a Ren’Py game by myself and from the ground up; it’s been a really enlightening experience! I recommend everyone interested in visual novels to do the same.

We don’t want to give away too much, this is a murder mystery after all… So that’ll be that for this week. We’re gonna make sure this next one just as productive, if not more!

On Wings Bringing Sleep

Lexiiii (Director, among other things) here with our team’s update after one week! We’ve got a mixed bag of updates - some great, some less great - so let’s get into them. I’m going to put the more spoiler-y updates at the end, so if you want to go in blind, you can avoid them!

On the less-than-ideal side, Dakuma got sick this week, which meant she wasn’t able to make as much progress on the sprites as we originally were hoping. Right now, we’re having discussions about whether our secondary characters (Mab, Dahlia, and Kreimhild) will get full sprites, or if we just use portraits for them. It’s probably going to come down to how much time we have. But I can at least share this early WIP of Morgaine’s primary sprite:

However, there’s great news on the writing side. RoseCrowned has been in - and I quote - “a fugue state,” and the script is coming along VERY well, with Act 1 completed, edited, and ready to program! I’ve been adding all the directorial notes and storyboarding the sprite layout, and let me tell you, I LOVE how it’s coming along. Here’s an brief excerpt for you all:

Ilse: ♫ My dove, my swan, you've been gone so long, how many tears more must I shed for your song? ♫

Ilse: I - I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. You tensed up.

Morgaine: It's fine. You can keep singing. The lullaby, right?

Ilse: Right.

Her own hands are getting more confident, and her voice…

Ilse: ♫ You left me with naught but a smile and passed on, this poor crow can't fly from the memory of your arms ♫

Ilse: ♫ Yet I know what skies you've soared onto from me, no pale-beauty feather is stirred by my pleas ♫

Ilse: ♫ I bared you my heart and I'll see yours bared too, if holding it's the last thing I'll ever do ♫

Her hair is nothing like mine. How would it feel to run my fingers through hers like this?

Ilse: Let's try this.

Morgaine: Who taught you this, your mother?

Ilse: I - I taught myself. Too much time on my hands, my sister always says.

That should do it. Bring it back over your shoulder. I wish I had a mirror to show you properly.

# Morgaine turns back around, and we can now see Ilse's expression again

The wildflowers… she's woven them all through my braid, and crowned me with the wreath. They smell soft… sweet.

Morgaine: Thank you.

Morgaine: …I thought you said that song was a lullaby? It seems a bit…

Ilse: A bit what?

Morgaine: Dark, is all. The end… it seems more like the singer is laying a claim to their beloved, rather than pursuing their love as equals.

Ilse: …Now that you mention it, I suppose so. I've known it for so long that I never gave it much thought. Although knowing my sister, it might well be some murder ballad that just happened to put me to sleep one night. That's the sort of thing she sings in a good mood.

Ilse: Who really thinks about the stories we tell children, until someone points out their flaws?

And in the other areas, we’ve locked in our visual approach to the story, using a NVL-style layout with watercolor-filtered photos to really convey a storybook:

Also, we’ve finalized the music we plan to use. We’ll be relying heavily on the beautiful work of Kamaboko Sachiko (with permission, of course!) - here’s “The Long Spell of Falling Down,” which we’ll be using as Morgaine’s theme.

降りしきる、白 @ フリーBGM DOVA-SYNDROME OFFICIAL YouTube CHANNEL

And that’s the end of the non-spoiler updates!

…If you’re still here, here’s Dakuma’s sketches of Act 3 Morgaine, as well as what the visuals will be for that part of the story.

Witch You Want

Last but not least is my own project, Witch You Want!

This week lunaterra has been hammering away at the script, making a lot of progress in the process. In fact, here's a snippet from the first day!

Mirabelle "It's nice and cozy, isn't it?"

MC "I guess...?"

Mirabelle "I'm glad we agree! We're going to get along super well, I can just feel it. Can't you?"

MC "Um..."

Mirabelle "Of course you can! I should know better than to ask questions I already know the answer to, silly me."

"Her energy is something else...! Those one-star Whelp reviews couldn't have prepared me for this..."

Mirabelle "Since this is your first day, I've made sure to start you off with a really simple potion so you can get in the groove!"

Mirabelle "I have a customer who's in urgent need of a strength potion. She's really strong on her own, of course, but there's a lot of stuff that needs moving! So it would help her out if she had a potion that made her even stronger."

Mirabelle "All you need to do is put the ingredients in the cauldron, stir the mixture, and voila! You have a brand-new potion ready for drinking."

MC "I don't really remember any strength recipes, though..."

Mirabelle "Oh, don't worry about that! It's really simple. All you need is some cat's eye, some peach seeds, and..."

Mirabelle "And..."

MC "..."

Mirabelle "..."

"Mirabelle and I stare at each other. The smile on her face doesn't crack even once."

Mirabelle "W-Well, it would be too easy if I just gave you the whole recipe, wouldn't it? Haha!"

Mirabelle "Think of it like a puzzle! Those two ingredients, plus something soft. If you can figure it out on your own, that proves you're able to think on your feet and make the quality potions my—our—shop is known for."

Mirabelle "Well, I've got plenty of orders to take care of myself, so I should go! Ta-ta!"

"She flitters away before I can say anything in response. What have I gotten myself into...?"

As you can tell, Mirabelle, well.... she needs all the help she can get. And to help with that, you're going to be preparing potions for her!

The base for the potion making minigame is complete - now I just need to actually finish the ingredient art and UI for it. I started on the ingredient art this week as well, and finished a few items. 

 And that's all I have for you this week! Next week? Who knows.......

— Arimia