Category Archives: VN

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Serafina’s Saga: Awakened now RELEASED!

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The time is here to experience Serafina’s story unlike you ever have before! Now animated, voiced, and developed with lush 3D environments in UE4, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened is now available for PC.

Get it on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2369430/Serafinas_Saga_Awakened/

Get it on itch.io: https://woodsy-studio.itch.io/serafinas-saga-awakened

Get it on Epic (coming soon): https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/serafinas-saga-awakened-921f2a

This project has been several years in the making, and I have faced a lot of challenges on the way. Thanks to all of you who have supported me on the journey, and I hope you enjoy this epic adventure!

Serafina’s Saga: Awakened Demo on Steam and itch

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Greetings everyone! A few weeks back, Woodsy Studio launched the Serafina’s Saga: Awakened Demo on Steam, and now it’s also available on itch.io. If you missed it earlier, now’s a good time to check it out!

The demo allows you to play through not only the Prologue, but also Chapter One. If you have already checked it out, and wish-listed or followed Serafina’s Saga: Awakened on Steam, thank you! If not, today’s post is a chance to go deeper into the content of the demo.

Versions of red-haired girl with spear, showing versions of Serafina drawn over the years
Versions of Serafina over the years

If you’ve seen the trailer and previous posts here you know that Serafina’s Saga: Awakened is a complete remake of the original Serafina’s Saga into a full otome-style visual novel. Everything is new from the writing, to the character designs and animation, voice acting, backgrounds and music. The demo is your first chance to see it all come together. Between the Prologue and Chapter One you can experience over an hour of all new gameplay. This includes enough choices to give you a feel for how your actions change your bonds with the characters.

The prologue introduces Serafina’s circumstances, a seemingly quiet life with her father (Arken), the forest she knows how to navigate like the back of her hand, and an elusive capybara. Leap through the foliage with Serafina, see what home life is like, and meet another human for the first time! You also have the chance to make the game’s first choice in this segment as you weigh how much to trust your father.

After the prologue, Chapter One takes Serafina out of the forest into a land where she only has her own intuition, and you, to guide her. Over 10 choices await you in this Chapter, including changes to Serafina’s hair color! While you will meet Belatrix Grandil, and you may catch some references to characters to come, the Chapter mainly serves as your introductions to Nikolaos Perin and Valerie Sparkov, representing two of your potential paths as the Serafina’s Saga awakens.

Can you determine which responses are the best for building your bonds with Nikolaos and Valerie? Will you choose caution, or throw caution to the wind? Should Serafina pursue either of them? Depending on how you respond to the choices in Chapter One you can find hints regarding alternate paths that may open up to you as the game progresses. If you make the right choices you can even be rewarded with one of the CGs included in the demo. Of course, that depends on who you think Serafina should trust.

Thank you for checking out the demo, and it would be greatly appreciated if you would wishlist and follow Serafina’s Saga: Awakened on Steam or itch.io. The full game is scheduled to be ready for you in March 2024. Until then keep an eye here and on social media for further updates on the game’s development and a deeper dive into the main cast.

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Crimson Spires Now Released!

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Just in time for Halloween week, Crimson Spires is now released on Steam and Itch with a launch discount of 10% off!

Get it on Steam

Get it on Itch

This otome-style visual novel blends eeriness and romance into an epic drama. A ring of deadly towers traps you in the small mining town of Bataille, Missouri with extreme conspiracy theorists, a serial killer, and wealthy vampires. Choose your partner wisely. 

Will you choose Julian: the older Bataille brother who aims to rule the town with mysterious powers? Maddy: a strong-willed woman eager to overthrow the oppressive authorities? Liam: the adopted, cheerful misfit of the rich Bataille family? Or August: a charming philosophy professor who might also be a serial killer? Each character branch reveals unique secrets about Bataille and a chance to find love.

Features:

  • Unlock four distinct romances and story paths in an epic script totalling 250,000+ words
  • Hear select scenes with a rich cast of English voice actors
  • Embrace your nostalgia for early horror games with an eerie, retro 3D environment
  • Explore select 3D interiors
  • Listen to a lengthy, dynamic soundtrack by developer and composer Jenny Gibbons

Quarantine and Crimson Spires

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As we all know, 2020 has been rife with crises and challenges, not the least of which is COVID-19. You probably don’t need me to go into much more detail. A horrible illness has swept across the world spreading anxiety, death, and isolation. Circa March, most of us stopped going out or seeing anyone who didn’t live under our roof. The lucky among us are still healthy, but probably spending most of their time at home while socially distancing from most of their friends and family. But in the midst of all this, I must point out one personal boon that has come from my experience:

This is an amazing time to be working on Crimson Spires.

Crimson Spires is about the isolation of a small town, the collapse of human reason, and the vampiric nature of capitalism upon the lower rungs of the working class. While all of these problems are being highlighted in the real world, Malcolm and I have been exploring these themes within the narrative of Crimson Spires.

Game screenshot Erika resigns

For these reasons and more, we can’t wait to share this story with the rest of the world. We hope it will be a source of catharsis, reflection, and entertainment in the midst of these dark times.

We are currently aiming for a release date of October 27, 2020, the week of Halloween! Thank you for bearing with us as we continue to work on the game; we know we have pushed the release date so many times! We will push it again if we must in order to ensure that this game is the best it can be. But we can’t wait to share this game with you all, and we will do our best to make that happen soon!

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Announcing Our Next Game — Crimson Spires

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The small town of Bataille, Missouri has been through a lot. First the lead mine closed. The owners of the mine moved their money elsewhere. Everything fell into sharp decline.

And then the towers rose.

Bataille had always been a bit isolated, but now… Now they are truly trapped. No way in. No way out. No idea what is happening on the other side. Planes don’t fly over Bataille any more. The radio is nothing but fuzz; the television is nothing but static. The Bataille family–the former owners of the mine and the namesakes of the town-say the towers are there to protect the people. They don’t say from what. And what on the other side could possibly be worse than the Bataille family themselves? 

Very little. Because the Bataille family are vampires.

We at Woodsy Studio are very excited to announce our next project, Crimson Spires, which we hope to release for PC in 2019. Crimson Spires is a mix between an otome-style visual novel and an adventure horror game, developed in a style intended to evoke the eerie simplicity of early 3D games. That’s a lot to try and reconcile, so it’s probably better to introduce the game through its story.

Six months after the rise of the Contingency Towers, the town of Bataille is broken. Dozens have died trying to escape and it is clear there is no way out. The town’s sheriff, Erika Wright, may be the most broken of them all. A former FBI agent from the city, she was trapped in Bataille after chasing a serial killer across its border moments before the rise of the towers. Now she spends her days patrolling the border, looking for any new corpses of townspeople who tried to cross.

When two people go missing–legitimately missing–from a town with no escape, Erika Wright will have to team up with one of four potential love interests to investigate, find the truth, and confront (or join) the vampire family that controls the town.  As for what happens along the way, well, one of the themes we’re looking to explore is the inevitability of mystery. Things have changed in Bataille. Maybe things have changed even more outside of Bataille. You won’t be able to solve every mystery of the strange new world, but maybe you can find a place in it.

Crimson Spires will play differently from our earlier visual novels. First off, after our good experience with miraclr: Divine Dating Sim, we’re structuring our story in a style similar to many Otome games. Rather than a single storyline with small-to-medium branches based on several choices, Crimson Spires will feature a separate storyline for each potential romance/investigation partners. Each story branch will cover (approximately) the final third of the game and will be entirely distinct from all the others.

Exploration will be different, too. Instead of a side-scrolling approximation of the environment, Crimson Spires will feature a fully-explorable 3d world. Small side quests and details about the entrapped town will be sprinkled around Bataille. There will also be a handful of interiors to explore, as well.

If you’re interested in checking out a (very early) demo of Crimson Spires, we plan on showing it off publicly for the first time at PixelPop here in St. Louis THIS WEEKEND. We’ll also have The Last Sacrament there as well, so if you’re in the area you should definitely check it out. If you’re not, make sure to follow us on twitter for updates about Crimson Spires.

PRESS KIT

 

 

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Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament OUT NOW!

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Hey folks! It has been a long time coming, but we’re happy to announce that Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament is out now on Steam and itch.io! Join Sofya as she is recruited to protect the Emperor’s daughter, Katerina Lapidus, in Vodotsk…all while she’s being blackmailed into investigating the mysterious Krovakyn Church by one of Katerina’s political rivals.

The Last Sacrament is our longest and most ambitious game to date. We have worked hard to give you all a game with lots of drama, romance, and high quality storytelling. Thanks to the power of the UE4 engine, we’ve added 3D camera views and other cinematic effects to the traditional visual novel elements. You can also play the mini-game, RiftRealms, to get new insights on the world and its characters. We sincerely hope you enjoy this game, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!

itch.io

 

Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament Release Moved to July 10

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Greetings Woodsy Studio fans. I come to you today with both bad and good news. First, the bad news. For the last few months, we’ve been fully committed to making our June 26 release date for Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament, but events out of our control have forced us to modify our plans. We’re just as excited to get the game out there for everyone to play, so this was not an easy decision. However, you won’t have to wait much longer for the continuation of Sofya and Heremon’s story. We’re only pushing the game back two weeks, so our new release date for Steam is July 10, 2018. Believe us, this one is sticking.

The good news is that this delay will give us the time to make the initial release of The Last Sacrament even better. We’re not just going to spend the two extra weeks polishing the game, but also implementing a few features that we weren’t sure would be able to make the release window.

The first of these extra features is going to be a replayable, semi-random RiftRealms game. Throughout the story of The Last Sacrament, Sofya plays a light RPG mini-game with a number of characters. Her character in this mini-game is persistent and you can buy upgrades between games. However, all of these RiftRealms games are one shot adventures, with no way to revisit them or play whenever you feel like it. This theoretically limits how many upgrades you can purchase for your character, especially if you have bad luck. We always hoped to be able to add a replayable RiftRealms game (even if it came in a later content patch), and this delay will ensure we have the time to flesh it out and properly test it for release.

Hopefully over the next couple weeks, we’ll be able to announce one or two more features we’ll be adding for release. Please follow us at www.twitter.com/WoodsyStudio for updates

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miraclr: Divine Dating Sim Out NOW

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Available FREE for mobile devices!

Download from App Store  Download miraclr on Google Play  miraclr Available at Amazon

What is miraclr?

miraclr is a comedic workplace romance starring the biblical (and apocryphal) archangels, told  in a mobile office collaboration app.

Play as a human recruited to assist the archangels of heaven with the creation and implementation of the first true miracle in over 400 years. Because you can’t visit them in their office, you are  given access to miraclr, an app used by the Archangels for intra-office messaging. It looks a little like Slack, with similarly structured channels and PMs.

After you start miraclr, you can choose preferences for morning, midday, and evening meetings with the angels. From then on, miraclr will unfold (mostly) in real-time, whether or not you have the game open. Your co-workers (the Archangels) will talk among themselves, ask for your input, and private message you for both work and personal reasons. Your timely responses (or lack thereof) will affect how the story unfolds and romantic relationships.

Read the story behind miraclr‘s creation

Available FREE for mobile devices!

Download from App Store  Download miraclr on Google Play  miraclr Available at Amazon

Announcing Echoes of the Fey: Fuel Your Choice Exclusively with Mountain Dew and Doritos

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Today, we’re proud to announce our newest addition to the Echoes of the Fey franchise, Echoes of the Fey: Fuel Your Choice. We think this program speaks for itself, so check out the video below.

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Echoes of the Fey – Episode 0: The Immolation

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Episode 0: The Immolation is a FREE, standalone chapter in the Echoes of the Fey visual novel series developed in Unreal Engine 4. Play as Sofya Rykov before she became a private investigator and before she was cursed with unstable magic powers. An officer in the Imperial Army, Sofya is tasked with guarding Leshin prisoners at Onigrad. She feels safe enough to drink, sleep, and party to her heart’s content. Then one fateful night, a massive boom rings out from the Fey reactor…

Download free for PC!

Episode 0 is a standalone chapter in the Echoes of the Fey visual novel series and the first game by Woodsy Studio made in Unreal Engine 4. This installment is an introduction to the world and characters for new players, but also provides important backstory for fans who enjoyed Episode 1 – The Fox’s Trail, also available on Steam. Play as Sofya Rykov before she gained her magical powers and became a private investigator. An officer in the Imperial Army, Sofya is tasked with guarding Leshin prisoners at Onigrad, a city which will soon become famous for its fiery destruction. Sofya will also be able to explore the prison and learn more about the world from her prisoners. When disaster strikes the prison, Sofya must balance every second of time before staging her escape. Episode 0 is a short adventure game/visual novel. At ~15,000 words and a playtime of approximately one hour, it provides a bite-sized window into the world at the very end of the war between Humans and Leshin. It’s also our studio’s first venture into Unreal Engine 4, providing a small preview of a full length UE4 title that we hope we’ll be able to release by the end of 2017. Hopefully you enjoy Episode 0 and, if it’s your starting point on the series, continue on to play The Fox’s Trail.

Written by Malcolm Pierce and Jenny Gibbons Art by Jenny Gibbons Some concept art by Wendy Gram Music by Jenny Gibbons Marketing Consultation from Carol Mertz

Voice Acting

Sofya Rykov – Amber Leigh

Heremon ir-Caldy – David Dixon

Rolan Volkov – Paul Hikari

Muriel ir-Kilmun – Helen Edgeworth

QA Kara Kirchherr Ben Cook Gene Kelly Zachari Barnes Jacob Anderson Edward Henry

Made in Unreal Engine 4

Press kit