Tag Archives: visual novel

Support us on Patreon!

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As we forge ahead with our next project, Crimson Spires, we’re looking for new ways to fund development, so we’ve started a Patreon! Any funds we collect will not only help to feed and house us as we work, but will also support costly features like voice acting.

As a patron, you’ll get to see screenshots and artwork from our next game before they’re publicly released. You’ll also get weekly posts about our behind-the-scenes development process. And finally, we’ll create custom content such as bonus CGs and short stories every month for patrons! Below is a sneak peak at our first bonus content, an image of Michael and Lucifer doing… I wonder what exactly? 😉

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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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The Last Sacrament Releases July 10

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The road to release Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament has been a long and winding one, but at last the end is in sight. We’re almost ready to give you a story packed with more romance, mystery, and action than anything we’ve released yet. We release for PC on July 10, 2018!

Add it to your Steam wishlist

At Woodsy Studio, we’re tired of seeing most games (even AAA titles) treat story and writing as an afterthought. Our primary goal is to deliver a good story with rich, complex characters in a world you can fully immerse yourself. With Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament, we’ve taken what players enjoyed about Echoes the Fey: The Fox’s Trail and developed it even further.

More Mystery

In The Last Sacrament, you actually have TWO mysteries to solve. A desperate politician named Nikolai Melinkov blackmails Sofya into a dangerous job: stealing the Sacrament of Tears from the Krovakyn Church. But in the meantime, Sofya’s childhood love, Katerina Lapidus, needs her protection from a dangerous assassin. Can you steal the Sacrament and hunt down Katerina’s enemy in time to prevent disaster?

 

More Romance

Despite her hardships, Sofya gets many chances to find love amidst her adventures. This episode offers the first opportunity to romance Sofya’s partner, Heremon ir-Caldy. She can also forge a romantic bond with Nikolai, Katerina, or Arkady as she tries to escape the dangers of her predicament.

 

 

More Action

Large segments of The Last Sacrament will play as a point and click adventure game with dialogue in the traditional style of a visual novel. But unlike our previous games, The Last Sacrament also features an in-world tabletop RPG called RiftRealms. Inspired by story-focused pen and paper games, Sofya will play RiftRealms games with various supporting characters as dungeon master. Players will both build a character in RiftRealms to fight increasingly more powerful foes, and learn about the key players in Sofya’s life through how they choose to tell a RiftRealms story.

While the characters of Echoes of the Fey play RiftRealms with Sofya, they reveal their own prejudices and beliefs through their strategies. They serve as “dungeon masters” who try to create a gaming experience for Sofya (and thus the player) that is both entertaining and challenging. Kind and compassionate characters like Heremon might slip up by making the game too easy, while ruthless characters like Arkady transform the game into a harrowing experience.

To get a reminder on the day it releases, go to Steam now and add us to your wishlist! Doing this also helps out indie developers like us by informing the Steam store algorithms that there is real community interest in the game. We can’t wait to share the final result with you!

Add it to your Steam wishlist

Big miraclr Update Coming on Valentine’s Day!

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We’re excited to announce that a big update to miraclr – Divine Dating Sim is coming to Google Play, the App Store for iPhone and iPad, and the Amazon AppStore for Android on Valentine’s Day 2018!

It will also release for desktop computers on Steam and itch.io!

New Avatar Options

An important new feature coming with the Valentine’s update includes new avatar options for the player. Currently, there are only 3 base options for male, female, and non-binary. We’ll be adding at least 3 new options for each gender, so 9 new options overall.

Valentine's miraclr Avatar OptionsGallery Addition

The update will also enable a Gallery system browse-able from the Main Menu screen. From here, you can view all the images you’ve unlocked so far while playing the game.

New CGs

Keep a look out for new CGs appearing in the Valentine’s update, as well!

Raphael Uriel new CG

     Raphael helps Uriel exercise (or so he claims)

Reply Improvements and Halo System

Whenever you reply punctually to a message in the game, you’ll receive Halos. You can use Halos to reply to missed messages or unlock special images.

Secret Story Branch

We’re also added a whole new secret story branch to the game of about 20,000 words. But it wouldn’t be secret if I told you more than that!

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Woodsy Studio 2017: Year in Review

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2017 was a busy year for Woodsy Studio. Development started on our latest and biggest game. We ventured into the free-to-play market in two different ways. We released our first console titles and we (unsuccessfully) dipped our toes into crowdfunding. Here’s a quick look at the year in review for Woodsy Studio.

February – Echoes of the Fey Episode 0: The Immolation

Woodsy Studio’s first release of 2017 was an experiment on two fronts. To start, it was our first game developed in Unreal Engine 4 and, as a result, our first game to utilize 3d environments. We also decided to release it as a free, stand-alone chapter to help promote the series in general.

Even though we had to build a visual novel display system from the ground up, we quickly took to UE4. Resource management (especially related to sounds and music) was much simpler than in GameMaker Studio. Building 3d environments instead of drawing 2d backgrounds also allowed us to incorporate camera angles and increase the number of settings and CGs featured in the game.Using UE4, however, had a downside. For the first time, we had to worry about the performance of our games. On low-end machines–specifically older computers and laptops without a dedicated GPU–The Immolation ran poorly. We coded in a low graphics mode (which, quite frankly, made the game look rough) but we’re not sure how many people knew to take advantage of it. Visual novel fans aren’t used to worrying about performance or graphics settings, and some of our initial reviews likely reflected that. For future (not free) episodes, we’ll likely look into a way to default to low settings when the user doesn’t have a graphics card.

Overall, we’re very happy with The Immolation as an introduction to the series and as a functional performance test for our future VNs in Unreal Engine 4.

July/August – The Fox’s Trail on PS4 and Xbox One

2017 marked Woodsy Studio’s first release on console platforms, with our 2016 PC game Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail coming out on both PS4 and Xbox One. We were still on GameMaker Studio for this project and we did all of the porting work ourselves, so we’re incredibly proud at how the game turned out on consoles and the fact we were able to release both ports within (almost) a month of one another. Xbox One was especially groundbreaking for us, as (I believe) we’re the first traditional visual novel on the platform and one of only a few GameMaker ports to appear on the system. We’re hoping that with future releases, using UE4, we’ll be able to put our console versions out much closer to our PC version.

October – miraclr: Divine Dating Sim (ios/Android)

This October, Woodsy Studio made its second venture into the free-to-play market with the mobile title, miraclr: Divine Dating Sim. Developed in under two months, miraclr is a novel-length (75,000+ words) VN that takes place in real-time over a single week. You chat and collaborate with the archangels of heaven to plan and enact the first true miracle in over 400 years.

miraclr was a unique project for us, in no small part because it was our first mobile-focused game. We had released games on Android before (Serafina’s Crown and Quantum Conscience) but those had been developed with PC in mind first and ported over to the mobile platform. miraclr, by its nature as a game that required real-time interaction, only really works if you have the game with you at work or school or wherever you spend most of the day. There are in-app purchases that allow players to skip around the real-time elements of the game, but we wanted to be sure it was completely playable for free players.

We’re hoping to have some new miraclr announcements soon, so stay tuned if you’re a fan!

November – The Last Sacrament Kickstarter

Not all of our news in 2017 was good. For the first time, we tried crowdfunding one of our games, the upcoming Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament on Kickstarter and fell significantly short of our goal. This certainly wasn’t out of lack of support from our current fans, who contributed and sent us plenty of messages of support. Unfortunately, despite various attempts to reach out to media and promote the campaign, as well as being designated a “Project We Love” by Kickstarter we simply weren’t able to get any press coverage or amplification.

Unfortunately, the reality of crowdfunding is that there’s only so much an independent studio can do to get the word out. We released a demo, still available here, and did what we could to try and drum up support. But ultimately we learned that we’ll likely have to take a different approach to getting press coverage when we release (which we still intend to do; more on that later!)

December – Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail on Jump

Finally this year, we expanded our reach to another platform–the online game subscription service, Jump!

Porting to Jump was a bit difficult, mostly because of the size of our game. On PC/Consoles, The Fox’s Trail is an installation a little over 700 MB. To make it work and playable via browser, we had to tweak our texture compression and sound streaming. This led to a few bugs we hurriedly fixed during release, but now the game is fully playable on the service. So if you’re a Jump subscriber but haven’t checked out our games yet, make sure you try out The Fox’s Trail!

Upcoming – Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament

Of course, the year in review wouldn’t be complete without a mention of our biggest project this year, Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament. We started production on our biggest, most intricate game yet back in March of 2017 and have worked on it throughout the year. Even with all the other releases in 2017, we always kept up work on The Last Sacrament and we hope to have it released in early spring of 2018 on PC, with a console version either concurrently available or out shortly afterwards.

Thanks to all our fans for your support! Hopefully we released something in 2017 that you enjoyed. We’re looking forward to more updates and releases in 2018 so make sure to follow us or sign up for the newsletter to know when we have something new for you!

 

How to Make a Visual Novel in Unreal Engine 4

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A little over a year ago, I set out to complete a strange task: I wanted to build a visual novel in Unreal Engine 4. To some people this seemed like using a rifle to shoot a fly. I was even prepared to admit they were right. But once I got deeper into the UE4 engine, I didn’t regret a single thing.

Why UE4?

The short answer to why I love using Unreal Engine 4 is this: the engine can accomplish just about anything I imagine, and it can do so quickly. It’s a wonderful engine to work with and it’s capable of so much.

That said, Ren’Py is still a wonderful tool to create traditional visual novels. If you don’t plan on adding 3D elements or complex mini-games to your narrative, then there’s probably no reason for you to switch to UE4. BUT if you want to expand the boundaries of a traditional visual novel and set yourself apart from the other VNs out there, I can assure you that UE4 might be a great tool to accomplish that.

Screenshot from our UE4 visual novel, Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament

How to Get Started?

When I started my first VN project in UE4, I struggled to find helpful resources. Not many people had tried to create a traditional VN system within UE4. I found a VN marketplace plugin, but it only functioned for very small-scale projects, and was completely unwieldy in terms of handling a large script or rewrites. So after a lot of searching and banging my head against the computer screen, I set about building my own system from scratch.

Now, one game and many months later, I want to share what I’ve learned with the game dev community at large. I’ve started a video tutorial series that will help you build the foundation of a VN system within UE4. This system is designed to handle large-scale projects and gameplay elements beyond just dialogue. You can begin by writing your script in a typical Open Office or Word document, then convert it into a spreadsheet and import it into UE4.

Watch the Video Tutorials Online

Part 1: https://youtu.be/qj_6dfzqaO0

  1. Create your text scene in a spreadsheet (4:05 )
  2. Create a structure in UE4 (8:45 )
  3. Import your first scene as a datatable (13:02 )

Part 2: https://youtu.be/KuHardkG37M

  1. Create a Scene Template Blueprint (1:09)
  2. Create an NPC character actor to launch the scene (2:56)
  3. Enabe click events (6:30)
  4. Spawn Scene Template when NPC is clicked (9:15)
  5. Feed the datatable rows into the Scene Template (13:57)

Part 3: https://youtu.be/ljaf1PHGq1Y

  1. Track the scene array with a Row variable (1:36)
  2. Create a widget to display the dialogue (4:08)
  3. Set text variables within the widget (9:18)
  4. Create widget from Scene Template and track as variable (11:14)
  5. Set widget variables from the Scene Template Blueprint (13:18)

Part 4: https://youtu.be/w7LxY8fZzdc

  1. Add dialogue widget to viewport (0:44)
  2. Track whether the row is finished displaying (2:11)
  3. Add an input to advance the text (4:26)
  4. Increase row number for next line (5:23)
  5. Enable input on the Scene Template (7:00)
  6. End scene and destroy actors when scene is finished (7:58)

In the tutorial series created so far, I don’t yet get to branching dialogue or character sprites. But if people find this first series useful, I may go on to create tutorials about that later. You can also find my posts about the VN system on the UE4 Forums.

Meanwhile, we’re running a Kickstarter for our current visual novel project, Echoes of the Fey – Fantasy Visual Novel Series! If you enjoy my work or find my resources helpful, please support us!

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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

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Making a Miracle with “miraclr”

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Jenny Gibbons here, gearing up to tell you an honest and not-so-glamorous tale about the world of indie game development.

Going full-time indie

About nine months ago, my full-time job told me that I had to choose between keeping my job or “ceasing activity” with Woodsy Studio, my own company. It was an impossible decision. I had already poured years of my heart and soul into my work at Woodsy Studio, and furthermore, my husband–Malcolm Pierce–had recently joined me as a creative partner. All our dreams lay with Woodsy Studio. I could not give that up. But the studio was not yet making enough money to sustain itself, either.

Malcolm and I were lucky in that we had a decent amount of savings stored up from previous years of caution and frugality. We tried to look at the misfortune of my lay-off as an opportunity to focus all our energy into Woodsy Studio and make it our bread and butter. Although Woodsy Studio was not yet self-sustainable, at least we had three commercially published games occasionally bringing in money.

Illustration from Serafina's Crown

Illustration from Serafina’s Crown

Floundering in a sea of games

Alas, as any other game developer knows, the gaming market is brutal. Try as we might, we were unable to make a big marketing splash with any of our titles, whether old releases or new ones. Even now, I struggle to figure out where we went wrong. By a large percentage, people who play our games enjoy them and offer high praise: both critics and customers. The challenge lies in getting anyone to play our games at all. And of course, I know I’m not alone in this. The sea of released games continues to grow and flood stores every day. Only so many can survive by floating on the surface. We were drowning, but we refused to give up.

By July, we had been pure indie game devs for seven months. We were living the dream–but we were also broke.

Our seven months of focusing on Woodsy Studio confirmed for us that this is what we both wanted to do. We wanted to keep making games together, and we knew we had the potential to succeed. We just needed to create something that could excite people more than anything we’d yet produced.

Drastic times = drastic measures

In a moment of desperation, we put our heads together and tried to think of something we could do to save our studio in the little time our dwindling savings still provided. It all happened in about ten minutes. Malcolm blurted something about romancing angels, I suggested making it unfold in real time on phones, and everything clicked. We knew we had a fun idea that we could produce relatively fast and use to branch out to a new audience: the mobile market.

The two months since that moment have been a non-stop storm of writing, programming, and drawing so that “miraclr” could become a reality. Malcolm and I are both extremely creative people and very prolific writers. But we pushed ourselves harder than we’ve ever pushed ourselves before to make this project happen. We reached the point we normally would have called “burn out”–and we kept going, knowing that it was dangerous, but also convinced it was crucial to our long-term survival.

I programmed a complex story system based on real-time to handle channels, direct messages, and plot branches. Together, Malcolm and I wrote over 76,000 words of story content (but Malcolm wrote most of it). I drew 19 CG illustrations, a dozen character icons, and five visual novel portraits with multiple expressions. Malcolm figured out how to incorporate ads and notifications into both Android and iOS ports. All in two months.

Gabriel from miraclr

Burnt out, but proud

We’re exhausted. We’re burnt out. But we also know that we did everything in our power to create a fun, unique game that might be the key to saving our studio. Whatever happens next, I can say with full confidence that we took our best shot.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy “miraclr,” and that it enables us to keep providing quality interactive stories in the future!

miraclr Main Page