I Really Want Royal Trap + Updates

Okay, so, it's a new month and I owe you guys an update.  BUT I also really want to play Royal Trap (I can never decide whether to bold or italicize games.  Thoughts?) so I figured I'd make it a double whammy and talk about both.

In Royal Trap you play as Madeleine Valois, a woman who serves in the courts as a guide to the prince in order to help him marry an appropriate bride.  Of course, this is not so straightforward and it looks like there are lots of wonderful things to complicate Madeleine's attempts to have her prince marry well.

So far, the art style and premise remind me of Crimson Empire, which I haven't actually played or read, but that makes me super excited anyway.  So far, I've really enjoyed Hanako Games when it comes to story, but this seems more like my normal cup of tea.  The art also makes me excited because the outfits are elegant, and the art quality is an improvement over Date Warp and Magical Diary from what I can tell so far.  You can watch the trailer to see for yourself!



I admit I haven't played the demo yet because I know once I start playing I won't want to stop, and by posting about it here first, I can get a discount when I buy the game, but don't let that dissuade you.  I really do enjoy Hanako Games and the art and music alone promise an interesting time.  The theme is "Elaborate Deception" produced by LeetStreetBoys and featuring vocals from Natasha Cox.  It's crazy catchy as per usual with LeetStreetBoys, even if the lyrics are a little cheesy.  You can hear it in its entirety here.

Okay, I think that's enough about Royal Trap or else you'll be confused about why my update is even here.

I did not wind up completing Bionic Heart 2 in an appropriate time frame, so it got finished up by KittyKatStar.  There's no hard feelings.  She's nice and much faster than me.  I didn't really start feeling better until around Valentine's Day anyway so I haven't been particularly effective at anything.  She also wrote parts of Heileen 3, and is the writer for two other games for Winter Wolves including Spirited Heart 2.  KittyKatStar is someone to keep an eye on :]

Bionic Heart 2 should be out by mid-March and I'll post about it once it's released.

For Culina, I once again haven't been particularly productive, but I managed to pass the 10,000 word milestone for the story which makes me happy and I got to write more Emily.  From what I can tell in the lemmasoft forums, people do not like Emily very much.  It's not really a spoiler, but the MC in Culina did not have a clean break-up with her, and to me, she is still very much a part of MC's life whether or not she's there.  It's not really fair for people to just dislike her based off of what I've written, so I'm trying to portray her in a more positive light.

I'm not saying Emily is an amazing character.  If she were a real person, I would not like her at all.  But I know her better than I've written her and she isn't just a flighty two dimensional character.  I'm working on fleshing everyone out when writing the main story for Culina and we'll see how effective I am.

Culina Word Count:  10516
Bionic Heart 2 Lines Remaining:  0

Tuesday Update: 08/21/2012

Psh.  Update schedule?  Who needs that?  >.>

So, something pretty cool happened today and something pretty cool happened last week.  I'm not making huge progress on my writing for Culina, but a lot of other things are happening so I can't really complain.

When it comes down to it, I'll make sure that Culina comes out properly so to my few readers out there, please don't worry! >.<

Anyway, today Riva (who I always call Celso in my head even though he told me to call him Riva or Jack) asked me to look over the beginning of Heileen 3 to see what I thought of the writing.  I actually think that the writing for Heileen 3 is pretty strong because it's concise and doesn't use any language that makes me wince (and I don't mean because of swearing).  It's fun and since it's geared towards teenagers, I think is just right.  I feel pretty honored that he would ask my opinion of something like that so that was pretty awesome.

At the time I also asked for a license key or a discount for Bionic Heart and he gave it to me.  I'm so psyched and pleased that he gave me Bionic Heart.  Now, before you go crazy and run off to ask for all of the Winter Wolves games for free, it's not like that.

The cool thing that happened last week is that Riva/Celso/Jack (I think I'll just call him Celso since that's what I call him in my head.  Sometimes I also call him Winter Wolves, but that's just lame of me) contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in being the proofreader for Bionic Heart 2.  It's not paid, but getting credit for my involvement is very nice for my resume.  However, I haven't played the first game so I asked for a discount code or something so that I can play the game and understand where the second game would be coming from.  It's still awesome that he gave it to me.  Last night before I asked, I asked my friends if they thought it was unreasonable to ask for the game and they said no, but I was still pretty worried.

Celso is a really nice guy, he's always replied to my tweets on twitter and doesn't mind my emails asking for work and actually remembers me when he needs someone!  His games aren't the best, but I've always kind of held him as my standard for general Indie Game stuff.

Speaking of really nice Indie Games people, Papillon (on the lemmasoft forums) from Hanako Games is also really sweet.  When I PMed her kind of stupid questions about Magical Diary she replied promptly and just this week when I asked if there was a current discount for Long Live the Queen she said she'd give me one if I drew fanart :D  I'm not a great artist, but I'm semi-decent at chibi's at this point so I'll try to do something.

It'd be cool if I could find the time to draw fanart for Culina or some other Ren'py game too.  So much to do!

Oh, but as for Culina, we got a WIP of the main page and it's looking pretty awesome.  Netravlr is also getting there on inputting things.  He has a full time job so he can't dedicate as much time as I can right now.  If I get a job though I'm not sure I'll make my writing deadline x.X

Camp NaNoWriMo Word Count:  1082  (I've given up on this >.>)
Culina:  Hands in the Kitchen Word Count:  1738 (What is progress?)

Last Week's Goals:

1. Finish my Group 1 deadline for Culina.  Did not happen.  I have to catch up and do two groups this week x.X
2. Think about my Project Itzkeria contribution.  I did think about this, but we need to do team brainstorming before I start anything concrete.
3. Work on my 30 Drabble Challenge.  I posted one of the drabbles on my tumblr.  Progress!
4. Work on my KHR fanfiction.  I miss it.  Did not happen.  I plan to actually outline Time Traveling for Dummies though.

This Week's Goals:

1. Finish my Group 1 and 2 deadline for Culina.
2. Work on my Project Itzkeria contribution.
3. Work on my 30 Drabble Challenge.
4. Outline Time Traveling for Dummies.
5. Play Bionic Heart.  Hey, it's kind of work >.>

*Note:  These goals are supposed to be writing related, so things like fanart and stuff don't get to go on the list.  I'm still iffy about putting fanfiction on the list too so in my like, 2? readers have an opinion about that let me know.