Somnova Studios

Hey guys, did you hear? A bunch of feeltards are doing a Katawa Shoujo rip-off, but with retarded girls. What kind of person would want to do that? What kind? I dunno. I guess I'm sort of a normal dude, as are my colleagues. Well... normal-ish. Anyways, this may come as a surprise, but Missing Stars seems to have garnered some controversy by its mere existence. Generally, I don't bother reading or listening to criticisms said about our project, as they're mostly based on assumptions since precious few details concerning our VN have been released so far. Nonetheless, I feel that there are questions that have arisen that deserve to be answered. Why are you doing this? It's fucking fun, that's why. Somnova isn't just a dev team. We're friends, too. Sure, we might want each other dead by the end of the project, but so far I'm glad to have become acquainted with my colleagues. Together, we've had some laughs, fapped over shared musical ta...

Art by blackjack Looking back, it certainly has been a wild, wild couple of months since we all started making this VN. Development has been progressing pretty well over this summer, despite most of us being busy with real-life work. Scenes are being edited as we speak. We're also busy working on the user interface that will be used in-game, and making sure the scenes flow correctly. As far as art is progressing, we're getting sprites made, and they're looking incredible! With all this talk about sprites and scenes, what exactly are we making? A game? A novel? The true answer is hard to determine. The 'select choice, get next scene' element of most visual novels isn't really 'gameplay' in a sense - the player merely follows a path. Many game experts would indeed be hesitant to call a visual novel a 'game', as there are no real challenges (aside from the dilemma of what option to choose) that directly affect gameplay. But what happens when...

Hi folks! I’m MDV and I work for Somnova Studios as a medical consultant. … ‘A what? Goddamn, those missing screws fags will really take anyone into their project!’ That’s probably how /vg/ would respond, but I’ve figured they might not be the only ones who’ve heard about Somnova’s medical consultants and wonder what they actually do. In this blog post I’ll try to explain to you exactly what we do and why I think we’re essential for this project to succeed. If you’ve been following Missing Stars, you know we’re writing a visual novel set in a school for students with mental disorders. If we want to tell our story in any way that makes sense, we need the input of people who have experience with and knowledge about people with mental issues. The medical consultants of Somnova Studios are those people. To make sure everything on the subject of how exactly certain disabilities work and how exactly they are treated, we have M22 on our team, a practicing psychiatrist. I’m n...

Happy Blog Day, everyone. I'm alabaster, and unless you frequent our IRC channel, you probably have no idea who I am. I'm a writer on Missing Stars. Nice to meet you. If you're wondering why you haven't seen my name yet or, more to the point, why I haven't revealed my character yet, there's a good reason. We have enough already... Actually, my role here is a bit different from my fellow writers. In part, I'm sort of like the team putty, stuffed into any and all gaps that materialize. I primarily write scenes that don't fall under the purview of the main writers – essentially, the scenes that don't involve any of the main path girls – and I do a fair share of editing too, wherever it's needed. That's not to say that I don't have a character of my own. In fact, I have two. I'm responsible for Missing Stars' two big side characters. It may seem odd to give these characters their own writer, but I think it ...

Good evening, everyone. Allow me if you may to introduce myself first: I am Gloom, the writer in charge of Katja Böhm's route.   Now that you have someone to blame for the upcoming, let us without further ado move on to the subject of today's discussion, which I believe is one that unavoidably will be touched upon (in all the wrong ways) during the creation of a game such as this: Broken Birds. Also known as Fragile Flowers, Damaged Damsels, and Tarnished Treasures, Broken Birds are a literary archetype extremely prevalent in the romantic VN genre and one that you are quite likely (almost by definition, being readers of this blog) well acquainted with, if not officially. Usually female, usually young and beautiful, the Broken Bird is a character meant to evoke a very specific set of feelings at the reader. Where the Poor Little Kid with Leukemia is meant to tug on heartstrings through pure pity, the Broken Bird goes a step further: through pity, she seeks to attract the reader...