Somnova Studios

Now that we've got all that feelsy stuff out of the way, let's get down to business. For 2013, I've resolved to post more regularly about our actual progress. I know, I know: Missing Stars making progress? Preposterous! But we are. Besides, it's a lot easier to track and explain development when you know the general direction you're headed in. That first year was pretty chaotic -- lots of false starts and squandered time. But we're firmly in the saddle now and looking forward. It may be a little ways off, but for the first time, we're looking seriously at a demo release. So what progress are we making toward that goal right now ? Well, we're getting one scene completely polished and up to the level of quality we expect from the VN as whole. That means sprites, backgrounds, music, and however many passes over the script it takes to make it behave. Once that's in place and playable and -- most importantly -- up to snuff, we've got a...

Courtesy of blackjack What were you up to a year ago? One year ago today, I was lurking the Katawa Shoujo forums. I happened to be there, in the right place and at the right time, to stumble on this little thread about a proposed visual novel. I happened to have some skills, maybe, that were needed, but more importantly, I happened to be in the right state of mind to want this thing – this thing we're now calling Missing Stars – to be made. There's been a lot of happenings happening just right for a while now – a thousand little moments that string together into the story of Somnova Studios so far. Even after the project was on its feet, if one vote had gone another way, or if this character had been chosen instead of that one, the team might look a lot different today. The events that led to my being a staple of the team is probably the most convoluted roller-coaster of them all, but here I am. Sometimes I wonder about all the different ways things could h...

Okay, here's something a little different. Instead of an update on Missing Stars this week, we wanted to give some love to another project. Our friends over at Rainy Day Studios have been working on their own VN, Con Amore, for the better part of 2012. To celebrate the new year, they've just posted their very first reveal , and I'm excited to see where they go from here. If you don't quite have a long enough list of VNs to look forward to yet, you should check it out. Or... even if you do. About that -- the English language VN community looks like it's blowing up. In a good way. There are so many awesome projects coming down the pipeline, and it's a pretty interesting time to be a fan of the genre. At Somnova, we were fans before we were devs, so it's nice to take some time off now and then to be fans again. We've got our eyes on Con Amore. What projects are you watching? -alabaster Discuss this post on the forums