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Blog Post of Doom

Greetings and Salutations, everyone.

I'd like to say that this year has been a little rough for Somnova, but really, every year has been rough in one way or another. Over the course of the last eight or so months, we've lost (or lost touch with, in some cases) writers and editors. Fortunately, we've secured a very talented pair of writers plus a superb editor to help us out. That said, we still need at least one writer for one of the routes.

Although the route in question was already drafted some time ago, there are some issues that need to be addressed. Without the original writer, it wouldn't be right for the rest of us to pick at it in an attempt to patch things up. Instead, we'd like to have someone dedicated to the route who can make it work from the ground up.

Although there is an existing framework to work within, the new writer would have the freedom to change the plot, within reason, as well as their characters and associated backstory. We also need someone capable of carrying the route beyond act 1. For more details, visit the forums and leave a message. If you've applied with us before and haven't heard back, (probably because we weren't hiring at the time) please do reconnect.




Moving on, let's have a status update:

Editing, as always, is progressing. I myself am inserting stage and sprite directions into my scenes.


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Lena doesn't cry, she just gets madder.


I know that simply saying that we're editing is rather vague, but it's a huge job. The mere act 1 of Missing Stars is in the neighborhood of 100,000 words and has gone through a number of comprehensive rewrites.

Fun fact: At one point, the main character had amnesia and at the end of Lena's route, he overdosed on MDMA while attending a rave in the catacombs under the school. 


Things get pretty sticky when elements get added to the story only to be removed. You get things referencing other things that aren't there anymore, and eventually you get two consecutive scenes that feel like they've come from two completely different VNs. It's a long and frustrating process but we've been fixing that.


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Also, this girl should be wearing trousers.


Our intrepid background photographer, amarsh1138, is pulling double duty and doing some editing. He spent a small fortune at the print shop to give us the red-marker treatment.

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Scenes 1-45(The first half of act 1)

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The whole demo.


Merlyn's been pumping out tech demos whenever we revise the script. These mockups don't have much in the way of graphics, but are used to test the user-interface and path functionality.


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Dat Splash.


Thanks for sticking with us this long.

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