Somnova Studios

Merry Christmas, everyone! Today, we have a little present for you all: a cute chibi drawing of Sofiya and Natalya! We've had a great 2021, but 2022 is looking to be another fantastic year for Missing Stars and for our studio. We are extremely excited to show off more content for our visual novel, so please look forward to our upcoming updates regarding our Steam release! Have a safe and relaxing holiday weekend, and may you all have a happy new year too! Twitter Instagram Facebook Official Somnova Discord

It's time for another Missing Stars Update!  While working on our changes for Act One's upcoming Steam release, our writer for Lena has had to make his departure from the studio. It's unfortunate, but it happens with volunteer projects such as these. We took the time to find a suitable replacement for Lena - her unique characterization meant we had to find someone who could really excel with her character. Sadly, we felt that there was no one who could capture the original writing style. What's more, the act of finding a new writer might also introduce additional risks such as potential ghosting and/or incompatibilities with other team members. All of this internal discussion was also taking up valuable time that would be better suited for other Missing Stars content.  As a result of this, we feel that it is best to remove Lena as a route character, and make her a side character instead.  What does this mean for Act One?   Lena's character will still be featured i...

Hello again, it's another Missing Stars update! This month's update will once again be rather short, but we do have a great update for this month: all of Act One's scenes have been converted over to our new code base that Adam W, our lead writer, talks about here .  At the same time, we are continuing to update and add any missing CGs, sprites, as well as revamp our UI so that Missing Stars looks even prettier for the Steam release. Here's a recent work in progress, featuring Erik and Annaliese! The full image is way too cute for this blog post, so you'll have to wait. We also decided to make a "sprite" of Erik proper, as we realized that we actually didn't have a reference that wasn't in a CG or early concept art. This piece probably won't show up in-game, but in the case that you all need a reference for fanart, storytelling, or something else entirely, here's an official image of our protagonist! Special thanks to Likhos for making this...

Hey folks. I'm Adam, Annaliese route writer on Missing Stars. I was formerly known as "Ultra_HR", but since my first (and last) blog post , I decided I didn't like that name any more. For the record, the "HR" stood for "horseradish", not "human resources". No, I'm not sure why that was my username for so long. I just use my real name now. Since then, I've also become the writing lead for Somnova Studios. I thought I'd share some of the things we've done since I took on that role to make working on Missing Stars as easy as possible for everybody (or, at least, not a total pain) and to make it a way better experience for readers. Managing a massive story as a large volunteer team Missing Stars is a pretty big visual novel, especially for a volunteer team. Act One alone has a word count of over 250,000 (251,848 at the time of writing, if you're interested). We don't have a projection yet for how long the full rele...

This month's update is going to be rather short, as we don't have a lot to talk about that we haven't already. Fortunately, this doesn't mean that we haven't made good progress: approximately 84% of Act One's scenes have been converted over to our new code base, and we continue to power through the remaining scenes, CGs, and any other small tasks that need to be completed for the Steam release. We still don't have a release date yet, but we will keep you update to date as we get closer to completion. One thing we want to mention however is Adam W, our lead writer and sometimes programmer, wants to write a dedicated blog post explaining the script format we used for our new code-base, as well as the whole reformatting project in general to show what steps we took to convert Act One over to Steam. If you've ever been curious about what our methods look like, make sure to stay tuned for that! Finally: make sure to keep an eye out for an upcoming podcast ep...

As you may have guessed from our last post, we've been hard at work polishing Missing Stars: Act One for Steam. But what does that entail? Well, for starters, we have a few extra sprites we'd like to add: Renee Eva Renee and Eva got a few lines in some scenes, but didn't actually get any sprites associated with them, which caused some confusion. Because of time constraints we couldn't include everyone initially, so for the Steam version, we decided to give everyone a face. Internally, we keep track of side characters so that we can re-use them in other scenes, as opposed to making another one-off character that's never seen again. Eva will definitely get some more screentime, so get ready to see more of her! We have also taken the time to upgrade some of our preexisting sprites to add better shading and more accurate lineart. Likhos and the rest of the art team are working hard, and it shows! Sprites are one thing, but CGs are another thing entirely. CGs are...

For years, it was believed that there was a hard line between Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) within the field of psychology; if you had one you could not be diagnosed with the other. Recent evidence, however, has revealed the opposite. According to a 2017 study found in Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry , over half of people with ADHD have some comorbidity with one or more psychiatric issues [1]. Solid numbers remain elusive, but experts can extrapolate that the two are not as segregated as they were once believed.  So what are these disorders, and how are they both different to each other? How are they similar to each other? ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder commonly found in children that can continue into adulthood. This disorder affects many areas of the brain including (but not limited to) executive functions in the brain, impulse control, and attention span. ADHD is typically diagnosed when a child is in kindergarten or pres...

Hello everyone, and happy International Voice Day to everyone!  International Voice Day, while not being one of the better-known holidays, is an international day celebrating the human voice and the impact it has on our lives - and raises awareness of how it impacts those who lose it. There are, obviously, physiological problems that can cause loss of voice, but also neurological and psychological ones - and losing the main way we communicate is never an easy burden. To celebrate our voices and the importance in our lives, we decided to gather our voices and record something special for you - you might recognise the original from recent music culture. So, go forth, check out http://world-voice-day.org/ , spread awareness and maybe give Annaliese's route another shot to celebrate IVD! Click here to listen to our Wellerman Parody! A personal note from Astartus: Hey, everyone! I just wanted to use this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for the support you've given ...

GOTCHA! Well, sort of...That last part about Steam from our April Fools blogpost is actually true!  We've mentioned a few times that we've been working hard at improving the code behind our little visual novel, and this was one of the reasons why we wanted to do it. We want to present a polished title not only to another platform, but to you guys, our avid fans. Act One has been a tremendous success for us and because of that, we feel that we have to show off the best possible version of our story.  Don't worry, this version will also be free, as well as the eventual full release of Missing Stars.  The Steam version of Missing Stars: Act One will have a lot of new features, including:  More backgrounds! More CGs! Achievements! Accessibility Options!   ???????   ...Yes, we're excited about the last one. We're so excited that we can't tell you guys what it is just yet!  (But to give you a hint... no, it's not Katawa Shoujo -crossover content...

Over the many, MANY years that Missing Stars has been in development, fans have asked us about whether we would add some (or any) DLC routes to the game when completed. While we've publicly said no to these requests, we have a confession to make: We haven't been entirely honest with you wonderful fans...  ...because in reality, we've already have some DLC content planned just for the fans who have waited years for the game to finally be complete!  You might be familiar with these two characters we've decided to include...  That's right, it's Emi Ibarazaki and Hanako Ikezawa from Katawa Shoujo! Katawa Shoujo continues to be a huge pull for many a visual novel connoisseur, and we've decided to capitalize on that with our new DLC. We're developing two original stories that will feel quite familiar to Katawa Shoujo fans, but are distinct enough to stand on their own in the world of Missing Stars. Here's a quick gameplay demo of the new DLC! In addi...