Somnova Studios

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...

Much as our spiritual predecessor was dubbed a 'cripple porn game', from the outset our game has received the pejorative of a 'retard porn game' (to paraphrase and collate the general reaction, which generally ranges from hesitant to hostile). I do think that maintaining a healthy level of skepticism is good to keep around you, and I honestly don't expect anyone to have good feelings about the project till we have at least a sample of work out in the public eye. Still, I would say that our acquisition of our particular label is, to an extent, a fault of our initial titling and billing of the project. As many of you will probably remember, our working title was Mentaru Shoujo  (a title we had never intended to keep), and it was described as a game based around the concept of mental disabilities. There are obviously a lot of problems here, and I'll try to go a bit in depth with them. Obviously, the original title, apart from being a bit derivative, does evok...

Hello everyone! We know we've been silent for longer than usual, but sometimes no news is the best news. As the heat of summer (or, for those in the Southern Hemisphere, the cold of winter) keeps us inside, we're pushing even harder to make this game a reality. There's a lot of stuff we've been hard at work on, and we hope you're excited for what we have in store! Our  slaves   writers are hard at work, as well as our crack team of artists, musicians, and programmers. Also, today marks six whole months of development!  Thank you for your continued support of our game and its development. As a reward for tolerating our existence, here's a little something. Art by naso4 Meet Erik Wilhelm, the main character of Missing Stars. He's a laid back and generally good-humoured fellow. Born in Switzerland, Erik has been an avid hiker for most of his life. Even at St. Dymphna's, the outdoors is still very much in Erik's blood, and he can often be fou...