Somnova Studios

Happy Easter folks! Hope you manage to grab more eggs than your basket can carry! Art by Aiwa Just a little production update along with our Easter Greetings; - Our writing had been restructured to fix storyline intertwining, continuity problems and character events - the greatest problem among these is to ensure the transition between one writer's scene to another to be merging in a smooth way - Music materials are pouring in - our particular challenge is a proper execution of leitmotifs to fit their intended momentum - Art organization and breakthrough had been achieved - we are aiming higher for the visual experience in this VN and there are new standardizations. Expect more art-related news in future! That's all for now - I suspect that we will have subsequent update blogs from our respective departments soon enough. Stay tuned! - Imperial Discuss this in forums

1. Announce you're creating an obviously derivative project that follows in the footsteps of a beloved earlier work to which you will never live up. 2. Tackle a delicate subject that most people are uncomfortable with. 3. Accept a couple people onto your team who occasionally post on reddit so you will forever be labeled a reddit project (which is a bad thing I guess?). 4. Release previews in which you mostly drop the names of more successful and popular works (to increase your nerd cred!) instead of saying anything of substance about your own. 5. Profit! It's no secret that Missing Stars has a bit of a bad reputation in some circles. We would be the first to admit that we've made mistakes, of course, and that maybe some of that reputation was well-earned. Recently, though, the hate aimed at us seems to be dying down somewhat or, at least, balancing out with the more positive impressions. We're probably loved and hated in about equal measure these d...

Ah, that special day is upon us... You know, the day where half the population voices their resentment of yet another commercialised holiday out of bitter loneliness, while the other half scrambles to get a gift basket from the convenience store on the way home from work. You gotta admit, a squeaky teddy bear and stale chocolate is a lot cheaper than alimony. Speaking of last minute gifts, Blackjack bailed us out and picked this image up from Tesco on her way home.    image by Blackjack How would you guys spend Valentine's Day with your waifu? Discuss here in the forums . (Seriously, we need romantic ideas for tonight or we're in the doghouse.) -kosherbacon

The issue of what the optimal degree is of letting a fictional character be defined by a so-called "mental illness" is one that is obviously of great relevance to our work and that by extension has already been discussed at length several times already by several different persons on this very blog, some of which are probably smarter than me or more knowledgeable on the subject matter and all of them undoubtedly more capable of expressing their opinions in less than a thousand words. I still haven't done so, though, or at least not to any degree that I would consider satisfactory and thus I have decided to take a short break from the job I've signed on to do and that is by all means expected of me to once again bother the lot of you with my pointless verbosity and meaningless rhetorical cyclicity. My desire to spew forth purple prose must, after all, be satisfied if I am to further postpone the inevitability of me one day snapping and going on a destruct...

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...