Somnova Studios

Some of you more astute followers may have noticed a slight change on our forums. It took many a night chanting over forbidden text, maidens sacrificed, and making shady pacts with dark forces. But, we finally decided on a new design for our group's logo! Many thanks to keviniskool for whipping this baby up and slathering it over our unworthy eyes. Discuss this blog post on the forums.

Missing Stars is a visual novel. Since visual novels were pioneered in Japan, most VNs use manga-style artwork. But Missing Stars isn't most visual novels. Keen readers and frequenters to the forums might have noticed a decline in releases of concept art. That is because the artistic direction of the project has shifted. Missing Stars will now be using digital photographs for character sprites. The user interface and promotional materials will still feature drawn artwork, whenever necessary. Given the game's setting and our aspirations for the broadest audience possible, this is a logical choice. After all, most if not all of our backgrounds were intended to be filtered photographs and photorealistic (w)renderings. However, this does present us with production related challenges. Our strive for visual realism has upped our demand for on-location photographs since rendered images will just have to be that much better(and time-consuming) to keep up. Fortunately, our staf...

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