To celebrate Valentines Day, Blue Rose is 30% off until February 16th! Go get it now for your friends or dear ones, or take this chance to get it cheap if you were holding out!
For the full version of the Valentines artwork, go here.
Time to finally talk a little about what is currently going on with White Cat!
It’s been almost half a year since Blue Rose was released, and I’m very thankful for the nice reception of our Visual Novel so far! Even with private and open testing though, there will almost always be hiccups with the script after release. Some of you have sent in your corrections and comments on these, a few of them very detailed as well, and I really appreciate it. They will all be taken into consideration, and a future patch for the script will take all these things into consideration. Feel free to still send me a mail if you run into something bugging you!
Remember that the game is also still up for voting on Steam Greenlight, should you wish to show your support there.
Now for what is currently on the drawing table for White Cat. Those who have followed my twitter or tumblr, you may have already noticed me mention one of these projects in passing a couple of times. I have been reworking and rewriting Angelic Orbs from the bottom up for a little while now, our company’s next big visual novel title. Some people might know the title from our first free vn from years back, while a very few might even remember its roots as a webcomic from even longer ago.
The first vn of this title was a kind of sidestory, while this project is a complete telling of the original story from the ground up. It will also be different from Blue Rose in a few ways, one of the most noteable ones the fact that this is not a first-person story. The reader will not step directly in the shoes of a protagonist and aiming for romance routes, but will instead follow a small group of protagonists and influence their journey over the course of the story, sometimes even choosing what POV to follow in the coming events.
A few other features are in mind for this title, that I won’t speak of yet however. The script is in the middle of being written, as well as general character and world designs being made. Hopefully I can show you something more of this soon, though the game itself won’t be done in a while.
At the same time as this, I am also working on another project of a very different kind than Blue Rose and Angelic Orbs. It will be cute and deadly. But that is all I’m going to say about it so far.
And that is mostly what is going on at the moment! After our first big release we are hoping for 2014 to be another good and productive year, coming closer to bringing you great storytelling and entertainment.
And in the future if the support for it is there, I might return to this lonely folder on my desktop named “Blue Rose 2″…
VN’s Now! announced their winners for the 2013 Best Of’s, and Blue Rose got the spot for Best Romance!
A big thank you to the site that has also given the game and White Cat a nice bit of attention with their review and interviews!
And of course a congratulations to the other winners on the site, especially Muesli and Dischan for winning “English Visual Novel of the Year” and “Studio/EVN Circle of the Year”!
Here’s to hoping we can all keep it up in the new year!
The visual novel Blue Rose is now up for voting on Steam Greenlight! If you’d like to see some Otome fantasy action on Steam, go vote now! If still in doubt, you can always try out the demo.
If you already bought the game, feel free to vote anyway and maybe get the chance to get a steam key for your copy.
I just stumbled across this article, that puts light on something that bothers me about me current project. It discusses how, in time, some authors in printed literature began to drift away from using third person past tense, to use third person present tense, most likely because they were inspired by the style of writing screenplays. The article then goes on to touch on how those two different ways of writing have a different impact on the way your story is perceived, and that you should choose one depending on what you wish to achieve. This is all when discussing traditional novel writing.
How does this come out when writing for the visual novel format? They are usually a mix between choose-your-own-adventure stories and comics, making them very different when approached from a writer’s angle, sometimes more than you’d think.
The script of most visual novels are written with a first person POV, putting the reader in the shoes of the protagonist. He’s seeing things happen, he makes the choice as they come up. Present tense lends itself well to this type of story, as you’re supposed to be there, experiencing all this, in a story where no one knows the ending yet. It is part of what sets visual novels apart from reading book or a comic.
In comics themselves, this issue most often does not exist, as there is no descriptive text – only dialogue. The rest is something you see happen, it’s not told.
Now what if you want to write a third-person visual novel?
This is what I’m currently doing, and it’s proving surprisingly challenging. You’re no longer “in the shoes” of one person who sees all this unravel – you’re not making choices of what one person in particular would think or do. Adding to this, I’m trying to lean more heavily on the visual side of things, mimicking the original comic roots of the story I’m writing. But that’s for another day.
I soon realised, that when returning to third person, I naturally wanted to revert back to past tense as well, as I used to do. It’s what I’m used to reading, and writing. And it’s something people might be more used to reading as well, as the article puts it. This is something I’m struggling with quite a bit at the moment – as a reader you’re still put directly into the action, you’re still making choices for these people on the screen and impacting their lives as you go – should it still not be present tense?
I think the evidence still points towards the latter, though I still have to be careful with not falling into pitfalls of old writing habits. But the subject interests me.
What are your thoughts on the subject, as readers and writers?
Since releasing Blue Rose, I have received many requests for guides and help with obtaining Aran’s ending.
While this is not an actual walkthrough, here are some hints for those who are still stumped.
Late as always, but I finally got to play through all of Little Busters, and I thought I’d write some of my impressions of the game here. Note that I played the original version of the game, so the added scenes and route from Ecstasy and Perfect Edition were not included.
The game has several character routes with a suggested play order, in order for you to get the most content available from them all, so I’ll list them and my thoughts in said order. I won’t spoil too much (apart from one route), but if you haven’t read Little Busters yet, and don’t want your experience to be too sullied by information, you should probably not read this yet!
Also, this is going to be a long read….
And finally the last introduction – the elusive Aran:
Aran… what can really be said about him?
Aran is always there in the distance, watching. He’s quite an expressionless character, unless you meet him under the right… circumstances.
In the novel his route will not be available until you clear at least one other path first.
Yeah, that’s him.
(Now that Blue Rose has been released, let’s get the last two characters introduced!)
It’s time for Tobias’ introduction:
Tobias is a young hunter who lives alone in the forest. He finds and saves Lena, but in the end they don’t get along very well.
“Don’t underestimate rabbits!!”
Tobias prefers to be alone and generally dislikes soldiers and everything else connected to the war going on in the world outside. As a result he finds it difficult to accept the presence of someone like Lena.
He is also the only chase-able male without some sort of amazing combat skillz.
A minor bug prevented a certain CG from being unlocked in the CG gallery. To fix it, simply download this patch and unzip it in the Blue Rose “game” folder:
If it asks to overwrite old files, choose ‘yes’.
Old saves should still function without problems after applying the patch.
Any new orders and downloads of the game are already updated and have this issue fixed, and as such will not need this patch.