#made marion dev update
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Writing: On Chapter 2! I'm putting in a few fun romance trope situations (though I am ashamed to say I have not yet found a good home in Made Marion for "and there was only one bed"). This is the chapter where Marion realizes how much fun it is to tease Will.
Art: Two CG sketches have been approved! I'll show off the first one since it goes in Sherwood Common.
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Could you explain what lost in Limbo is?
*JAZZ HANDS* ✨ AHEM!! Glad you asked, anon! I will assume you are not familiar with visual novels (for the sake of answering the question as best as I can if anyone else stumbles upon this ask), so let's break down Lost in Limbo to its basics! If you have any more doubts, you can always send another ask! 💜
*Also friendly reminder that English is not my first language and I also suck at explaining things, so I'll do my best ; v ;
✦ Lost in Limbo is a dark-fantasy romance visual novel...
As the title says! A visual novel is a videogame genre mostly defined by its interactive nature and for heavily leaning into its narrative aspects. It's like reading a 'choose your own adventure' book but seeing 'everything' that is happening on the screen. Interactive fiction, they also call it!
You basically play through a story, reading it, having visual depictions of the characters and the places as the story happens*, and you can usually change the story's outcome or some other aspects like relationships via choices or other forms of interaction. There's usually a couple of different endings to the 'same' story!
*Not all visual novels have choices, or have all their characters / scenarios depicted, etc. There's a lot of ways to do a visual novel!
Lost in Limbo is focused on the romance / fantasy genre, and the story takes place in a fictional world you'll explore as you play. You'll be able to experience the story through seven different 'routes', meaning you'll have to choose a character to romance and find more about the story and the cast through that very same romance. This kind of visual novels are often referred to as 'otome', 'amare', or 'dating-sim'. Each term has its differences so if you are interested, I suggest doing some research on them!
To keep this short, you can learn more about LiL in our Masterpost! Which needs another update!
If you are curious about this kind of games, you can check out different 'otome' games / dating sims on itch.io, Steam, and even the Nintendo Shop! OR TUMBLR!! Here are some personal recommendations of fellow indie devs that are working / have worked very hard on their projects!
✦ Alaris and Intertwine by Crescence Studio
✦ Made Marion by Velvet Cupcake Games
✦ Trouble Comes Twice by Foxglove Games
✦ Save the Villainess by Best Laid Plans Productions
✦ 3 Seasons by Hamilton Hour
So yep! A game. Interactive fiction game. You romance some hotties. You play through a story. You can die a few times and things can go downhill in numerous ways. You solve some mysteries and hopefully immerse yourself in the story. And a few more things!
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A Loving Overview of: Made Marion
(Sherwood Demo)
Hi-ho, Wudgey here! This week we’re gonna have a brief interlude from updates to feature a talented fellow indie dev. This does mean that the Herotome update next week might be rather... massive... But we like big things around here, don’t we? ;) -- Ahem...
@velvet-cupcake-games captures the allure of swashbuckling rogues and medieval court intrigue with Made Marion; a must-try for all fans of classic European folklore and middle age aesthetics.
The visual novel features the titular Marion of Glastonbury at a crossroads:
Join the rebel band of Sherwood thieves, or adapt to Nottingham and gain influence from within.
At present the Sherwood demo is available on itch, and an additional Nottingham demo is slated to release soon. ❤
More screencaps and thoughts under the cut!
First Impressions
The game opens with an atmospheric rendition of Green Sleeves, and a gorgeously rendered Marion peering out of a gilded frame. She’s back-lit by daybreak (or duskbreak? how would i know) beyond a stone archway, and she gazes towards the player as if inviting them along on her journey.
Overall, the game is presented with near-professional quality, including polished GUI and period-appropriate sound effects. Even empty save slots are rendered with flourishing detail reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts.
Characters
In place of a prologue scene (which has been excluded from the demo), a brief synopsis explains how Lady Marion came to be betrothed to the infamous Sheriff of Nottingham, and her story begins with a contemplative carriage ride.
While the player will be able to make some choices to guide Marion, she quickly proves herself to be an active protagonist. Her first person POV is methodical and levelheaded, finding solutions and reasoning in times of crisis rather than distress. Still, her stream of consciousness is paced well, and includes enough insight to allow for an enjoyable read.
Classic instrumentals (flutes, lutes and harps) smoothly carry the game from whimsy to battle intensity when Marion’s carriage is beset by bandits.
Enter our first love interest: Will.
The tall, dark and gorgeously dandy duelist is a man of few words. When pressed, he simply explains that he’s under orders to watch our protagonist, and we then receive our very first choice of the game: Bribe the unflappable muskateer enthusiast, or be feisty.
Either way, we end up outside the carriage face-to-face with the-man-the-myth-the-legend himself…
.
.
Just kidding.
It’s our second love interest, Robin Hood.
A stark contrast to the hot-and-cold hooligan in the feathered hat: Robin is boisterous, poised to impress and eager to enchant.
And Marion is having none of it!
She’s hauled onto horseback (stagback?) and carted off into Sherwood Forest, which grants her the opportunity to either engage in dignified banter or open palm smack Robin across the face.
While the developers certainly abandoned antiquated damsel tropes, I did appreciate that Marion struggled with feelings of shame. When manhandled by bandits, most spunky heroines give either indignant or completely flustered performances. Marion makes admirable escape attempts, and when she does not succeed, she’s disappointed in herself for not being stronger. Yet even at her most miserable, she still tries to carry herself with pride. It’s a breath of fresh air to have a protagonist with humility, who also had the foresight to stow a dagger in her boot.
While Will will either be annoyed or impressed with Marion’s antics, Robin will generally react in good humor.
Our third and final love interest, John, responds with a warm patience – or concern, if your Marion is stubborn enough to try tromping barefoot into the woods.
He’s easily the most polite member of the crew. His kind, respectful approach was a welcome reprieve amid merry male camaraderie and their general refusal to communicate clearly. He even made me shoes! Shoes! I have never wanted to hug anyone as quickly as I wanted to hug John.
We soon find that the so-called bandits are not only operating in the roles of a found family, but a real blood-related family; with Will and John being half-brothers, and Robin being their cousin. Even at the game’s early stage, the love interests have an interesting dynamic with one another, and I’m keenly interested in seeing how it all unfolds.
Minor characters, such as Nell and Theo (along with totally-not-a-love-interest(-yet) Layton Tuck), also come across with fleshed out personalities and with motives and aspirations of their own – despite only having brief appearances.
Final Thoughts
Admittedly, I feel parts of second chapter are not as polished as the first. Marion forgave Robin more quickly that I preferred (“You need to speak your piece and complain about how they manhandled you, Marion!” I squawked at my screen, offendedly guzzling cornflakes and coffee, “Embrace your inner Karen! He owes you a PRopEr aPoLOgY!”), and Robin’s speech sounded a touch more like exposition than the sweeping storytelling tirade I’d expected from him (which may be improved with a high adventure background track rather than the current driven/inspirational speech bgm). But these are molecular gripes that pale in comparison to the engaging premise, enjoyable characters, and polished presentation.
“And yes, I’ve also decided who I want to do next.”
The demo ends presenting Marion with the game’s major branching choice, along with a promise and anticipation of more to come. And I’m genuinely looking forward to it!
The Made Marion Kickstarter is tentatively scheduled for October, along with the release of the Nottingham demo (where we’ll be meeting four more love interests!!):
Meissa: A kindhearted fortune-teller from an enemy land.
Lord Geoffrey: The infamous Sheriff of Nottingham himself.
Gui la Londe: An idealistic chevalier in Lord Geoffrey's court.
Alanna Dale: A cheerful bard with a fistful of secrets.
A generous helping of options, to be sure! Again: the Sherwood demo is available on itch. I can’t think of an adequate way of ending this overview, so here’s a cop-out yet tonally appropriate gif to demonstrate how I feel at the prospect of playing more Made Marion in the near future:
#indie game#indie dev#made marion#robin hood#otome#english otome#medieval#gaming#writing#folklore#idk how else to tag this yall pls support your friendly neighborhood content creators thnx ilysm#aloo#loving overview
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We are Steam Deck Verified!
I'm still sick in bed, but a lovely thing happened while I snored my Covid symptoms away. We became Steam Deck Verified!
That means you should now be able to seamlessly launch Made Marion on the Deck. We support cloud saving, so that should work as well. Please do let us know if you have any issues on the Deck!
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The big update is coming before the end of the week! (Preview: Will's route halfway written!)
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Made Marion Development Update, May 2024
The Halfway Mark
Will's route is now halfway written, which is when my writing speed really picks up steam. As of the end of chapter 2 we're at 37.5k words. There's a lot happening in chapter 3 and of course the two chapter 4s, so Will's route may be slightly shorter than Robins, but not by much. And I believe the main culprit is the fact that Robin just spits out so many more words than Will. As for who spits out the most meaningful content, well.
Our script and coding should be ready in time to launch Will's route during the summer. I will give more specific dates once I'm more sure of the exact completion time and the readiness of our visual assets.
And in good news, my new doctor is doing a great job helping to narrow down the exact causes of my long Covid symptoms. I should also be referred to a specialist by the summer. Future route production will definitely be faster if I can manage Normal and Necessary Human Activities(tm) without spending the next day dead asleep.
Patch Incoming
Having received the graphical assets I've been waiting for, I have completed a small patch to the existing game client. We were very proud to see that Robin's route launched relatively bug-free! There were a few dialogue tag issues that we missed during Beta (no wonder, with so much dialogue in there!) and some other minor typos and anachronism issues.
The patch is ready to go but since I'll be out of town this weekend, I'm going to launch it on Monday just in case anything catastrophic happens. That's highly unlikely considering the changes made, but never say never in game dev. :-p You should see the patch announcement on Itch (if you're following us) and Steam when it happens.
I also replaced the enchanted arrow graphic with an improvement and replaced Alvin's sexy silhouette with our new style. The new style better matches the game's overall style and IMO it's a fair bit sexier, as well. Here's the new image!
Will is getting two sexy silhouettes (this should be our number for every route going forward; we'll get a second one for Robin at some point as well), and one of them contains a neat scenario that will let Lawrichai do something a little different with the silhouette forms. I'm excited about it.
See y'all next month!
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It's still Tuesday, right?
Writing Will Chapter 3! Did I say there would be less Tuck in this route?
There will be less Tuck in the next route. When I said it about Will's route I forgot that Marion and Will are investigating the druids, which is kind of important to Tuck. :-p
But his relationship with Marion is quite different in this route.
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Made Marion Development Update, Feb 2024
Hello everyone, and happy belated Valentine's Day! Will took a moment of his time to make everyone a very special Valentine.
Darn it, Will.
The Writing Desk
I am moving into Will Chapter 2! These first couple months of Will route development have been challenged by some unavoidable IRL issues, but those are all cleared up now and I am devoting the rest of February and March fully to writing Will's route.
Chapter 1, as predicted, will be around 20,000 words. I still have one more Chapter 1 scene to finish, but it's a big action scene, and those tend to take me forever as I figure out all the logistics. I decided that rather than delaying the rest of the adventure, I'll slowly add to that action scene while writing Chapter 2.
Will Preview Video:
In case you missed it, we created a preview stream featuring the beginning of Will's route for the Steam Storyteller's Festival in early February. Here it is!
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Art Roundup
Some backers have been curious as to the completion status of our art, so here's the roundup:
Sprites and CGs (Arrapso)
All main character sprites are complete, save for a ??? variant sprite that will only be seen in the DLC.
We have 3.5 major NPC sprites yet to be completed: Hugh, leader of the Grey Wolves (backer sprite); Issa, Lord Geoffrey's cousin in from Nibiru (backer sprite); Kafeel, leader of Nottingham's Sunjati Merchant association and Will's friend; and the final version of Thomas, a character who is only seen in Alanna's route. I will need Kafeel for Will's EA release and am hoping to have Hugh and Issa for it as well, although they are more important on the Nottingham side.
After those are complete, Arrapso's main job will be CGs. I have ordered 4/5 Will CGs and am still deciding on the design for the final one. We also still need to design the backer wallpapers (which will be available in PC and phone formats).
Backgrounds & Creature Sprites (Sandra)
Backgrounds are almost entirely finished. I have one more major background to commission and then it'll just be the occasional variation as needed or maaaaybe one or two more major backgrounds later on to add more variation to the Nottingham Town exteriors.
All major creature sprites are complete. I may commission one of Geoff's beloved hunting hounds during his route, but haven't decided yet. Meissa's bird friend will likely be a cut-in like our messenger doves.
Lore Intro and Cut-Ins (Lawrichai)
Lawri has been having some IRL challenges but should be back with us soon. Her main jobs right now are sexy silhouettes and the lore intro animation. We may be transforming the lore intro graphics into a full .webm animation instead of using Ren'py's built in Animation and Transition Language, as this might actually be easier for Lawri, as well as looking a lot smoother and making me pound my head against my desk less. It's a win/win/win! We'll have more on this next time.
Otherwise, Lawri's work is ongoing depending on budget and how much she is able to complete from route to route (I can always add in more cut-ins, but for now we're focusing on more critical ones as we have time after the sexy sils are complete per route).
So that's where we are with art right now! We're in pretty good shape overall, there just might need to be some more intense art production while I complete the second half of Will's script.
See you next month!
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Will Chapter 2 marches on! Currently working on the carriage heist scene.
Some time back, our backers voted to see three different points of view of this scene, depending on which of the Sherwood love interests Marion is working with.
These three members of the Nottingham Guard are the major antagonists in the carriage heist scene. They will also be the major antagonists in John's route, but for now we only see them while trying to steal a portion of Lord Geoffrey's tax shipment.
Each of these three guards has the ability to make life more difficult for our Sherwood love interests during the heist. On Robin's route, Marion is able to deter all three of them, setting the heist to Easy Mode.
She won't be as well-positioned on the other two routes. Will's heist difficulty is Normal Mode and John's (where she's waiting in the forest for Robin and Will to do their thing first) will be Hard Mode.
Once you've experienced all three versions of the carriage heist, you'll get an idea of how Marion's presence makes a real difference. I wonder, how will the heist go when it happens off-screen during the Nottingham routes?
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Still rockin' on with Will Chapter 2 in between being poked and prodded by various doctors (my new doc is doing all the diagnostics so that when she sends me to a specialist we can say we ruled out everything that isn't Long Covid) and then paying the Long Covid price for Doing Some Stuff, aka tipping over on my couch asleep.
My goal is to be well into Chapter 3 by our next Kickstarter update in mid-May.
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Greetings from Nottingham!
Had a few Collapse Days(tm) this past week but made good progress nonetheless. I should be fully done writing Will Chapter 2 tomorrow or Thursday.
As for the rest of the team, Lawri is finishing up the new Alvin sexy silhouette, Arrapso is completing some miscellaneous sprite bits I need to start coding Will's route, and I'm commissioning Sandra to complete two additional BGs I'll need for this route. Edhie is working on comments for the completed scenes so I'll be able to start coding Chapters 1-2 while I write Chapters 3-4.
As with Robin's route, Chapters 3-4 will take me significantly less time to write than Chapters 1-2.
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Three scenes left in Will Chapter 2, going to write one a day for the rest of the week and then I'll be in Chapter threeeee.
Art should be ramping up around Chapter 3 Start Time as well.
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Made Marion Development Update, March 2024
Hello everyone!
We're continuing writing Will's Chapter 2 this month. I went back this past week and wrote the final action scene in Will Chapter 1, so now that chapter is entirely complete.
Writing isn't going as quickly as I'd hoped, but I'm doing as best I can with my health limitations. I have a new lap desk so I can write on the couch more often, and I have a new doctor who is being much more attentive in trying to get me help for my lingering long Covid symptoms.
Since we're largely just writing and sketching art right now, I'm going to take April off from major development updates and send out the next big one in May. I will still be posting our weekly mini-updates on Tumblr if you're interested in more granular progress.
In the meantime, enjoy this sketch I approved of Will's common route CG (I approved two Will CG sketches, but the other one is spoilers), and my silly little contribution to Tumblr's Ides of March-o-Rama.
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Made Marion Development Update, December 2023
Happy Holidays!
Will's more of a "Bah Humbug" kind of guy than a Happy Holidays one, but he's what we've got.
Thanks to everyone who has played through Robin's route and left lovely reviews and feedback! I'm so happy about the response we received to our first Early Access release, and will be doing my best to make sure all our routes are up to that standard.
Development Progress
We're settling in to creating Will's route now. Unfortunately, shortly after Robin's route launched I contracted Covid for the second time. I was down for a few weeks between the virus and the Paxlovid I took to beat up the virus. But now that I'm feeling better, it appears the Paxlovid also helped beat up some of my long Covid symptoms. I'm feeling close to normal for the first time since Dec. 2021!
Since recovering, I have finished writing 3.5/6 major scenes in Will Chapter 1. I'm hoping to finish Chapter 1 by the new year. Writing Will is quite different from Robin. It's not difficult to know what he's thinking at any given moment! As you might be able to guess from the end of Sherwood Common, Will and Marion don't exactly get off on the right foot. It's pretty fun to write their awkward attempts to work together and the bickering that ensues.
For those of you who follow our weekly Tuesday Tidbits updates on Tumblr, I'll be taking a week or two off of those as I celebrate the holidays (though I'll still be writing, just taking a social media break), so I'll see you all in the new year!
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Happy Tuesday!
This week I wrote a scene and did some important editing and plotting work.
We also have a nice sketch going for Alvin's replacement sexy silhouette (in the new style that you can see in Robin's route).
All the threads are coming together for the various twists in Will's route. My writing process is about half pre-planned and half extemporaneous - I find my dialogue in particular is better if I just let it flow as I write and allow the characters to inhabit the scene.
Will's route is the opposite of Robin's in some ways. Robin's political/conflict plot was fairly simple, Robin vs. the Sheriff for the leadership of Nottingham. It was his relationship plot with Marion that was more complex.
Will is the other way around, his relationship development with Marion flows pretty naturally (for a rivals to lovers, that is), but there are a lot of chess pieces being moved around in the background of his political/conflict plot. There are multiple antagonists that Will brushes up against, and not all of them are moving out in the open. Most of our antagonists are not nearly as straightforward in their confrontations as Geoffrey!
So it's been a lot of fun to take the basic plot building blocks I put together for the route and add more antagonist involvement behind what's going on. Plus I need to make sure Will and Marion get the clues they need to get from point A to point B. It's a ton of fun to weave all the threads together but it does mean I need to go back and add bits to earlier scenes more than I did in Robin's route.
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Happy April!
We're still cruising along in Will Chapter 2. I'm happy to announce the return of cut-in and lore intro artist Lawrichai, back from a health related absence. I have some fun stuff planned for her to illustrate!
We didn't participate in AFD this year. I have a feeling our current focused character would not be a fan of April Fools, especially because a certain cousin of his would adore the tradition.
I imagine Will just hiding at the top of a tree for the day or something.
That's it for this week. I'm at a pretty good energy level for a change, so I'm going to see how much I can turn up production speed!
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