Black Closet - Elsa

Yes, the PC / Student Council President is a fixed character, not a draw-your-own. Due to game design, though, you don't see much of her other than CGs. She does not have a side image or a minion card, she is the hand that HOLDS the cards.



While her look and some of her basic personality is fixed, this is a game where every single time the protagonist speaks, you get to choose what she says, so there's still plenty of room to push things in your own direction.

Black Closet - Rowan

Oops, I almost forgot about Rowan. That's... Kind of a common reaction.



Naturally, she's the minion with the best starting Stealth score. And you desperately need someone who can carry out tasks without getting caught. Better hope she's really on your side!

Black Closet - Mallory

The Ingenue. The Pollyanna. The New Girl. And the shortest girl on the team.



No surprise that Social is her top starting skill.

Black Closet - Vonne

Behind every great leader is an awesomely organised assistant.



At least, as long as she's on your side and not secretly betraying you...

Black Closet - Thaïs

A spoiled brat prone to throwing temper tantrums, sure, but you have to expect there's more to her past that shell. One of the characters who's evolved the most in production.

In gameplay terms, she starts out with the best score in Intimidation so tends to get deployed when you need to rough someone up - er, convince them.

Black Closet - Althea

Introducing the first of your minions - er, loyal Student Council members.



Like you, Althea is a senior, which means that you've had a lot of years of history together, and university looming on the horizon. If, that is, the school doesn't come crashing down in a scandal first.

Most elegant young ladies keep their love lives under wraps. Althea is unusual among St. Claudine's students in being openly a lesbian... and willing to play "prince" for girls who aren't quite sure what they want. She flirts with just about everyone, except you.



(And if you're familiar with a game character of the same name in development, it's a coincidence! Neither of us knew the other had such a character going, and they're not exactly similar.)

extreme placeholder edition

Another quick glimpse of "What on earth are you working on?"



Art and interface and all very obviously nowhere near done; the logic behind the actual mystery-solving stuff is complicated and most of our time is going into that, prettifying it can wait!

self-indulgence

Interface design is not really one of my skills. However, I lack the patience to wait for artists to do everything, so I always fool around with it anyway.

Of course, once my icons are squeezed down into super-compact form it's almost impossible to make them out. I wonder if anyone can even hazard a guess as to what this is all meant to represent...



(Even if I do keep these, you'll see the icons better in the zoomed-in cards, and the skills would be explained first, so it wouldn't be QUITE this mysterious...)

secrets and lies

Since it's the new year, I suppose I should give a small sample of what I'm working on.

Still adding CGs to The Royal Trap. I should probably make an official page for it soon. I haven't touched the story in quite a while, just waiting for all the art to come in so I can put together the beta-purchase version, hopefully in February.

Otherwise, working on the weird secret project I've mentioned occasionally, the one that really isn't a VN and doesn't entirely fit into any established category. It's... a social-battle mystery-solving card game with side romances? And, since I felt it was about time I did one, it is entirely yuri. You can play them as friends if you want, but there's no boys in this game.

That is NOT FINAL ART!!! it's just a little mockup I put together to demonstrate some of the current ideas.

And as I've admitted elsewhere... I need to find a new artist (or small studio preferably), throw out what little was done, and start over on Magical Diary: Wolf Hall. Stating this in public will hopefully give me the guts to go through with it!

GUBS, the card game

I'm not really a huge fan of fantasy card games. I played Magic a little bit when it was the new thing, but didn't find the strategy of deck design appealing. I like more randomness in my table games, for some reason. When I'm sitting down to play with friends, I prefer having unexpected things happen and laughing about them; competitive strategy stresses me out.

I have found some card games I enjoy - Gloom is great fun, with transparent cards for stacking and gameplay that encourages you to make up silly stories of how exactly THAT happened...

But I'm getting off-topic! This post was to say that I found this game, which is a freeware implementation of a card game, advertising the cards themselves, which you can buy if you want to play with others in the real world.

hearts are wild

So, I got around to trying Heartwild Solitaire, a game I mentioned once before. It's quite pretty, with relaxing piano music and luxurious backgrounds. However, even with plenty of forewarning, it was still rather shocking to START the game, without having even played any cards yet, in a nasty violent romantic situation, bleeding and fleeing from my abusive partner. I wonder how well this plays with the casual audience? (And what does it say about the average casual player if it goes over well?)

Anyway, the game itself is more enticing than standard solitaire for me due to the prettiness and unusual card layouts. You have only so many 'special' powers (like the ability to turn over the holder deck and play them again, or shuffle all cards, or even just to retry the level) so you can run out, get stuck, and 'lose' - but this only means your current score goes to the highscore list as is, and you continue from that point with a clean zero and a fresh set of powers.

It's not exactly pulse-pounding excitement, but who expects that from solitaire?



BFG Demo

*blush*

So, um, I haven't been posting much.

That doesn't mean I don't play any games at all.

Actually, the game I've just been playing is, er... a free demo that's quite innocent of a game that isn't. :) See, the basic idea of the game is that you're a cute little anime girl and you're playing a game very similar to Uno with a bunch of other cute anime girls. They all giggle, blush, sigh, whine, and otherwise react to the way the cards are played and it's just.... CUTE!

In the full version of the game, when you win you can choose one of the girls with the lowest scores to see naughty pictures of, but in the demo it just says 'Buy the game to see the CG', so it's not really naughty. Still, this isn't a game you'll want to be looking at if you're opposed to That Sort Of Thing.

There's not really much point to it... there's only so much skill and strategy that can go into playing Uno, and the 'reward' of the full game isn't there. But it makes me giggle. Oh, and the game is in Japanese although enough of it is English that it's pretty obvious what to do - choose the first option on the menu to start the game, click on cards to select and play them.

Obviously the following link should be considered not work safe, but if you want to see, go here - Shoujo Mahou Gakuen - Oshaberi Card Game (Magical Girls' School - "Chatting" Card Game)