plottwiststudios - Tumblr blog

plottwiststudios · 8 days

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What I thought when I heard "Requiem of Silence": This must come in when a woman sacrifices herself for the main character/party and it's a very dragged out burial scene. Probably very sad, going by the Youtube views and the anime committee"

What I Thought actually watching the scene involving "Requiem of Silence" in the actual episode: Nothing because I remained speechless the entire segment.

#Yes I am all caught up on the show #What a stressful watch #Probably will have to watch it again #Because there's so much there #We're talking the same amount of stuff you miss by not playing Women of Xal's many routes kinda vibe #Or not rereading my books

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plottwiststudios · 18 days

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Gay Panic at the Disco

That about sums up my novel so far. There's a murder mystery and emotional healing/growth in there too.

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plottwiststudios · 1 month

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wox was a very poly game. Are you poly as well or just supportive of the lifestyle?

Ethically Non-Monogamous And Polyamorous. Ye. Though you wouldn't know as me and my partner have never been in a relationship outside of each other in our adult lives.

From the few fellow poly peeps I've met, all of them have told me that people were more into flaky window shopping than forging any memorable and fun bonds. My own anecdotal experience makes that feel all the more true. I wonder if it has anything to do with North Carolina...

#polyamorous #polyamory #non monogomous

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plottwiststudios · 2 months

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I've fallen completely off the horse of motivation/hope/confidence and while I'm trying to get back on that, I'm not above asking fans this.

#an oldie but a goodie #women of xal

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plottwiststudios · 2 months

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To this day, a whole 10% of Women of Xal's Kickstarter was funded by one generous individual. And despite reaching out a few times, they never got back to me to get their OC into the game with their own romance route and theme.

Not complaining, but I will never not be flabbergasted.

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plottwiststudios · 2 months

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I will ruin a fan favorite character's morality before I will quietly listen to people lie about my problematic characters' ethics. A flaw of mine? Yes. Will I absolutely do it again? Boo I will if you besmirch the character of my villains again.

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plottwiststudios · 2 months

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I will however keep posting WoX memes and Fanart. I never would have thought of this myself.

I present to you: Blorboposting about my niche interest game maybe a few hundred people know.

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plottwiststudios · 2 months

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In Happier News

Your vote determines the couple we'll likely be presenting whenever Women of Xal returns to the spotlight and we start working on the series again.

#Tags don't work for me

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plottwiststudios · 2 months

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Women of Xal II: Delayed Indefinitely

(1 out of every 200 Women of Xal players unlocked this CG)

The team has discussed it further, and we have certainly come to the same, overwhelming agreement: we're shelfing the series. A long list of reasons can be found in this Tumblr post, but in short: To survive and even thrive, this series is not the way to go. I'm fighting debt to this day -- all to make sure the game's quality was as good as it was. So until the game is profitable and the fandom legitimately grows, or at the very least there's an investor with $50k to spend on a visual novel, it's financially and emotionally folly to fight against such a devastating upstream battle. So here's what we're going to do going forward...

2024 Goals:

Remaking A traditional novel ("Mesto Accelerando: Encore")

Let the cofounder lead the next project (Non-Visual Novel)

Small practice projects with Unity/Unreal/Godot

Finish the artbook for Women of Xal I

Sharpen up my music skills

I have personally noted that an all PoC cast is overwhelmingly great and fun for my spirits, but objectively proven to chase away income I need to eat, get medical attention, and not stress loved ones. Lesson learned.

What About (x) Project?!

AlrightEros: Backburner as it needs more income than we can spare at the moment. We do however see the potential in it from both a passionate and financial standpoint, however!

PT's DollMaker: We were putting it all together right around the time AI took over and decreased demand for commissioned art of actual effort everywhere. That's just a discouragement I have to get over and we'll try to release the app for it.

Xynthology: ...Did you know, that tabletop rules are harder to balance than one might think?! Costs may be the least of our concerns here. I'm still rebalancing nonsense to this day. This day!

Definitely a "completely fallen off the horse" moment for me, but I do intend to get back on it with a clearer, stronger vision and the same ferocity that saw to the completion of "Women of Xal". I promise we'll keep providing unique, diverse characters that range from Xjena's chill vibes to Clanice's esoteric problems that I initially thought only I could relate to. But right now I really do need to sit down and figure out if the stories I want to tell -- the way I want to tell them -- is at all something the world will ever embrace. Because if it's not, I need to sort out how to proceed for a company dependent on the exact opposite.

Thanks for listening, and for always sticking around. <3 -John

#black experience #black women #people of color #bipoc #diversity

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plottwiststudios · 2 months

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Different timezone crowd.

Women of Xal II Kickstarter: Delayed?

Hey, have you heard of the overly ambitious visual novel titled "Women of Xal" for Steam and Itch.io? (PC/Mac/Linux) Because that plays into why we might need to shelf the series for a few years. Full breakdown under the cut. (No spoilers)

For those who have gotten the True Ending, you should be fully aware that the story is about to vastly expand outside of Xuna's castle. It's a narrative must where everything that happens, happens well outside the scope of the original game in so many ways. And let's talk about scope! Especially if you have no idea what's so staggering about the original Women of Xal visual novel:

600+ optional choices we painstakingly programmed

Branching paths that people are still asking for guides on

A dozen romance options

Poly and gay options that interact with one another

Voice acting from now VERY popular voice actors

A 15 hour story full of mystery, lore, and tense politics

110 track soundtrack

4 Endings

Animations

Thousands of art assets (Bless Cat)

Years of hard work and long nights

No AI Art

100% positive reviews as of this post

Recouped $6000+, or roughly a fraction of the cost of development. After 2+ years of being released

Note that very last bullet point. Doing things for the art and passion is amazing and all, but I can't be investing literal thousands of hours into creating a game for a subset of a subset of a subset of people. I have bigger projects I want to finally get to work on. Ones I really hoped Women of Xal I would help a bit with funding. But it's not. And because of certain facts about the game, it may never be able to do so. To no fault of any of the players.

When I made Women of Xal I, my time was more readily available and I was quite a bit younger. The cost of running a company and creating a game like WoX as the first product hadn't quite hit me. I was also silly enough to believe "if you make it, they will come" to a degree. That part makes me grin in a not fun way.

But these days I have a job that takes me away from creating, but does pay the bills and debts. Debts I don't want to get into again in order to create the sequel that will undoubtedly come with far higher costs due to the game's scope. I have a better understanding of the costs of hiring returning and appropriate talent necessary to create a game better than the last. (I don't personally believe in being satisfied with an intentional steep downgrade.)

Yes there is the Kickstarter option for Women of Xal II, but there are plenty of costs and time investment that makes it an unviable avenue to explore during this point in time. After all, who but the people who sat down and explored everything the first game had to offer would understand how we came up with a $50,000 Kickstarter price tag for a visual novel's sequel? Especially since too many will look at the first Kickstarter and believe we made the first game with only $14,000.

I have thought about giving Women of Xal I a modernized facelift with a smaller Kickstarter, complete with a ton of new features and fun ways to streamline and highlight the narration's strong points, but there's a LOT of baggage that comes with that, including not wanting to go backwards when I still want to create my "pipe dream" projects.

So I'm thinking we'll give it a bit more thought these next few days, and if we can't think of a solution that we haven't already tried, we'll officially announce the delay (and before you suggest your own ideas, know that there's a 99% chance we've already tried it).

A long, long post just to say I do sincerely apologize for having people wait longer, but I am literally still a few thousand dollars away from paying off all my debt that came from funding the first game. It's a micro-trauma I do not feel inclined to repeating again. When the franchise is in a better place, or I am emotionally/physically, I will return back to Women of Xal to finish the story. If I cannot, I will release a summary of events that transpire after the first game's true ending.

But for now, I'm going to focus on financial and emotional healing, and creating projects that I feel will be more appreciated by both myself and people who are turned off by what "Women of Xal" offers.

Thank you all for supporting our small company these past several years. <3

-John

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