steamberrystudio

[steamberrystudio]

It's been a long time since we've introduced the characters. So here is a re-introduction for the folks new to my otome visual novel!

Meet Aldrias, the gentle nerdy childhood best friend! He's smart as hell, but maybe a little scatterbrained and naive. Will your lifelong friendship finally blossom into something more romantic after all these years? 👀

Full character bio:

[steamberrystudio]

Amare Games Festival Mid-Point Check in!

Hello Everyone! We hope you are having a great Amare Games Festival 2024! Most importantly staying hydrated and having fun. We have already started to received some amazing entries this year! Just a reminder that if you released a Full Game, Demo or Game Update this month you can submit it to the #AmareGamesFestival

All you need to do is join on the Jam page and submit your game. Sign up on the Amare Games Festival Itch Page. We also have a special surprise!

Thanks the precarious nature of the current Social Media climate we are trying something new this year!

All games entered will be featured on the NEW amaregames.com website. I'll be showing off some previews in the coming weeks.

Can't wait to see all the amazing entries this year.

To find out more details about the Festival keep reading!

What is Amare?

Check out the Amare tag on Itch.io https://itch.io/games/tag-amare Why a festival?

Jams are an awesome way to get the creative juices flowing and challenge yourself to create a game in a short amount of time. However, there are already a lot of amazing projects in progress, so it's important to celebrate those and give people the opportunity to focus on setting and achieving goals with their existing projects as well.

Examples of Submissions

A new game.

A new demo or Vertical slice.

A new chapter update to an existing game.

Adding new features or content to an existing game.

The festival has fairly relaxed rules, but in general, we would like all participants to keep these in mind:

Rules:

You must Release or Update during the festival period. Work can be commenced before the start of the festival.

Please clearly label demos or first episodes as such. - This is to help us organise the entries

Please clearly state the exact update or new content that was added during the festival.

Submissions can be Free or Commercial.

NSFW must be properly labelled, but is fine as long as it adheres to Itch.io's TOS

No hate speech, (i.e. speech that promotes hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.) or content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers.

Content Warnings are needed (Here is a link to help you with those if you need it!)

We currently do not support AI-generated games or games that make use of generative AI writing and art. Until legislation is put in place to ensure ethical training models that respect artist and creator copyright and regulate transparency on the use of AI in creative content, we will not allow the submission of games that utilise generative AI.

We kindly ask that you tag your game with the 'Amare' tag here on itch.io. This will ensure people who are watching the tag instead of just the jam page will see your game.

Join the discord to find others who are looking for festival partners, and to talk with other Amare Devs!

[steamberrystudio]

This is it — probably the funniest line I'll ever write in my lifetime as a person who's horrible at being funny on command. I'm probably way too proud of this, but thank you Jori for making me channel the humor in me that I never knew I had.

...Wait, it is funny, right? I'm not just exposing myself on how bad my sense of humor is?

*crickets*

Well uh, I'll just drop my obligatory daily plea for Steam wishlists here: if you haven't wishlisted the game yet, please do so! 🙏 Help out a solo indie dev who's godawful at marketing and at being funny.

[steamberrystudio]

Amare Fortnightly Bulletin 16/03/24 - 31/03/24

Hi everyone! Issue #13 of the news bulletin is out now! Be sure to check it out for game releases, updates, and several new Kickstarter campaigns that are coming up! 

~Amare News Team

Itch Link for Issue 12 Download - https://amaregames.itch.io/amare-new-bulletin-2024/devlog/707619/issue-13-released-mar-16-mar-31

[steamberrystudio]

Hi, I was wondering how much experience do the boys in Gilded Shadows have in dating? Did any of them have any long term relationships before meeting the heroine?

As a side note I really love Magnus's hair. He reminds me of Rapunzel trapped in a tower. Was that intentional?

Most of them have minimal to moderate relationship experience.

Ari had no dating experience prior to meeting Morgan.

Caissa previously had one or two semi-serious relationships.

Caleb has dated off and on but has only had a couple of semi-long term relationships (mostly due to work, etc).

Jack has also dated off and, like Caleb, has only had a couple of longer term relationships. And that was prior to leaving Endgame. Since returning to Delphine, he hasn't had an serious relationships.

Lance had a longer term relationship before his "accident" and move out to the Wastes. Since moving to the Wastes, of course, he hasn't been with anyone but his plants.

Magnus dated frequently before his accident as well but didn't really have anything super long term at the time. Since the accident, he hasn't dated (or wanted to date) anyone. (And yes, his hair was definitely meant to evoke a certain princess-in-a-tower feel. ha ha)

Quill has had several long term relationships before meeting Morgan and had a fair amount of dating experience..

Reuben also has been in several long term relationships that ended up going sour by the end.

Yuu has had a couple of longer term relationships, but only a couple.

So yeah, most of the lads have dated and have some relationship experience. Ari is the only one who had literally no dating experience at all before meeting Morgan

#Gilded Shadows #asks #dating experience

[steamberrystudio]

24/03/2024 Devlog

Hallo! Time for the bi-weekly tumblr update! 

Writing:

I have finished revising Chapter 6 and am about halfway through Chapter 7. Chapter 7 is the longest chapter in the game (by far) and will be longer when it's done as one of my goals is to flesh out the character interactions in this chapter and make them a little more interesting.

Art:

Received two new completed BGs (a restaurant and a Kav-specific BG) plus a new location sketch of, appropriately, a very sketchy place where sketchy things happen.

Other Stuff:

Nothing significant. I've been formatting each chapter as I get it revised but unlike a few months ago, I don't really have time to pick up many little extras on the side right now as real life is quite chaotic and busy, which means it's just easier mentally to focus on one game-development thing at a time instead of bouncing around.

I do have a little break this upcoming week so hopefully I can tick a few small things off the to-do list though including a few residual things I have to finish for GS backers who are waiting on some artwork.

Upcoming Weeks:

Mostly I will be focusing on the revision until it's done. I'm currently more than halfway through editing, and making decent progress though it doesn't always feel like it.

Chapter 7 is about halfway edited and is the longest remaining chapter to revise. (Not that the chapters after this are short - just short by comparison.)

The next two chapters are a little shorter and have a slightly higher ratio of common content in them so I'm hoping I can edit them faster since the "common" content has already been revised once.

I'm not quite optimistic enough to think I could get through two whole chapters in the upcoming week but I'll dream about it at least. Ha ha.

That's all for now!

Remember if you want more detailed and weekly updates, you can support on Patreon, where I update every week!

#when stars collide #devlog #indie otome game #amare game #updates

[steamberrystudio]

Amare Fortnightly Bulletin 1/03/24 - 15/03/24

Hey Everyone!

Issue 12 of the bulletin is out now!

The last two weeks have been slow in regards to new Visual Novel launches or game updates, but you'll find quite a lot of Interactive Fiction news so if that is your jam make sure to check out this fortnight's issue! There is also a bunch of event news for Amare including new game jams, Kickstarter news, and sales! Big thank you to everyone who has been checking out the bulletin each fortnight and a warm welcome to new readers. ~AB Team Itch Link for Issue 12 Download - https://amaregames.itch.io/amare-new-bulletin-2024/devlog/698674/issue-12-released-mar-1-mar-15th

[steamberrystudio]

☀️RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT💀

Kanau is officially out! It's a horror/romance visual novel, following up my previous game, Karamu. It's a story about two broken children finding each other. It's animated and fully voice-acted! You can play it here!

🔽More info below!🔽

Synopsis

On the eve of his tenth birthday, Rakuo Kumode undergoes his family’s “initiation rite.” When he bucks against his family traditions, he has an encounter that will change the course of his life forever…in good and bad ways. 

A story about two broken children finding each other.

Features!

📖12k words (~1 hour playtime) 💃Animated 🎨Storybook format, told entirely with unique illustrations 🎙️Fully voiced! ☀️13 CGs and 18 mini CGs 💀Yandere origin story (just like the comics???) ✨Suffering

WARNING

This game deals heavily with the topic of child abuse, and as a whole it's a bit darker than Karamu was. Please review the content warnings and play with discretion.

[steamberrystudio]

And now this is Dr. Nichole Baumann in Step 2! Tamarack's mother 🥺

She is equally to blame for the difficult family dynamic going on with Tamarack. But things are made even worse by Tamarack's grandparents preferring to blame Nichole alone and never their own son, Fred. It's not a great time for anyone, ahah.

Our Life: Now & Forever is a nostalgic Visual Novel where you create your own character and grow from childhood to adulthood with your two closest neighbors. It’s currently in development by GB Patch Games.

Steam Page

Itch.io Page

Discord -  Twitter - Website - Patreon

[steamberrystudio]

Join us for the Amare Games Festival 2024! A Game Jam celebrating love and diversity in story-focused games!

Amare Games Festival 2024

Join us in April for the 2024 Amare Games Festival, a game jam celebrating love and diversity in story-focused games!

For this festival we invite you to create or update a game that you believe falls under the Amare Genre tag!

Don't forget to Sign up for the Festival on the Amare Games Festival Itch Page.

What is Amare?

Why a festival?

Jams are an awesome way to get the creative juices flowing and challenge yourself to create a game in a short amount of time. However, there are already a lot of amazing projects in progress, so it's important to celebrate those and give people the opportunity to focus on setting and achieving goals with their existing projects as well.

Examples of Submissions

A new game.

A new demo or Vertical slice.

A new chapter update to an existing game.

Adding new features or content to an existing game.

The festival has fairly relaxed rules, but in general, we would like all participants to keep these in mind:

Rules:

You must Release or Update during the festival period. Work can be commenced before the start of the festival.

Please clearly label demos or first episodes as such. - This is to help us organise the entries

Please clearly state the exact update or new content that was added during the festival.

Submissions can be Free or Commercial.

NSFW must be properly labelled, but is fine as long as it adheres to Itch.io's TOS

No hate speech, (i.e. speech that promotes hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.) or content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers.

Content Warnings are needed (Here is a link to help you with those if you need it!)

We currently do not support AI-generated games or games that make use of generative AI writing and art. Until legislation is put in place to ensure ethical training models that respect artist and creator copyright and regulate transparency on the use of AI in creative content, we will not allow the submission of games that utilise generative AI.

We kindly ask that you tag your game with the 'Amare' tag here on itch.io. This will ensure people who are watching the tag instead of just the jam page will see your game.

Join the discord to find others who are looking for festival partners, and to talk with other Amare Devs!

[steamberrystudio]

Announcing the Amare Games Festival 2024

Amare Games Festival 2024

Join us in April for the 2024 Amare Games Festival, a celebration of love and diversity in story-focused games!

For this festival we invite you to create or update a game that you believe falls under the Amare Genre tag!

What is Amare?

Why a festival?

Jams are an awesome way to get the creative juices flowing and challenge yourself to create a game in a short amount of time. However, there are already a lot of amazing projects in progress, so it's important to celebrate those and give people the opportunity to focus on setting and achieving goals with their existing projects as well.

Examples of Submissions

A new game.

A new demo or Vertical slice.

A new chapter update to an existing game.

Adding new features or content to an existing game.

The festival has fairly relaxed rules, but in general, we would like all participants to keep these in mind:

Rules:

You must Release or Update during the festival period. Work can be commenced before the start of the festival.

Please clearly label demos or first episodes as such. - This is to help us organise the entries

Please clearly state the exact update or new content that was added during the festival.

Submissions can be Free or Commercial.

NSFW must be properly labelled, but is fine as long as it adheres to Itch.io's TOS

No hate speech, (i.e. speech that promotes hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.) or content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers.

Content Warnings are needed (Here is a link to help you with those if you need it!)

We currently do not support AI-generated games or games that make use of generative AI writing and art. Until legislation is put in place to ensure ethical training models that respect artist and creator copyright and regulate transparency on the use of AI in creative content, we will not allow the submission of games that utilise generative AI.

We kindly ask that you tag your game with the 'Amare' tag here on itch.io. This will ensure people who are watching the tag instead of just the jam page will see your game.

Join the discord to find others who are looking for festival partners, and to talk with other Amare Devs!

Sign up for the Festival on the Amare Games Festival Itch Page.

[steamberrystudio]

Announcing the Amare Games Festival 2024

Amare Games Festival 2024

Join us in April for the 2024 Amare Games Festival, a celebration of love and diversity in story-focused games!

For this festival we invite you to create or update a game that you believe falls under the Amare Genre tag!

What is Amare?

Why a festival?

Jams are an awesome way to get the creative juices flowing and challenge yourself to create a game in a short amount of time. However, there are already a lot of amazing projects in progress, so it's important to celebrate those and give people the opportunity to focus on setting and achieving goals with their existing projects as well.

Examples of Submissions

A new game.

A new demo or Vertical slice.

A new chapter update to an existing game.

Adding new features or content to an existing game.

The festival has fairly relaxed rules, but in general, we would like all participants to keep these in mind:

Rules:

You must Release or Update during the festival period. Work can be commenced before the start of the festival.

Please clearly label demos or first episodes as such. - This is to help us organise the entries

Please clearly state the exact update or new content that was added during the festival.

Submissions can be Free or Commercial.

NSFW must be properly labelled, but is fine as long as it adheres to Itch.io's TOS

No hate speech, (i.e. speech that promotes hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.) or content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers.

Content Warnings are needed (Here is a link to help you with those if you need it!)

We currently do not support AI-generated games or games that make use of generative AI writing and art. Until legislation is put in place to ensure ethical training models that respect artist and creator copyright and regulate transparency on the use of AI in creative content, we will not allow the submission of games that utilise generative AI.

We kindly ask that you tag your game with the 'Amare' tag here on itch.io. This will ensure people who are watching the tag instead of just the jam page will see your game.

Join the discord to find others who are looking for festival partners, and to talk with other Amare Devs!

Sign up for the Festival on the Amare Games Festival Itch Page.

[steamberrystudio]

Amare Fortnightly Bulletin 16/02/24 - 29/02/24

Hello everyone!

Issue 11 of the news bulletin is out! Please be sure to check it out this week as there have been a ton of new games, demos, and DLC releases. Additionally, a lot is going on over on Kickstarter.

If you're interested in seeing a ton of new projects, this is the perfect week to check it out!

~AB team

Itch Link for Download - https://amaregames.itch.io/amare-new-bulletin-2024

[steamberrystudio]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #9 | 02.29.24

What is this?! Two devlogs in one month?! More likely than you think! This February has been very productive for me and the team, so let's dive right into it!

Ooooh boy, Raquel keeps knocking it out of the park! She managed to get done every expression for every LI, and I coded them all! Now we have our wonderful characters ready for their debut. We have been using the wonderful Image Tools for Ren'py made by the talented and hard-working Feniks, whose tutorials and resources save a lot of dev's lives every day! This tool has made everything a bit easier for newbies like me, hehe.

Here's a taste of our edgelord's expressions! 💜 They're kind of a cutie when they put some effort into it!

We also had our second valentine's day celebration art piece thanks to Kayden! Sadly with the reworked version of the demo, you won't meet Vycar yet, so we thought we could ask for his forgiveness by giving him a beautiful bouquet and reminding him how much of a sweetheart he is! 💜

Also, Raeya got a hair update!

So, we weren't completely satisfied with the way we portrayed Raeya's hair, so this has been a rework we were sure we wanted to make. At first we were just going to render it again, but we ended up working on it from scratch to better represent what we envisioned for her. We hope you like it as much as we do! ; v ;💜

As always, we are open to any critique or advice; we are white people who have the luck to be able to ask POC friends for their advice as we work, but the more the merrier! Don't hesitate to send us your opinion to our ask box or even our email, [email protected]!

When it comes to the background department, we have been making great progress thanks to Airyn, who is honestly leaving us with our mouths hanging open every time! Thanks to her, another background has been finished and another one is in the making, leaving only two backgrounds to be revised and approved!

I personally can't stop looking at this WIP! She understood perfectly what we wanted to portray just by looking at an old WIP we had, and this is what we have so far—and it's already amazing!

Allie has been OBLITERATING the script. As of today, I think we have almost gone through everything that needed to be corrected and discussing, and lord if the script doesn't look a 100% better after we put it in Allie's hands. The way she writes, the way she understands everything I want to say even when sometimes I don't even know myself—what a talented, inspiring and amazing writer they are. I know I may sound annoying at this point singing her praises endlessly, but if the script is in the state where it is now, it's thanks to her!

My programming adventure of the month has been a success, if I say so myself! I've coded the characters with aaaaall their layers, their expressions, the blinking animations, made some videos, and started coding the script. Step by step as they say; I've coded 18 pages, and there's, uh...142 more to go. Haha! *sobs*

BUT WE ARE GETTING THERE! We can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I can finally click 'new game' and read the script and see the stuff going on! YAY!

Some extras of the month—we are preparing a Casting Call to choose the voice acting talent that will hopefully give voice to our characters. The demo won't be fully voiced (it's impossible with the funds we have, which are...zero), but if we are lucky we'll use some of our personal savings to pay for at least a few lines for each character so you can get an idea of how they'll sound if we get funded! Raquel is preparing an art piece for the announcement, and I'm getting the document ready and asking fellow VA friends for advice :3.

Also, we have a new member here at Ravenstar Games! Some weeks ago Astro and I formally adopted our first kitty, 8 month old Riki, fulfilling one of our dreams. We got him from a feline association that works with volunteers and fosters cats who have been abandoned, cats they find on the street, and so on. Riki has been living with me since January, and he's a happy, long big boy who loves playing, cuddles, and sitting on my desk while I try to work!

Say hi to the Ravenstar family, Riki! 💜

A productive month full of accomplished milestones, excitement and new challenges! The team has worked so hard, and I've done my part too! We still don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but we have done a lot of stuff we were sure we wouldn't finish yet, and look at that! We are doing so well!

As you can probably tell, my batteries are starting to run low, so I'm going to leave this devlog here. Thank you all like always for cheering us on, for being here in this journey with us, and for all the love you send our way. Let's hope March is as amazing as February has been, for us and for all of you! 💜

[steamberrystudio]

25/02/2024

Hallo! Time for the bi-weekly tumblr update! It's been a little chaotic...

(which, I have to say that at some point I think I'm going to have to acknowledge that my life is just in a permanent chaos state or something because I say "it's been chaotic" every time, but it's always true!)

I've been editing and editing and editing...and also coding stuffs!

Updates:

Writing is up first as always. I have been editing like crazy. I've decided to through the game chapter by chapter instead of route by route. This is going to make it a bit easier for me to keep thing straight from a continuity perspective.

I am currently working on Chapter 5 - which is probably going to be the case for a while because it's a really long chapter (like...65,000 words).

Art-wise, I have been off and on working on Kav's introductory CG. It's not a high priority thing since it's not needed yet but I'd still like to get it done. I just have to render out the background and then it'll be ready.

In other art news, I continue to get BGs and BG sketches.

And for other stuff...

Feniks has been continuing to work on and refine the flowchart code. Of course, a lot of what they're doing in that regard entails "below the fold" stuff that won't mean much to the player but that I'm personally excited about. Ha ha.

Another big one is that I've reworked the choice menus to maybe make choice selection a little more intuitive for players without adding any overt choice labels. This is going to require me to go through and update all the existing menus in the game but it's a relatively small update in terms of code. 

Gilded Shadows stuff...

Finished proofreading and editing the lore book but I haven't had time to wrap everything up with that just yet.

Once I finish getting these out to backers and patrons, those will be up on Itch.io for purchase.

Screenshots:

In the upcoming weeks, I intend to.........

Continue in Editing Purgatory. It will be this way for a while. I'm hoping to get finished with chapter 5 by my next update here.

I always work on other things too but it's kind of hard to list those because there's a lot that needs to be done in general.

So yeah, that's it.

Remember if you want more detailed and weekly updates, you can support on Patreon, where I update every week!

#gilded shadows #whenstarscollide #indie otome game #amare game #updates

[steamberrystudio]

Amare Fortnightly Bulletin 1/02/24 - 15/02/24

Hi everyone! 

Issue 10, covering from the 1st of February until the 15th is now uploaded.  Amare news is heating up again with more releases, updates, and crowdfunding going up. Ace Jam also wrapped up within this time frame so be sure to have a look at that.

There were a few last minute game announcements and releases we caught but the bulletin was finalised by then so we'll definitely catch them in the next update! But that just shows there is a lot going on in the world of VNs right now!

Be sure to check out the issues and all the new content out there.

~AB Team

[steamberrystudio]

Hey just finally finished playing Gilded Shadows, and I loved it so much!!! Been following since changling and I can’t wait for When Stars Collide.

I have a question (and apologies if it’s already been answered) what are all the LI from GS ethnicities?

Hi there! I do know what you're asking and I have answered it in the past but I do want to point out that Gilded Shadows happens centuries in the future and on another planet. Even if the characters have a specific ethnic heritage, for most of them it doesn't inform significant part of their heritage simply because their nationality, species, or identity as an Esper is really where their identity comes from.

The civil war - which lasted decades - in particular, wreaked havoc with the population's connection to their Earth heritage. Most don't have much in the way of anything that ties them to Earth other than DNA.

If you said the name of the country their ancestors hailed from to most of them, they couldn't tell you anything about it or really even have a mental picture of what that is. Most of the residual cultural ties between Earth and Arcalis are things like names and food and clothing, some religious beliefs, and that sort of thing.

Additionally, most of the characters are more of a broad mix of things rather than having a single specific ethnic connection to an Earth people/area/culture.

Below is a list of their *strongest* ancestral and ethnic links to Earth but they probably all have a mix.

Ari, Caissa, and Magnus all have ancestral ties to Europe (and probably other places, of course).

Caleb has ancestral ties to China and probably has the most cultural connection since it's something he's specifically researched.

Jack has ancestral ties to the Caribbean Islands and Latin America.

Lance has ancestral ties to Europe and Southwest Asia.

Reuben has ties to Southwest Asia and Northern Africa.

Yuu has ancestral ties to Northern Europe and Japan.

Quill, I'm not sure. He does have organic bits, like all Neo Humans. So, presumably, he has some sort of ancestral heritage you could tie to Earth, but I never really determined where.

#gilded shadows #asks