#lgbt otome

[heartfragment]

Heart Fragment Winter Sale - 50% off!

If you don't own Heart Fragment Book Two: Belief Fragments yet, it is on sale right now for 50% off on both Steam and Itch!

Please consider supporting through Itch if possible. More profits go to the creators there, and it comes with a Steam key as well. Your support will help with finishing up the creation of Book Three.

Happy holidays, everyone!

#heart fragment #steam sale #itchio sale #otome #otome game #otome games #yuri game #visual novel #lgbt otome #lgbt visual novel #english otome game #english otome games #indie otome #amare game #amare games #amare

[imma-write-stuff]

I found this vampire otome from kickstarter

Its called Bite Me it gives me Touchstarved vibes link is in the replies

#vampires #otome #video games #lgbt otome #vampire otome #visual novel #vampire romance #lgbtqia #lgbt

[breathlesswinds]

(Devlog) What We Learned Making A Trans Dating Game

Hello, Amelia here, the writer for Breathless Winds. It's been 250,000+ words, countless revisions, and three years since this game entered development, and I wanted to talk about what I've learned leading up to release.

The concept for Breathless Winds was actually sort of a joke between friends. I was talking with Doris about how there should be a dating game where you play as a trans woman and your dating options revolve around certain ‘tropes’ we’d both seen in trans fiction-- the totally accepting cishet guy who falls in love with the trans heroine before she even knows she’s a woman, the cool trans woman who the heroine doesn’t know if she wants to date or wants to be, and so on.

Doris wound up suggesting we make this game ourselves. We both like visual novels and want to tell LGBT stories. Still half-jokingly and half-seriously, we started fleshing out what the romance options would be and coming up with a setting-- and soon, we were fully committed to making this game real.

I was a fan of visual novels but had only ever written prose. I knew which visual novels I liked and which scenes stood out, but I didn’t know why they did or how to make my own. 

I read some great advice from visual novel developers, but a good amount of my knowledge came from just working on Breathless Winds. As our first project, this game has grown a lot with us and we’ve learned a lot while making it.

Learning How to Write Visual Novels

A bad habit I had to break out of was only using the ‘novel’ part of the game and not the ‘visual’ part. I would sometimes write “He smiled” or lines like that, and Doris informed me that we can convey this much more simply with a sprite change.

It sounds obvious in retrospect, but lines like that are often pretty invisible when you’re reading a non-visual novel. These lines change the sprite of the character inside your head (if that makes sense, haha). I realized that I’m so used to them being ‘invisible’ that I didn’t notice their absence in visual novels I liked, so I would accidentally include them while writing. 

I was also writing these routes in a word processor, so I didn’t have the visual portion to reference, myself. I wound up making a lot of ‘tone’ notes like, “Lantana should be smug here” so that the meaning would carry when revising and implementing these into Ren’py. 

So, while visual novels share a lot with prose, they’re an entirely different medium. On the subject of representing things visually, I’ve struggled trying to figure out how much can be visually represented and how much should be written. 

Every asset in the game has to be drawn by Doris, so if I want the characters to go to a new location for a scene, I have to keep in mind that’s another background that Doris has to draw. If I want a new character to show up, that’s another sprite she has to draw. I don’t want to overload her, but if I’m trying to avoid this entirely, characters sometimes wind up standing in one room talking for ages without anything significant changing on-screen.

I’ve learned that it’s recommended for something to almost always be changing on-screen, though, so sometimes I just have to ask Doris to make a new asset for a certain scene. I still try to stick to locations/characters that already exist more often than not.

Every single thing in a visual novel is deliberate. Another thing I’ve had to learn that I never even considered before is how to write each line so it fits in the text box. It sounds obvious, but when I’m playing a visual novel, I don’t usually think about how each line has to be carefully constructed so it doesn’t need to be split up into two or more text boxes. In my mind, if a visual novel is well-created, there’s not much that breaks a reader’s immersion.

Planning & Outlining

The previous section might sound really weird to some people, so let me elaborate.  I’m a lifelong ‘write by the seat of your pants’-er, so the biggest trial-and-error of creating Breathless Winds for me was planning out the game.

Initially, I created outlines for each of the four routes, and we agreed ahead of time on which CGs each route would have. That way, Doris could draw the necessary backgrounds and CGs while I was in the long process of drafting this game.  My original outlines weren’t great. I know a lot of people have different experiences with writing, but for me personally, a story is always shaping itself in my mind. When I started making the outlines for Breathless Winds, I knew the concepts we wanted to convey, but I didn’t know what each route (and the game as a whole) was really about yet. This might sound weird and unprofessional, but sometimes, I don’t know what a story is about until I finish the first draft.

So while I was writing, I would look at my outlines and I would think, “this doesn’t actually make sense, he wouldn’t say that” or “this plot point would work better if moved to this other section” or “there’s a plot hole here I didn’t notice”. The story wound up changing a lot in this way as I learned what it’s really ‘about’. 

And even after I finished the first draft, I’d get feedback from Doris and/or my editor and they would suggest fixes to problems that even I hadn’t noticed, and then I would revise the route some more, and later on I’d come back and need to redo part of the route to comply with something I wrote in a later route-- I haven’t really felt ‘finished’ with Breathless Winds at any point, and I think I’ll still feel this way after the game is released.

This means that sometimes, a background was created but would go unused because there was no space for the scene that would use it, or we’d need a new CG last-minute, or so on. 

When I’m figuring things out as I go while writing a non-VN, the only person that I can adversely affect is my own self… so I’m eternally grateful for all of Doris’s patience with me on this matter. I think Breathless Winds has come out a much better game for all the re-plotting and revision. 

I redid the outlines several times as I went. I think I’ve understood how to create outlines that personally work for me-- ‘living’ outlines that hit all the main points, but leave wiggle room for moments when a character does something unexpected, work the best for me.

Scope Creep

So, originally, each route was meant to be 40,000 words. “With four routes, that’s only 160,000 words!” I thought. “And some of my favorite visual novels are about that long, so I can write that much, too!” ← clueless

This is the most infamous mistake that new creators make, and I walked right into it. I should have known better since I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with past non-VN writing projects before, but I was starry-eyed and didn’t realize how much work it is to make a VN. Some of those favorite visual novels I referenced were made by much larger teams, writers whose full-time job was writing (I wrote all of these routes on the side while working at a day job). 

If I could have done it again, I would have asked Doris to start out with a really short VN. But, I don’t regret making Breathless Winds at all. It’s brought Doris and I a lot closer, for one. Every time I thought I wanted to give up on this, Doris would motivate me to continue. Without the two of us both and our strong friendship, Breathless Winds wouldn’t exist, and I think that’s beautiful. 

No matter what, we’re going to see it through to the end. (I hope people like it, though…)

Anyway, here I am talking about how much 40,000 words is. Each route now is about 60k to 70k words. The problem with having evolving outlines is that they can often evolve into double their original size.

We came up with the idea of the poachers really early in development, and then not addressing the poachers felt like a failing, but by that point it was too late to remove the poachers entirely… and so the game wound up a lot longer dealing with the poachers. 

I think that if we had an editor sooner on in the game’s development, then we might have had someone to tell us, “do you really need all of this in the game? Does this plot point really need to be there? Will you be able to write all of this in a reasonable amount of time?”, haha. But Doris and I were really excited about the possibilities of this game when we started creating it, and without anyone to reel us back in, we wound up coming up with more and more things we wanted to put in the game.

Did you know there was going to be an island full of talking rats who say things like “the big cheese” and stuff all the time in Breathless Winds? Yeah. 

The Core Design Philosophy of Breathless Winds

So, for anyone who’s read this far but doesn’t know yet-- the premise of Breathless Winds is that you play as a trans woman who doesn’t know she’s trans yet, and she finds love with one of four love interests as she discovers her gender identity. 

In real life, it can be a lot messier for a person to date when discovering their gender identity. To put it briefly and mildly, a trans person’s life and sense of personal identity can rapidly change during a gender crisis and the early stages of transition. 

However, we wanted to make this game a ‘wish-fulfillment’ type story-- a trans fantasy about acceptance, community, and love. During a gender crisis, it can be easy to feel as if one has lost touch with themselves and become isolated from others. A sincere wish shared by many trans people is to be accepted, loved, and even celebrated as their true gender, not just tolerated. 

Since many trans people don’t get love and acceptance in real life, especially with the ongoing transphobic moral panic, we wanted to create a game that would bring this feeling of trans joy and celebration to trans audiences. 

We also hope that cis players will still enjoy the story and characters, and maybe come away from the game with a new understanding about being transgender and other aspects of LGBT identity (although we never intended this game to be ‘educational’).

Making Characters that Celebrate Trans Identity

Although we went through several revisions, the core identities of each character stayed the same since the game was first ‘jokingly’ pitched. In another post, I discussed how each character is themed around a change in seasons. (I also wound up theming them around the four humors when I was initially concepting them-- I really wanted to avoid too much ‘overlap’ in the LI’s personalities, haha). 

Ultimately, characters are created to serve a role. The LIs in Breathless Winds were designed to be love interests, of course-- characters who would appeal to the hypothetical trans femme audience. As mentioned earlier, we modeled them after other trans fiction tropes because these types of characters have a certain tried-and-true appeal, but this left plenty of flexibility to put our own spin on it. 

A trans woman being loved as a woman by a cishet guy can feel like a high form of ‘passing’, ‘fitting in’ to the female gender role, and being validated by his orientation. He only likes women, and he likes you, so you’re undoubtedly a woman. As a cishet guy, he represents a sort of acceptance into a societal norm that trans women can desire to live to. (Lantana, as a cis lesbian, represents the sapphic counterpoint to this-- although there is of course a big gap between the ‘normalcy’ of a cishet man and a cis lesbian woman, and I don’t mean to say those two are equivalent.) 

But not all trans women want to live to that (cis) societal norm. Rue and Valerian, as a trans woman and a trans man respectively, are the t4t options. 

Rue’s route represents that trans/sapphic ‘envy’ (“do I want her or do I want to be her?”) as well as finding power in community aside from what society considers ‘normal’. We’ve always been pretty clear about what we wanted to do with Rue’s route.

We went back and forth a lot more on Valerian’s route. Initially, we were unsure if he should be trans. He and Rue are the two less-friendly love interests (at least initially), so I was afraid it would come across that t4t is a more hostile option, which is not true at all. But it also felt like a mistake to not have a trans man in the game-- but making Gallardia trans would have required a big overhaul of what we had in mind for him and his route. (Although, childhood friends t4t is a really good idea...)

Beyond that, Valerian takes a villainous role in any route that isn't his own. We were worried that it would be wrong to have a trans antagonist who represents unjust power. However, Breathless Winds is a queer game with other positive trans characters, and we've always approached Valerian as a hot anti-villain man that you can't help but like.

In the end, Valerian’s route is about breaking generational cycles and what it is that makes you a man, and I also managed to sneak in a scene where they dance at a ball in the royal palace, so in the end I think it all worked out great.

Wish Fulfillment and Catharsis

Doris and I both agreed that we wouldn’t depict on-screen transphobia in Breathless Winds. Poppy worries about not being accepted, but fear of acceptance can come with any change in identity. Rue was rejected by her family for being trans, but this doesn’t take place ‘on screen’ in the game. There exist certain metaphorical parallels for transness and transphobia, but every route has a happy ending. 

Following up on this-- it can be difficult to write about discovery of gender identity without writing about transphobia, considering how many trans people suffer from internalized transphobia during their period of repression.

Sometimes, repressed/closeted transgender people ‘hyper-perform’ their assigned gender as a form of denial. A trans woman might grow out a beard and join a gym, while a trans man might become very interested in makeup and feminine clothing. 

In Breathless Winds, Poppy often struggles with ‘strength’ and what it means to be a man. In several routes, she tries to prove her strength under the assumption that being stronger would make her happy. Afraid the world would reject her if she became who she really is, she preemptively rejects herself.

Not every trans person suffers from prolonged denial, internalized transphobia, or even gender dysphoria. I don’t think it’s impossible to tell a purely-positive story about trans joy. 

While Poppy never gets rejected for being trans, faces transphobia, gets called a slur, etc, she faces both internal and external (metaphorical) obstacles to realizing and accepting her identity. 

Gallardia represents a societal norm that Poppy can’t live up to herself as a man.

Lantana suffers from certain aspects of her identity as a woman, which makes Poppy feel guilt for wanting to be a girl.

Rue is isolated from town at the start of her route, a ‘punishment’ for breaking this societal norm.

Valerian has to hyper-conform to his masculine gender role at first in toxic ways before finding acceptance from within and from his loved ones.

These struggles are real to a lot of people, but instead of pretending they don’t exist, I hoped to tell a story about catharsis. Poppy is able to live up to her truth as a woman and finds love with Gallardia, Poppy and Lantana redefine what being a woman should and does mean to them, Rue and Poppy find community in others who don’t fit the norm, Poppy and Valerian stop seeking gender validation from a society that was never made to serve them. 

Although these powerful forces of oppression exist, loving yourself as a trans person- and loving those around you, protecting the natural world, and standing up for what you believe in- can save the day. That’s the kind of story we wanted to tell.

Wrap-up

There’s a lot more I could write, but this has already gotten really long (sorry!) so I’ll wrap it up here. 

Learning how to write a visual novel in terms of technical skill (how to depict events on-screen, how long each line should be) as well as in terms of writing skill (how to outline the game, how to plan visual assets) has been a massive undertaking for me. 

Writing Breathless Winds has been a big challenge but also deeply rewarding, and all of your support has made the experience even more wonderful. Thank you for reading and thank you for supporting the game!

#visual novel #otome #dating sim #amare #trans #lgbt #breathless winds

[zephyo]

STOP BURYING ME ALIVE, BEAUTIFUL🩸

Made for Ludum Dare 54.

You're between a rock, a hard place, and a lot of rats.

Play it here: https://zephyo.itch.io/stop-burying-me-alive-beautiful

#ludum dare 54 #ld54 #game jam #game dev #indie dev #visual novel #indie otome #lgbt #wlw

[magicalwarriordiamondheart]

Val wants 2 kiss all of them on the mouth and you should let her do whatever she wants cause she is cute.

1 Like = 1 more kissy kiss for Val

✨Wishlist✨Demo✨

#magical warrior diamond heart #mwdh #magical girl #magical boy #mahou shoujo #visual novel #otome game #indie dev #game dev #visual novels #visual novel game #indie games #queer games #lgbt games

[missshoujo]

Free Otome Games on Steam

Royal Order (just demo and LGBT+)

Dark Nights

Our Life: Beginnings % Always (LGBT+)

Blush Blush ( +18 and LGBT+)

Error143

Nekopara - Catboys Paradise

Winter Worm, Summer Grass (+18)

How to Take Off Your Mask Remastered

#romance #shoujo #otome game #lgbt+ #adult game #catboy #error143 #blush blush #our life #free game

[lunonoxart]

Micah Yujin from Error143.  The game is so good, and he is such a good character. Also trying a new lineart style.

#micah yujin #error 143 #error143 #visual novel #dating sim #video games #video game fanart #micah yujin fanart #digital art #art #sketch #anime #indie game #jenny vi pham #lgbt #lgbtq #otome #otome game

[ebi-hime]

Hello everyone! \o/ I'm writing a quick post to let you know that a few of my VNs are discounted on Steam at the moment, including the gloomy historical otome(-ish) VN With Eyes of Ice and the atmospheric yuri VN Rituals in the Dark! You can check out my discounted VNs here! With Eyes of Ice (GxB, historical, drama, pretty gloomy): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355830 Rituals in the Dark (yuri, atmospheric, vaguely spooky): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118880 Unluckily in Love (yaoi, slice of life, cute, wholesome, mild drama): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2146500 Embraced by Autumn (BxG, historical, crossdressing male protag, multiple routes!!!): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1639920 There's quite a selection of VNs which are discounted, so I hope you all find something you enjoy!

#visual novel #indie game #indie visual novel #indiedev #yuri #wlw fiction #lgbt fiction #lgbtq #yaoi game #otome #indie otome #english otome #renpy #sasalele

[clowningclownn]

my game is up on itchio!! its listed under the name: Uncanny Desire

please check it out, it's free. if you find any bugs or issues, please feel free to write a comment about it and ill fix it!

https://quixoticvein.itch.io/uncanny-desire

#pickle post #art #uncanny desire #horror #romance #dating sim #visual novel #cryptid #pretty lady #illustration #game design #game development #renpy #otome #lgbtqia #lgbt #halloween #women #itchio #free game

[galengames]

Chapter one of Dual Chroma: Academy Carols is out!!

play: https://galengames.itch.io/academy-carols

“Winter break has come to Aradal. Unable to afford the journey back home, you brace yourself for a long snowfall alone at the Magic Academy, only to find you aren't the last student left on campus. What's more, among your newfound festive companions is the popular and typically unapproachable Prince Keldrannon - the last person you'd expect to stay.

What begins as a sad and solitary wintertide soon thaws into the promise of something far more precious. Warmth, friendship, perhaps even love.

A thoroughly merry and magical celebration may await you, after all.”

❤️ Romance an imperial prince

❤️ pick your pronouns and magic type

❤️ immerse yourself in a cozy fantasy world

More chapters to come soon!

#OELVN #datingsim #otome #english otome #lgbt representation #amare games #galengames #dating sim #interactive fiction #magic academy #visualnovel #visual novel

[lovesoflauryn]

Halloween 🎃 is coming up and I’m not big on scary games but this one caught my eye and the DEMO was AMAZING !!!! The art is a gorgeous! You can watch my demo Play through up above⬆️

Steam Description: Little Goody Two Shoes is a horror narrative adventure game, set in a hand-painted fairy tale environment. There are 10 possible endings to fit your choices and actions in the game.

-Kieferberg is a small and devout village, which means Elise will need to carefully navigate her relationships with the villagers to avoid arousing suspicion of witchcraft and be left to die in the Woods as punishment.

-At night, Elise can roam around the Woodlands, a mystical and phantasmagorical realm where enigmas and deadly enemies await as she tries to uncover its secrets.

-Through a limited day and night cycle Elise will need to carefully manage her needs if she wants to stay alive to finish her tale.

-Get struck by Cupid’s arrow and fall in love with the charming bachelorettes of Kieferberg. In this all-female cast of romanceable characters, unlock dreamy date scenes and storylines for each of them.(Dating sim?)

#gaming #anime #horror games #halloween #scary games #little goody two shoes #pocket mirror #sequel #horror gaming #lgbt games #yuri game #romance game #dating sim #Youtube #otome #rpg maker #rpg horror #survival horror

[heartfragment]

Heart Fragment Book Two: Belief Fragments is still 50% off for 3 more days!

If you don't own Heart Fragment Book Two: Belief Fragments yet, it is still on sale until January 4, 2024 on both Steam and Itch!

Please consider supporting through Itch if possible. More profits go to the creators there, and it comes with a Steam key as well. As mentioned before, any support you give will help with finishing up the creation of Book Three!

Happy New Year, everyone! Have a fantastic 2024!

#heart fragment #visual novel #dating sim #interactive fiction #otome #otome game #english otome games #english otome game #english visual novel #renpy visual novel #amare game #amare games #amare #steam sale #itchio sale #itch sale #otoge #indie otome #indie visual novel #lgbt otome #lgbt visual novel #yuri game #yuri visual novel

[chizuny]

Finally almost all game bgs are done! wich means we are one step closer to the demo re release !!

#indie game #indie game dev #indie game developer #otome game #dating sim #lgbt game #visual novel

[breathlesswinds]

Breathless Winds has a demo out on Steam! A LGBT otome game about self-discovery, protecting nature, and finding love with four potential love interests, the full version will release later this year. Add Breathless Winds to your wishlist to receive updates about the game's release!

#lgbt #otome #visual novel #dating sim #trans

[tricitymonsters]

MORI’S UPGRADED CHAPTER IS FINALLY PUBLIC!!

You can play the “final” version of his intro chapter on Itch.io for free!

Features!

Choose your name and Pronouns

Sex scenes with customizable body types

3 endings

Hot Punks

Hot CatBeast (Technically a hot Bakeneko for those in the know!)

Incredibly Rad Artwork by Atlas / @totatoti​

Currently about 45-50min long with stream-safe audio!

Content Warnings!

Lots of adult language

Use of Alcohol

Blood & Violence

Mild Body Horror

Explicit Sex/18+/NSFW

If you like the game, please consider telling your friends/posting about it on socials.  I’m a solo dev and keeping the game free relies on help from not only my very cool patrons, but also the wider community at large spreading the word. 

#renpy #visual novel #interactive fiction #kinetic novel #r18 otome #otome #lgbt+ games #monsterfucker

[magicalwarriordiamondheart]

Welcome to the official Tumblr for Magical Warrior Diamond Heart! 💖

Valerie Amaranth, an ordinary 16 year old, has her world changed forever when she receives the power to transform into a magical girl: The legendary Crystal Warrior, Diamond Heart! Now with the help of Diana, she must find her allies, defeat the Nightmare Agency, and rescue the missing princess, Rosalia! Magical Warrior Diamond Heart is an otome visual novel inspired by magical girl anime. Play as Valerie and decide the fate of the world, eat delicious donuts, and even smooch lots of cuties! Will Val defeat the Nightmares, make new friends, and find love? Or will she meet her tragic end?

✨ Available for PC, Mac, Linux, and Android devices ✨

💖Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Magical Girl, Comedy, Drama, Action

💖Rating: 13+ for Violence, blood, body horror, drug reference, language, and crude humor. Click here for a more detailed content warning list.

The free-to-play version of the game will have

FOUR adorable and distinct characters to smooch (Sophie,  Ethan,  Zacharie, and Opal)

A friendship route with the fairy Amber, if you'd rather not smooch anyone at all!

Male, female, and a nonbinary love interests to pursue.

Dozens of beautifully illustrated original artworks

Partial English voice acting from a very talented voice cast!

200k+ words of content!

DLC content to include:

Even more adorable DLC characters to smooch! (Alex,  Liam, Clover, Chandra, and Diana)

Even more artwork gorgeous artwork to admire!

Extra bonus episodes!

400k+ words of content!

🌸 Official Website 🌸 Meet the characters 🌸

🎀 Youtube - Watch clips from the game, occasional devlogs, and other little videos I come up with! 🎀 TikTok - Silly memes and videos about the characters! 🎀 Twitter - General updates, but with way less talking space 🎀 Patreon - Exclusive updates, WIPs, and early access to builds 🎀 Discord - Community server, chat with other fans and post about secret spoilers in the backer build channel lol!

🌸 Tag List 🌸 FAQ 🌸

Try the game! I've been updating it with new episodes and content so keep an eye out! If you're interested in keeping your build updated, check out this guide!

#magical warrior diamond heart #mwdh #magical girl #magical boy #mahou shoujo #visual novel #otome game #indie dev #game dev #visual novels #visual novel game #indie games #queer games #lgbt games #need a proper pinned i think.... #Youtube