Follow Discord's TOS and keep things family-friendly, lighthearted and appropriate. The rest of the rules are in the "rules" channel in the server. Just be cool and you should be fine!
How can I join?
Here's the link!
What took you so long?
We're a small dev team, and a community server can be a lot to take on. We wanted to make sure that the game's development progress, and the team, were in a place where we could run a server that also won't distract from our work or lives.
What's next!?
Apart from the Discord, we're still going to make announcements in our steam community, our dev blog (here), our bluesky and other accounts. The Discord server might have smaller snippets you won't see elsewhere, and various dev team members may be hanging around if they feel like it. We won't be giving out story spoilers though! :)
The server is an experiment for us, so bear with us if we need to adjust things as we go. That's all! Thanks for reading!
At the enclosures where Sawyer grew up, all the Utahraptors were enrolled in an intensive corporate leadership training program. Sawyer strived to meet and exceed every single evaluation criteria. However, that didn't lead to much popularity with her peers.
Hello, hello! We're back with the next part of Daisy's character profile posts! Today's all about the neat stuff Daisy can get up to in battles or exploration. Read on for more!
Daisy's Battle Role: Tank!
For Daisy, the number one feeling we wanted to emphasize in gameplay is the feeling of "presence", both for battle and exploration. Daisy takes up a lot of space and anchors the team! When playing as her, the camera even zooms out to help give the sense of a higher viewpoint, and where you place Daisy often determines what areas of the battle map are critical to controlling.
Moving her around the battlefield takes some planning and forethought, as there are many routes the others can take that Daisy can't. The tradeoff for these difficulties is that Daisy can control the pace and positioning of fights, both by being the center of attention for enemies, but also by pushing her opponents around.
Stealth & Positioning
Stealth is trickier for Daisy, not only because there's more of her to spot, but also because she's the only playable character who can't walk through tall grass without being seen. She's too tall! She has to stay still if she wants to hide, unlike the others.
Our battles will almost always be stealth-optional. Daisy is designed to provide strong abilities that players are encouraged to use, at the cost of having to work much harder to maintain a fully stealthy approach. Or, when stealth has failed, Daisy can bail her less-sturdy allies out of trouble.
Get Loud!
In the demo, Daisy's large health pool and "Intimidating Roar" have a natural synergy, as she can cause enemies to attack her instead of others. Enemies in Clever Girls keep track of a "threat" value for each player character, which is used for target selection. The total threat an enemy perceives also determines whether or not they start panicking, which causes them to suffer various penalties and make worse tactical decisions.
Daisy has the highest "threat" level even before roaring, so it's common that enemies in a tough position near her will freak out. There will definitely be some expansion on these themes in the full game. Imagine having Daisy be a frontliner to push enemies into more vulnerable positions, either due to panic, or by literally sending them flying.
The Panic status, and other emotional states that can be inflicted on the poachers, will be expanded in the full game.
Another gameplay concept we wanted to experiment with Daisy was the idea of her shaping the environment (she is an avid gardener, after all). Some areas can only be accessed after Daisy opens them up. We also have all sorts of ideas based on the concept of Daisy enabling mobility and teamwork (ever heard of a "fastball special"?)
We plan to work this idea into exploration too, by giving Daisy chances to move things around and help the others explore. Just don't let her feel left behind when you run off into some place she can't follow. She gets lonely!
Big-Hearted, And Also Just Plain Big
Daisy's damage output isn't as high as you'd expect from a gigantic carnivorous dinosaur. Being a considerate soul, it's obvious she pulls her punches. Maybe once the stakes are raised, with some encouragement, this might change...? We'll just have to wait and see!
What's Next!?
In the future posts, we'll tell you about character interactions, and Daisy's design process! (Did you know we referenced the color scheme of a famous brand of tractors and farm equipment when searching for inspiration? No, you didn't. How could you have known?)
When that post is ready, you'll read it here first! See you next time!
Hey all! This is the second phase of our Character Profile series, focusing on Daisy, as requested by quite a few of you! Today we're telling you all about her.
In Part 1, we have some species facts and personality. Just like last time, we will follow up with info about her gameplay details, interparty dynamics and her visual design process!
Keep reading for more!
Species: Torvosaurus tanneri
Daisy stands out from the rest of our cast...literally! She’s over two meters tall!
Daisy is a Torvosaurus, a genus that existed during the latter half of the Jurassic period. We wanted a representative of the classical ideal of "dinosaur" that comes to mind when you hear the word, but the T-Rex has had plenty of spotlight! Where are my megalosaurid fans at!?
Many people guessed that she’s an allosaurus, and we definitely see how you got there! The differences between the two would be pretty much impossible to discern at our level of detail, and both species have got that forehead-ridge thing going on.
In fact, Daisy is the only character that no one had guessed the exact genus of before the reveal...which didn’t really surprise us!
Daisy's species specifically is the smaller of the two currently named members of the genus, but she still makes an impact. T. tanneri was estimated to weigh in at least two metric tons, and when she has to, Daisy throws her weight around. However, it's pretty obvious from her animations that she tries to pull her punches. Even delivering a stealth KO makes her cringe!
Daisy's Personality:
Above all, Daisy cares. She's very aware of how others feel, sometimes even more so than they are. She's sentimental, even towards objects, plants and other things that aren't even people.
Daisy will always listen. However, when it comes to her own deeply held values and beliefs, she will dig in her heels and won't budge...for better or worse!
She's often hesitant and overly careful, both habits she picked up as soon as she became aware of how fragile the world around her can be. Of our four main characters, she's the one that feels the least in tune with her species...and she definitely isn't comfortable in battles! But when she has to, she steps up to keep her allies safe.
Daisy feels best when she's making things around her better, either by helping others, or with her favorite pastime: gardening. She's in her happy place while planting, watering, pruning... Perhaps there was a little bit of nominative determinism at play when she was made.
Daisy has very little experience with the world outside her enclosures when the game starts! She's a bit of a homebody, and she probably wouldn't have left her enclosure at all if she had a choice. Maybe she can find another place to call home someday.
That's it for now! Watch out for the other parts of her feature, where we'll chat about Daisy's battle gameplay role and abilities, as well as her how she gets along with the rest of our cast.
Hey all! We've updated our demo to a new version! It's got a lot of enhancements! You can read our steam post for all the details.
There's also some info on some other little extras we might add to the demo while our full game work is ongoing. We've got some very busy dinosaurs over here!
As for this blog, keep an eye out for our next character profile post series! We're writing it as we speak! (It's really hard to write and speak at the same time...)
As always, we've got all kinds of cool stuff cooking that we're dying to show you when we can. Thanks for reading!
This is the third and final part of Sawyer's character profile series! Here's Part 1 and Part 2, in case you missed them! Today we'll chat about her visual design and inspiration, featuring some newly revealed behind-the-scenes concept art created during the design process! We'll also talk about some upcoming project details.
Keep reading to see it!
Let us know which of our three other playable dino gals you want to see a profile on next! We have so much stuff to share... so many fictional dino facts. Hit us with an Ask, or send an email to [email protected]! You can also check out our Bluesky. We post some smaller stuff there, too.
Sawyer's Visual Design:
Sawyer was the first of the four dinosaur characters we designed! Here's some of our work-in-progress images used during that process. You can see how much of an inspiration real-world bird feather patterning was.
Her design process was also the most straightforward: We essentially nailed it in one, going with C1's pattern but with a snout color that we felt matched better.
Her amazing character design (and all the rest of her in-game art!) is done by strflr.tumblr.com!
What are all those redacted lines in the image? Don't worry about it! We can't go ahead and spoil everything about her, can we?
Some interesting tidbits about her design process:
We wanted to use hawk + deer patterns and colorations, to evoke "hunting" themes
Her feather crest and overall plumage is inspired by the ornate hawk-eagle (a bird), but also by ancient Greek / Roman soldiers with their iconic brush helmets. She's a commander, after all! We wanted to instill the idea of tactical and strategic intelligence.
In order to recreate her 3D version, we had to painstakingly re-paint her complex feather coloration onto her 3D model. It was done in stages and took nearly a whole day before it started looking good! I still remember the dread we felt after designing Prati, when thinking about this process...
We knew we were making an ensemble game, so we wanted to make sure each of the characters existed in different color "spaces". However, since Sawyer was designed first, we had only rough ideas on what color palettes the others might have. You can see them in the upper right. (They've since changed! That's the design process for you.)
That's all about Sawyer for now! What's next?
Which of the other three characters do you want to see a profile for next? Let us know!
We'll feature all four in time, but we're interested in hearing what order you all want.
What's next for the Game!?
We're still working on it!
Coming up soon, we want to share details on some huge enhancements for the demo. We've made big changes focused on dinosaur movement and character appeal. We've also been working to greatly expand the depth in the battle system beyond the very early version in the demo. These are changes we want to make for the full game anyway, so why not have them improve the demo first? That way you all can sink your teeth into 'em ASAP!
There's might even be a little bit of brand new content to play, if you're good! Be good! Eat your vegetables!
When we have more details, you (the person reading these!) will be the first to know. (Not counting all the other people we told before you.)
Thanks for reading!
With that, we'll close you out with a random collage of Sawyer! Many of these are new... We've almost (almost but not quite) run out of dinosaur pictures! We'll go scurry off to make more.
So first I wanna say I've enjoyed the demo, I look forward to seeing what the final game will be like! 👍
Secondly, I'm a little curious, and I might have missed/overlooked it, but do the dinosaurs understand what human language is? Like when humans speak with each other, will the girls understand what they're saying?
Thanks! Good question!
You can actually make a good guess about this one based on the interactions in the demo: At various points, the girls will read signs and other human written material. It would be safe to assume if they can read the language, they could likely understand it when they hear it spoken. And that assumption would be correct!
That's not to say each dino will have the cultural context and background to fully catch the nuances, however! This will surely cause them no problems whatsoever : )
Here's part 2 of Sawyer's entry in our character profiles series! (Here's the previous part: Part 1.) Today we're chatting about Sawyer's role in tactical battles, as well as some of the interpersonal dynamics that will be featured in the game's story.
Juicy stuff! Keep reading to see it!
Sawyer's Battle Role: Commander!
Sawyer's role in gameplay is to get into the thick of battle, coordinate her team, and chomp people! Here's what she brings to the table in a fight:
Mobile, decisive strikes. Sawyer's one of two playable dinosaurs that can jump large distances, which means it's easy to position her to Stealth KO and use her strong attacks.
Command abilities! Set up teamwork combos, like with her "Shot Caller" ability, which rewards a teammate that attacks a specified target.
She'll also gain abilities that make sure everyone is in the right place to capitalize on opportunities, or to get out of trouble. The fundamental element of tactics is positioning, after all!
Sawyer's combat toolset is designed to give a point for the rest of the characters to stand in contrast from. But, we want her to be the best in one aspect: reliability! In any given situation, Sawyer can either do some damage, help someone else, or just bail everyone out! This should come in handy during the more intense encounters with enemies. (Maybe we'll have a chance to see some tough battles sooner than you'd think?)
It's not all about violence, though! Let's talk about the touchy-feely stuff.
Sawyer's interpersonal dynamics:
(Sawyer can be quite charismatic... when she doesn't overthink things.)
A large focus of Clever Girls is about the interactions between the four playable dino girls, and how the relationships between each of them can develop. In-game, the characters can enter friendships, romances and rivalries with each other, but will also spend a lot of time interacting, solving problems and just looking at stuff!
Here's a preview on how Sawyer might get along with the other main characters in the game:
PRATI: Sawyer can learn to value Prati as a helpful resource to keep the group's spirits up, and they share a sense of humor. But, when Sawyer puts her foot down her seriousness is often the target of Prati's mockery. They're great pals when they can relax, but friction occurs when Sawyer thinks it's time to focus.
SHADE: Sawyer respects Shade's composure and knowledge, and both can learn to value each other's judgement. Conflict can brew when Sawyer's idealist views run into Shade's pragmatism. Shade sees Sawyer as untested and naïve, but can recognize her talent for giving inspiration. Both act as if they're the responsible ones compared to the other two, and might have a different wavelength of communication because of it.
DAISY: Daisy appreciates the support and encouragement Sawyer gives her, and Sawyer can learn how to help Daisy through her challenges. However, if left unchecked this might put Daisy on the road to dependence. Sawyer recognizes Daisy's gentleness and take her concerns seriously, but she might be prone to steamrolling Daisy's opinions when focused on an objective.
Our goal is to have the relationship story routes between two characters affect their interactions (in battles or story scenes) in a really interesting way! The game's all about how the characters work together and get along when thrown into unfamiliar situations, after all.
That's it for now. Next time we'll look at some of Sawyer's visual design inspirations and concept art, and then we'll see which character people want to see featured next!
Hey all!
Thanks for following the Clever Girls project! We've been blown away by the response to the demo, which has exceeded our expectations by far. It's been so gratifying to see the characters and gameplay that we've worked on for so long connect with people, to a degree that we honestly didn't expect. If you haven't played the demo yet, try it out!
We're still working away on the project, both on enhancements to the demo, and development of the full game.
To tide you all over in the meantime, here's the first part of Sawyer's entry in our Character Profile series of posts, which will focus on details about each of the game's four playable dinosaur girls! This is the first part of multiple entries that will focus on Sawyer. Each of the other characters will also get profiles posted here eventually!
(This series will also confirm the specific species for each character, though some of you amazing dino nerds already figured them out!)
Keep reading below to find out more!
The fiery Utahraptor leader: Sawyer!
This part of the profile will focus on Sawyer's species and personality! The next parts will talk about her role in battle gameplay, her interpersonal relationships, and her visual design.
Species: Utahraptor ostrommaysi
The leader of the crew! You may not know her well (yet), but that's what the profile is for!
Sawyer is a utahraptor, one of the largest in the family of dinosaur species usually called "raptors" in media (Dromaeosauridae) (had to triple check the spelling). They're well-known, classic dino representatives. The original idea for Clever Girls was going to feature only dromaeosaurids, but we wanted to have a wider variety in species and capabilities of the player characters, to make everyone stand out more!
With that in mind, we chose this species for Sawyer so she could be our "mascot" character, and raptor representative. She's a good all-rounder that sets the gameplay baseline that the others vary from.
That's not to say she's basic. She certainly has many stand-out traits of her own!
Sawyer's Personality:
(Sawyer's feather crest really adds to her expressiveness, doesn't it? That detail was inspired by modern bird species.)
Sawyer is friendly, decisive and idealistic.
She's proactive, takes initiative, and is ready to lead from the front! Just as soon as she figures out which way is forward, anyway.
She has practice with team tactics, coordination and leadership, even before she escaped captivity. How could she have learned these things? Why did she? Who knows! (we do lmao)
Rushes into challenges like she's got something to prove. She can be strategic and guileful, but she has a penchant for solving problems with her teeth once she gets riled up.
Wants to be diplomatic, but can sometimes struggle to be a good listener. She has a strong need for external validation and prefers to do things by the book when possible (classic teacher's pet).
That's all for now! We'll post the next part of Sawyer's character profile before too long. Thanks for following!
We've updated the Clever Girls Demo! See the link below for a full list of changes, as well as our plans for the future, which include a lot of exciting battle changes!
Bugfixes and more!
Also, check out a screenshot of a VN event that was previously disabled due to a bug. See if you can find in the new build!
You can play the Clever Girls Demo right now! Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3162300/Clever_Girls_Demo/
Details and release notes below the cut!
The demo is a short sampler of what the game will be like! It doesn't have everything the full game will have (it doesn't have the relationship system, for example!) but it has enough to see if you're interested! We've been working on this for what feels like a million, billion years!
Here's the release notes on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2844340/view/524224889691832726?l=english
We're going to make a lot of updates! Things to fix, improvements, etc. will be ongoing, but it's very playable as-is!
If you play the demo, we want to know what you think! Leave us a Steam review, use the in-game feedback form, use the tag when posting, send us messages on social media, whatever! We wanna see what people think!
Regarding romantic relationships, will the characters be able to be romantically involved with more than one partner at once, or will they be strictly monogamous?
We're exploring the possibility of some romantic relationship story routes possibly involving multiple romantic partners, but we can't make a firm commitment yet. The main thing those routes will depend on is:
Does it makes sense for the characters involved and can we write it well? We have some leeway here, but we want to make sure we only write routes we're confident we can deliver on.
Do we have the resources to add that story route? We have so many ideas, we likely won't be able to have all that we want.
Each character can be friends and rivals with multiple characters at once, of course.
Steam Demo release date announcement! Q&A! DINOSAURS REAL!!!
The Clever Girls DEMO will be playable, free on Steam on August 7th! We're theming this demo as a "Dress Rehearsal". It won't have every mechanic the full game will, but it should be enough to find out if you're interested! Here's the link!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3162300/Clever_Girls_Demo/
Check below for more details! Wishlist the game on Steam, and you’ll get an email when the demo comes out!
What took you so long!?
We previously announced the demo would be released in Fall 2024, and boy were we wrong! Why were we so far off?
Clever Girls is an entirely self-funded project made by a tiny team of part-time devs. Making games (even just a demo) is really hard! Even if it took a lot longer than expected, we're still all happy with how the demo development went, and can't wait to see what people think.
We're confident we've got something people will really like. This demo has been in the works since our Steam page announcement all the way back in February 2024. Since then we've come a long way in refining the game's controls, systems and art & animation (animation especially!)
We're going to keep working on the demo before and after the launch, but we're finally at a place where we think it shows off what's unique about Clever Girls with a decent amount of polish.
There are some key differences between in what the DEMO has, versus what the full game will have:
What the Clever Girls Demo HAS:
Talking dinosaurs!
A linear, self-contained, possibly canon VN-style storyline. This is the style of storytelling we'll primarily be using in Clever Girls. The demo is roughly the size of a single planned "chapter" of the full game.
A 3D, third-person "Explore mode" with a unique environment and many interactions to look at. Explore as all four playable characters, and dig through a bunch of interesting garbage!
Three battles of increasing complexity, with more of the cast and abilities unlocking as you progress.
What the Clever Girls Demo DOES NOT HAVE, but we plan to put in the full game:
An introduction to the full game, with compatible saves and progression. When the full game is close to release, we will probably update the demo to include this. But it's not there now!
The RPG progression system. In the full game, your characters will gain experience in a traditional RPG fashion. Also planned are systems we’re calling “Memories” and “Mementos”. These will function similar to equipment in a traditional RPG. And of course, relationship-based unlocks will add to character progression as the cast’s interpersonal interactions develop. The demo doesn't have any of that, though!
The Relationship Graph system, allowing the inter-party relationships to progress and affect gameplay and story. For now, there's some teases of how the relationship system will integrate into battles-- but the demo doesn't have relationships that progress. That's not to say there aren't some fun character interactions, though! Maybe even a couple of small choices…
A bunch more stuff! Abilities, enemy types, NPCs, items, areas, etc
I like this game. How can I help?
Share the demo with your friends! We think Clever Girls will develop the best with a publisher's support, in order to make the project as awesome as we can. In a risky market, what publishers want to see most is engagement and popularity. Send the demo to anyone you think might like it, and hit the wishlist button on Steam! Also, leave a review for the demo to let us know what you think!
Provide testing and feedback! The demo is as much a gameplay preview as it is a technical test of the complex story and gameplay systems. Report bugs and give opinions using the feedback links on the game's pause menu. If you experience a crash, make sure to press the "send" button on the crash reporter so we can get a hold of the useful crash report data.
Can I stream the demo? Can I make video content showing the demo? Make fanart?
Yes! Please stream it, make videos, and/or make fan-art! Go ahead! We think we’ve got something cool, and we’re so excited to find out what other people think of it too. If you’re making content, we want to see it!
If you want to be extra nice, consider linking the Steam page (for the demo, or the full game) when you post things! Every mention helps.
Anything else we should know about the demo?
Depending on reading and gameplay speed, we've seen the demo completed in as short as 40 minutes, or as long as 2.5 hours. Don't worry, you can save and load, though some small sections might need to be repeated after loading.
We're still working on improvements! While we've tested it pretty thoroughly, we're a small team and can't possibly catch every issue, especially the more subtle or inconsistent hardware-related ones. If there's performance issues, crashes, or anything else, it will take time for us to fix them. Though our resources are limited, we'll do our best to make sure as many people can enjoy the demo as possible.
Currently, the demo keeps all your autosaves. This is just out of an abundance of caution, to safeguard against the possibility of softlocks or save corruption (though we've eliminated as much of those as we could!). If you encounter a savegame that doesn't seem to work right, or is stuck, try reloading an earlier autosave. The autosaves are very small, so you shouldn't have to worry about them taking too much disk space-- but you can delete them using the save menu if you want. (Or find them in your local appdata directory, under the folder named "CG_UE/Saved/Savegames" and delete them manually. Maybe make a backup first!)
Where's your Discord? I want to join a Discord!
We're still working on an official public Discord! As a small team, running a community space like that is likely to take a significant amount of time and effort that we'd ideally put towards development. A poorly moderated Discord community can be worse than none, so we're working on a plan to have a place where fans can hang out and share enthusiasm, but that won't impact our development. We want to make sure we know what we're getting into!
What's next for Clever Girls?
It depends on how the demo is received! We'll work on feedback and improve the demo, and also turn our attention to the full game. Funding is definitely something we're still sorting out (publishers, email us at [email protected]), but we have all kinds of options ahead of us to consider. If we need to, we'll keep self-funding like we always have. We'll make our little dino game real, one way or another!
Development information will be much more forthcoming! We've recently added a team member to focus on sharing things about the project. After the release of the demo, we want to rev up our social media presence and show more people the game. Let us know what kinds of content you want to see! Story teasers? Gameplay and mechanic deep-dives? Romantic dinosaur high-school AUs? (We're not doing that one.) Tell us what interests you!
As always, thanks so much for the time and attention. We're making this project so that people can enjoy it, so hearing feedback and responses from others is what helps keep us going.
To close us out, have some fun development art of Sawyer and Prati goofing around:
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