Rotten Raccoons is thrilled to announce that our episodic dark fantasy romance, OBSCURA, has released Chapter Two: The Depths now available on itch.io and and on Steam!
There's a marketplace under the mountain where anything can be bought and sold. Visitors wear masks to become faceless strangers. It's home to the unscrupulous, the outcast, and the desperate.
You're one of the desperate.
Strangers with their own secrets and ambitions can show you ways through the market. They'll guide you to your goal, but don't trust them to have your best interests at heart.
First chapter of each route available in the demo to try a taste.
Choose the protagonist's name, pronouns, and mask.
Four mysterious love interests.
Over 200k words so far (70k in the demo, 130k in early access)
A dark, mature story with many ways to fail.
Timed choices! Or turn them off for an easier game.
Original music by Cajsa.
Use the default, OpenDyslexic, or Atkinson Hyperlegible font for ease of reading.
Once you buy the game, you get all current and future chapters.
Full list of warnings available here, our streamer/VOD rules are here.
I just read the monthly update on itch and had a question about the third chapter. Is the third chapter the final chapter for all the characters or just Oleander? Maybe I misread that, but I think you guys said that the third chapter is his final. Is that the case for everyone?
Also, I just wanted to say I really appreciate the monthly updates on the game. It’s really nice to know what’s going on and get sneak peeks. Many games have very rare or small updates. I understand people get busy, but I just thought that the updates make waiting, at least for me, 1000000x easier. Take your time and get frequent rest. Thank you for all your work now and in the future. 💙💙💙
There's probably a bit of ambiguity about how I (Violet) write about our plans, that's my bad. When we're talking about Chapter Three, it could be me referring to basically this third and final stage of development where we're working on the third chapters for each storyline, or to a specific third chapter.
Everyone is getting one more chapter to tell their story. They'll be released one at a time and are being developed one at a time (Tobi and I are writing for different characters simultaneously, but Mugi and Cajsa are going to focus on whichever character is further ahead when their development phase can start). The monthly update just shows Oleander stuff since Tobi was really busy in June and didn't have any progress she could show for Cirrus' third chapter, but it is in development, and Keir and Francesco will follow.
And thank you! It definitely helps that we're a team of people and one of us is the designated social media raccoon, so there's no ambiguity about who is writing the update and when it's being done. I can imagine being a solo developer or part of an informal team and struggling to decide whether to write an update or actually work on the game, and that sounds hard as hell. Especially if game dev is a hobby or side-gig!
But I also agree that it's a little disheartening to check out a cool-looking project and discover the last sign of life from the developer was in 2023, y'know? If our updates are helping ease the waiting period and keeping people reassured that we're still working on the game, that means they're going their job!
i decided to buy the game in the summer sale, but i played the early demo as well. im bamboozled by how great the game turned out! my favorite was cirrus from the demo, and i still very much love him. however, oleander is definitely very close to him. (especially because he's my huge type looks wise as well, more than cirrus.) i really enjoyed the soundtrack, especially the churches song (?) im also delighted to see how the NPCs will be drawn. im especially curious about adonis and the riggers?
overall, this has been an amazing experience so far! i cannot wait for more. thank you for creating this incredible game 🤎
as for my actual question: are the full art images in the extra menu (im not sure what they're called 💔) downloadable somehow/somewhere? im so sorry if this is displayed somewhere, i couldnt find anything about this after searching :(
(i need to make the bathhouse oleander pic as my laptop wallpaper asap, or im gonna combust into 2 trillion little pieces of dust.)
have a good day!!
Tobi did a sketch of the rigging team when creating them that Mugi based the sprite silhouettes on, so they'll probably look something like this (allowing for style differences and the like).
Bespoke full screen images in visual novels are usually called CGs in the visual novel community (I think people generally agree that it's short for Computer/Character Graphic, but in the VN community it's always used in the short form).
When it comes to accessing them, the games files are "archived", so they're not immediately accessible, but Ren'py has a built-in screenshot function that should do the job. The S key automatically saves a screenshot of whatever is showing on the game screen. There will be a little pop-in of text on the top left of the screen giving you the file location. I've found screenshots saved include the game folder and, for some reason, my documents folder. If you're playing on Steam, you may need to dive into the Steam game folder to find it, which is a little out of the way but totally fine to go into.
Also, while playing the game, you can use the H key to hide the game UI like the text box, so it's possible to get clean screenshots from within the game too! Hopefully that helps!
Rheos is a seamstress, but her skills extend far beyond sewing. She serves as an "Artisan" within a mysterious organization. With a keen eye, she always notices the things others tend to overlook. She is not a believer, yet she serves the gods with a devotion similar to that of one. To her, the gods are more like mentors, and their responses give her strength.
Background:
Rheos suffers from a condition that prevents her from being exposed to sunlight, so she never saw the sun during her childhood. She lived with her adoptive parents in a house high above a valley. Her adoptive father was a doctor, and people who came to seek treatment would occasionally tell her about the world beyond the valley and describe what the sun looked like. Fascinated by the world beneath the sunlight, she would often sketch her own imagined vision of the sun.
Her nights were longer than anyone else's. From time to time, she helped light the lamps along the mountain paths, guiding travelers through the mist. Beside the valley stood a mountain where monks would climb to greet the sunrise, but she could only remain in the darkness, listening to the distant bells echoing from the mountain. The moon and the stars were among her few companions, and she knew them well. Whenever they began to fade from the sky, she knew the sun was about to rise.
Her adoptive mother would occasionally take her to the Temple of the Sun. She loved searching through long-forgotten books, reading the myths and legends preserved within them. Hidden within those stories was something impossible to put into words, a quiet force that gradually shaped her. In time, it came to accompany her—stitched into cloth, carved into stone, and scattered into the wind.
One day, a mystic who claimed to be guided by revelations healed the illness that had troubled her for years. Standing atop the mountain peak, she saw the sunrise for the first time and felt the warmth of life itself. Not long after, she joined the mysterious organization where the mystic belonged. To further understand and express these forces, she studied under its practitioners and sought to uncover their mysteries. Although she had no innate affinity for such practices, she continued to seek that distant existence in her own way, just as she once searched for the sun.
A failed ritual changed everything. That ritual had crossed a forbidden boundary. To keep the ritual from causing any more harm, Rheos forced the ritual to an end, but there was no escaping the backlash. Trust within the organization gradually fell apart. Rheos had no choice but to leave, believing that she might have lost the chance to continue moving forward. No one knew what the backlash would ultimately bring. It could lead to madness, or even death, while some were fortunate enough to survive.
She could no longer sleep peacefully. As the unknown gradually descended upon her, she became increasingly blinded by it. Though her body still lived, she was as good as dead. Her struggles were futile, yet she could not stop. Time stretched into unbearable agony, yet felt terrifyingly brief. Amid the torment of chaos and collapse, she began to notice something abnormal taking shape within her.
Perhaps... it was her turn. (end)
I've intentionally kept some details vague in this introduction—revealing everything would take the fun out of it. Her personality will differ slightly across different LI routes.
（I decided to introduce Rheos first because I feel like Cicada still needs some work.）
This is an English version translated with the help of machine translation, so some parts may sound a little unnatural.
Are pets common in the underground? Like almost having a familiar?
I swear I'm not trying to sass you, but having a pet underground would be like... having a pet. Magical critters are not domesticated, and the rules of domestication still apply, so pet ownership isn't especially different from real life.
I wouldn't describe keeping a companion animal as super common as in everyone is doing it (note that none of the three long-term resident LIs have a pet), but some long-term or permanent residents are going to have a pet in their life, sure. I'd describe it as being common enough that in general people won't be terribly surprised if you have one, but uncommon enough that those same people wouldn't assume you do have one by default.
keir was already my favorite - i have a weakness for the 'misunderstood bad boy' / 'noble thief' / 'asshole with heart of gold' type - but then i read about how much he likes music and how a partner who's a musician could literally bribe him with their music AND NOW i am actually in love with him.
if he could listen to the music we have today, which do you think he'd enjoy most? which genre(s), maybe specific artists he likes - or maybe he'd be a musical omnivore? (like me :D)
Getting personal for a sec: I don't actually like citing specific artists when talking about characters' musical tastes, possibly because I have had a lot of "he would not say that" experiences in my fandom experience regarding music, and my own musical tastes are very "he would not listen to that" in regards to Keir.
That said, talking more generally: Keir's the kind of guy who is heavily invested in the local music scene, which is going to be a big but variable part of his tastes depending on where you're putting him. The longer he's been into a genre the more he prefers weird and experimental takes on it. He likes the odd Top 40 radio hit or tiktok viral sensation (once it's found its way off tiktok, at least) but that does always come as a surprise to his friends. He'll listen to basically anything once, so "musical omnivore" is a fair enough description.
Hi!! in a previous ask from a long time ago, it was stated that Keir doesn't know what bananas are. (correct me if I'm wrong!) So does that mean the world of Obsura has certain fruits & vegetables that don't exist? and/or have completely new fruits that our world doesn't have? or are there certain fruits/vegetables that aren't traded in the mountain?
Bananas don't typically grow near the mountain, and they're a total bear to transport in a world without modern refrigeration. So while they probably exist in Obscuraworld, they don't get to the mountain that often and are extremely expensive. Keir hasn't had the opportunity or need to learn, so he just doesn't know what bananas are.
I don't think I've shared this yet? This is a gif I took while implementing sprites in Chapter Two because the way Oleander just cut in front of Halo and did his "ta-dah" pose made me laugh myself hoarse.
We've gotten better at implementing sprites over development, but moments like these still happen once in a while. They're not usually as in-character as this, though!
hiii! do you plan on adding more to the side story with vesper, or will you be leaving it as it currently is? i replayed it recently and cant help but be curious for i am a big fat vesper fan and would love to get more one-on-one content with them<3
It would be really fun! I think the ideal is to have a third encounter with Vesper corresponding to their Chapter Three experience (or an epilogue to Chapter Three), but it really depends on how much time we have available. And to lift the dev veil a little, the Vesper dates are in part a way of making sure we have Content we can be ready to release on Valentine's Day, if a character's chapter isn't ready yet. We will hopefully not have that problem next year, in which case the Vesper date would need to be updated another time.
