The proof of concept demo for Consummation ~wind above the dragon sea~ is now released on itch.io!
Consummation is a chuuni yuri visual novel that I created a demo for for Battle Action Fantasy VN Jam 2023! I hope you'll enjoy the game as much as I love the characters and their story.
This is an island spared by the heavens, a cage for the remnants of humanity.
A freelancer blessed by the wind receives a strange letter, leading her to a promised place of her youth. In that same district-city, the four great families chosen by the four great gods gather for their biennial conference.
As the paths of those hated and loved by the gods cross, a darkness beneath the sea stirs—to devour, to drown, to destroy, to choose.
A post-apocalyptic fantasy yuri visual novel proof of concept
Summer is coming to a close! It’s hard to believe that we’re two-thirds of the way through the year. Let’s take a look back on what’s been going on recently and what my plans are for the near future:
Recent releases
Short story poll results
Socials
Game announcement…!
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releases
We had two releases in the last two months: a demo and a Steam release.
Consummation ~wind above the dragon sea~ (demo)
This is an island spared by the heavens, a cage for the remnants of humanity.
A freelancer blessed by the wind receives a strange letter, leading her to a promised place of her youth. In that same district-city, the four great families chosen by the four great gods gather for their biennial conference.
As the paths of those hated and loved by the gods cross, a darkness beneath the sea stirs—to devour, to drown, to destroy, to choose.
Lachesis or Atropos (Steam Edition)
A private investigator visits a small town after recovering from a coma. She searches for her mentor's lost beloved, but the very eyes she was born with, those that can see the black strings of hate, drag her down into the darkness of conspiracy.
A cult, two priestesses, and the threads that puppet the world.
short story poll results
After a combination poll on Twitter, tumblr, and Substack, it was decided that I will write a Who is the Red Queen? short story to be delivered via this newsletter!
This short story is still in the concept phase. Please note that due to the multi-ending nature of the game, the short story should be considered non-canon or alt-canon.
I wonder what it’ll be about…
Perhaps a little short featuring Cheshire and the White Rabbit? Perhaps an exploration of what happens after a certain ending? Perhaps a story about the past between the White Queen and Red Queen?
Only time will tell.
socials
And with the slow and excruciating death of Twitter, I will make a quick aside to mention some other social media sites that I have made an account on.
tumblr
cohost
misskey.io (fediverse, can be followed from mastodon)
bluesky
It’s hard to say what will take the place of the dying corpse of the bird app, but for the time being, please feel free to follow me on any of those places!
Still, the best way to keep track of my work will be:
this newsletter (even if substack dies, the newsletter can be transferred easily)
itch.io
game announcement…!
Now, enough with the gloomy talk. Let’s talk about something exciting! A game announcement!
This is not the long term project that I spoke of previously (you’ll have to wait a bit longer for that), but rather…New Project!! The Final Prize is Soup - a spooky grey background with 3 chibis of girls with black hair and gold, red, green-blue eyes from left to right.
I will be participating in Spooktober again this year as director, character designer, and co-writer for a survival horror yuri visual novel by the title, The Final Prize is Soup.
After a disastrous break up, Qian Hailu wakes up to find that she's dead. Luckily (or unluckily), she's been given a chance to turn back the clock and avert her death—as long as she can pass three rounds in the game of life.
You who are unqualified to drink Meng Po's soup, you have been chosen for the game of life. Three worlds, three rounds. Win all three and you may avert your fated death. Lose any and your bones are forfeit for tomorrow's lunch broth.
Good luck. Our ghosts have prepared their takeout containers, all plastic, non-microwaveable.
tldr. death game in the afterlife (ft. cannibalism lesbians)
You’ll hear from me about this game, hopefully, quite a lot during the upcoming month of September. Please look forward to it!
(((o(*°▽°*)o)))
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See you in September!
shino
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Time is nothing but an illusion… in many ways.
If you haven’t read the demo for Consummation ~wind above the dragon sea~ yet, then I recommend checking it out first! It’s a short hour long read introducing you to a much longer yuri chuunige that I’d like to make in the future.
You may have seen me say that Consummation is a story that I’ve wanted to create for a very long time. How long; how long is very long?
To answer to that question: almost ten years.
I can’t quite remember when exactly this story entered my brain and decided not to leave, but I can vividly remember drawing the characters on notebook paper during my high school freshman year Biology class. (Consummation, by the same name, was probably conceptualized that year.)
The Four Gods, four territories.
A freelancer called Suzukaze, beloved by the wind.
An info broker called Qin, wearing a qipao.
And a beloved “Senpai” by the name of Kagura.
Those are the key factors that existed back then and still exist to this day.
Of course, since high school, lots of things have changed as Consummation sat around in the ideas document waiting for the light of day, being dusted off now and then in different forms.
For example:
The protagonist switched to Qin from Suzukaze for a period! (Although we’re back to my wind-blessed freelancer daughter)
Senpai (Kagura) was explicitly dead in most early iterations of the story, making it a revenge plot
Characters like Belka and Juhyeon were only created within the last two iterations of Consummation
I’m looking forward to seeing how Consummation evolves from now on, still so much the same yet so much changing.
But for now, I’m happy to ramble a bit about the parts that were exposed in the prototype demo!
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Q. world building?
First, let’s talk about the world building. Consummation is set in an unspecified era after the world as we know it was destroyed by a calamity that left the majority of the world uninhabitable and dangerous to return to.
We can consider the genre to be modern fantasy, the setting post-apocalyptic.
The plot takes place on an artificial island built in the Sea of Japan, a smattering of cities built upon the artificial land and manufacturing/infrastructure set below the earth in order to sustain an island that has no external trade. The level of technology is similar to ours but possibly slightly more advanced, even as the end of the world would have destroyed a lot of progress.
Whether or not there is any life beyond the island is unknown to the people living on the island; the belief is that they are the last humans on the face of the earth.
The island, which is usually referred to as just the island, is split into four territories in the four cardinal directions, each territory ruled by a group from each of the countries that helped create the island.
Fun fact: It used to be called the “Scrapyard.”
Should we call this a confederacy of dictatorships? Certainly, it wouldn’t exactly be false. (The island is not a democracy.)
For someone like our protagonist Suzukaze, the specifics of government and politics are beyond the scope of her focus, but you’ll see how the characters live on the island regardless.
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Q. What are the four territories?
In story, the countries that built up the island are Japan, Korea (unspecified), China, and Russia. As such, the territories are split between their groups and mostly run along their ethnic lines although movement between territories is not difficult.
There also exists a neutral city-territory, governed jointly by the four groups ruling over the territories, called Central, the location of the main story.
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Fun fact: While the Chinese territory and Japanese territory existed in the earliest iterations of Consummation, the other two territories were initially different groups (Italian and MENA).
However, taking into consideration the focus on East Asian mythology and the location of the island, I decided to go with countries from within the geographical region around the Sea of Japan that would be reasonably involved in the joint development of such an island.
(Maybe my Italian and MENA girls are somewhere out there in their own version of an island…)
Q. Who are the ruling groups of the four territories?
However, despite speaking in broad strokes of countries above, it quickly becomes clear that the ruling groups of the four territories are not quite the former state governments but rather families with the blessings of the Four Gods (the cardinal beasts, however you would like to call them).
The ruling groups can be considered powerful families that existed in their respective countries before the end of the world. They were able to gain positions overseeing the island before the collapse and then consolidated power as the de facto government after the collapse.
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In earlier iterations of Consummation, the story was also more focused on gangs and gang warfare (a mafia story?). However, for the sake of certain plot points, the four groups turned from their initial characterization as string-pullers influencing a weak government to the government themselves.
This is what we call the monopoly of legal violence.
Q. Cults?
Yes.
Q. language?
Given the four countries that led to the four territories, it would make sense that multiple languages should be spoken on the island.
At the very least, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), and Korean are spoken on the island. For the time being, I won’t specify if there’s a common language used for cross group communication or if everyone can just magically understand each other like Tekken characters. (o´▽`o)
Q. Senpai?
But you might notice that a very important character is referred to as “Senpai.”
Given the differences in types of relationships that exist across cultures (e.g,, there are so many ways to refer to various relatives in Chinese), I was unable to find a good word to describe the relationship between Suzukaze and Kagura aside from “Senpai.”
Perhaps if they were in school, then I’d call it something like “upperclassman” or “senior sister” (haha, no way), but it’s something that I can only describe as “Senpai.”
As such, you may see terms like “Senpai” used throughout the story for character relationships that are difficult to describe in English.
Q. What about honorifics?
However, I will refrain from using honorifics throughout the story. It would quickly become confusing with so many in-story languages, and my familiarity with Korean and Russian is relatively poor.
The lack of honorifics may be considered a loss of information, but as the story is originally written in English anyhow, I imagine that shouldn’t be a huge problem. Overall, I’d like to be consistent within the story.
Thus, no honorifics here!
Maybe next time.
misc
Q. Who are the heroines/love interests?
Given that Consummation is a yuri game, I figure that I should specify who the love interests are before I close off this ramble.
They are Qin, Kagura, Juhyeon!
My daughter Juhyeon will get revenge for her flirting being ignored…
(There is a minor chance of Belka having a route as well, but currently no plans are in place for a Belka route.)
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I hope I’ll be able to elevate Consummation to active project status soon. There is currently no timeline for that change, and I have at least one project queued up before Consummation.
May Update - Proof of Concept Project Announcement!
Hello, everyone! We’re already done with April, so today I’ve prepared an update on what I’m up to.
First off, I’d like to announce a proof of concept project to be released in June for Battle Action Fantasy VN Jam: Consummation ~ wind above the dragon sea
Consummation is a battle action fantasy, post-apocalyptic yuri visual novel set on an artificial island split into four territories, ruled by four groups from the now destroyed China, S. Korea, Russia, and Japan.
This is an island spared by the heavens, a cage for the remnants of humanity.
A freelancer blessed by the wind receives a strange letter, leading her to a promised place of her youth. In that same district-city, the four great families chosen by the four great gods gather for their biennial conference.
As the paths of those hated and loved by the gods cross, a darkness beneath the sea stirs—to devour, to drown, to destroy, to choose.
Here are some sneak peeks of the characters!
What do I mean by a proof of concept project? Instead of kickstarting active development of the full game, I will instead be releasing a short demo that serves as an introduction to the story. Consummation will not be a major active project but rather a promise to the future to make more yuri visual novels of all sorts.
As for which game is taking up the main project bandwidth, let’s just say that it’s fully outlined and writing is underway...! ( ˙꒳˙ )
And if you missed the announcement, Lachesis or Atropos is coming to Steam soon with new art, music, and other updates. Implementation of Steam achievements is underway with the help of Quill Yuri. Wishlist now!
The updated version will also be on itch.io if that’s your platform of choice.
shino
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out of curiosity, who is the shortest, as well as the tallest character that you have made out of all the vns you've worked on?
Ohh, that's a great question! I haven't written down heights for my characters, so I'm not sure how the exact heights compare across games. The following is mostly based off of vibes:
Tallest:
The King from The Final Prize is Soup
Shortest: (the power of being a child character)
Baek So-ra from Consummation (demo)
Maybe Lixue (from that moment she neglected the world) would compete with So-ra as a child, but she grows up, so... So-ra is the ultimate shortest!
Short Squad: (honorable mentions; at the very least the shortest in their game, haha)
I draw sprites once in a blue moon, but I hope you'll find my BAFJam daughters from the Consummation proof of concept demo to be cute too when I release it sometime in this coming week!
Consummation Proof of Concept: Mid-June Art Devlog
As we hit the midway point of June, Battle Action Fantasy VN Jam (a.k.a. BAF Jam, which I am helping to cohost) is also halfway in!
I’m working on a proof of concept demo of Consummation ~wind above the dragon sea~, a yuri action fantasy visual novel, for the jam.
At the moment, the demo script is fully written at approximately 12k words and other assets are in progress.
The Consummation prototype is a solo development endeavor, so my entry to BAF Jam will be a combination of online assets and my own output. It’s been quite a while since I last solo dev-ed a game, having led teams as director, scenario writer, and character designer for my last two projects (Who is the Red Queen?, Lachesis or Atropos).
However, I prefer not to ask someone to create assets that would be scrapped and redone in the scenario that the game is elevated from prototype to active (likely commercial due to scope) project. Thus, here we are. Jack of most trades shino is on the scene.
Let’s talk about the art!
sprites
Sprites progress: ~80%
Spites are almost done! Line art is complete as is flat coloring, but I’ll have to play around with the palettes and actually render my girls.
The sprites for the demo are drawn waist up with a white outline around them. Originally, I wondered if I could get away with only flats and no rendering, but it didn’t quite match with the background assets I had.
The sprites are displayed to the right, a locational cut-in to the left if applicable, inspired by what you might call the Liar-soft Steampunk style. It’s efficient for a one man team, especially one who is not an environment artist.
(I find that there’s 2 main sides of visual novel staging: comic style and anime style, with the use of cut-ins taking advantage of how comics build mental images of scenes within their readers minds through overlapping frames—but I won’t go rambling about that for now…)
photobashing
Backgrounds progress: 100%
Backgrounds are just about all gathered.
The majority of the backgrounds in the game will be from asset packs, sources to be listed on the game page when published. Alas, as is the case always, some locations are hard to find in those packs!
Hence, I did some photobashing for a handful of places. That is to say, finding some photos on Unsplash and editing them in an image editing software, such as GIMP, to create another image.
Use the clone tool to edit out unwanted elements, overlay lots of blue, and put the image through a variety of filters such as blur, oilify, mosiac, and others until satisfied.
The end result is workable as a temporary asset in a prototype game… Rinse and repeat as needed.
I may occasionally smash up some photos as placeholders, but you probably won’t see me doing BGs often aside from the rare solo dev game where I can’t find a separate asset for a location.
cgs
CGs progress: ~10%
Not much to say here; CGs are all still in the sketch phase, so I’ll just go ahead and show you a sneak peek of the first CG:
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To summarize the current progress:
Scenario: 100%
Art: ~50%
Scripting: ~50%
The month started strong, but unfortunately June’s a bit of a busy one for me. Here’s to making a good demo!
shino
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