what i really love in touchstarved is the mixing of cultures within eridia to reflect its status as "the last bastion of humanity" - like it's an actual representation of humanity as a whole!!!! that's so beautiful!!!!!
"tourists" are a concept in this world. the senobium has existed as a university attracting thousands of scholars from across the globe to share their knowledge (until it started gatekeeping).
the mention of foods that i am familiar with combined with architecture i know is on the other side of the globe just instantly clicked as eridia being a multicultural community. we don't need to highlight that the fall of other cities meant there were max exoduses because, through the cultural sharing, we can already tell it is a melting pot.
it's something i really love to see, especially in fantasy where oftentimes major cities are denoted as uni-cultural and monoethnic when, in history (think the city of Xi'an during the peak of the Tang Dynasty) new cultures were shared through trade and migration.
on a meta level, I think it's really wholesome that the dev team is equally diverse and are probably adding references to their own cultures in their work!!!
Revisiting Red Spring Studio's Interview with Blerdy Otome - Select Quotes
It's been almost a year since RSS had this interview, but I think that many people have not listened to it, or recently revisited it. I thought I'd highlight some quotes from it, though the entire interview is worth watching! Some of these quotes I have lightly modified for clarity or succinctness but the majority are direct transcripts.
23:30: "Touchstarved is a horror romance visual novel where the entire cast is made up of characters where you're like, "I can fix them!" but you actually can't. I think that Touchstarved is a very complex and mature story with really really complex themes and interwoven routes and obviously it's very sexy at the same it's a romance - and I think it's one of those games that I've always wanted to see exist and I think that a lot of the team has always wanted to see this game exist as far as being this kind of like dark, broody, moody, but also very deep, right, and authentic and honest exploration - Monsters, and the feeling of being a monster - feeling of being an "other", right, whether you're queer or POC or anything like that… we've created a game that's not only really fun and action-packed and bloody and all that kind of stuff… but very heartfelt in a way that I hope readers can pick up on.
Imo, this line of reasoning ("you can't fix them", and the cast's monstrous nature and how it intrinsically ties to/is an analogy for being queer, or POC) - makes me think that even in the good endings for the game, your character won't be minimizing the character's monstrousness. For example, even if your character has the Power of True Love, it's not going to make Vere nonviolent or absolve Kuras's guilt.
25:35: "These themes are pretty complicated in a way that's messy and honestly bloody and I think for that reason is why we're looking at a mature rating - that said, when we set out to make the game our goal wasn't really to be explicit, it was much more to focus on sexiness . . ."
Just clarifying that there won't be explicit sex scenes in the game.
28:55: "What are some aspects of the story that you are most excited to showcase?"
"I'm so excited that people get to die terribly, that just gets me so pumped up. Like in previous jobs I have not been allowed to brutally murder . . . main characters permanently and it's very important to me that I now have the power to write really just messed up awful endings…Don't worry, there's also good endings there too, they just get as much passion and all that stuff as the bad endings… but the bad endings, oh my gosh, those are some of my favorites."
This line makes me curious about whether the main characters are just MC, or if the other characters will brutally die as well!
30:50 "A little while ago we posted Kuras's character reveal and people really like the fact that he can't cook so for me it's really cute and innocent seeing people obsess over that fact and I really just want them to see the contrast between that version of Kuras in their head and what he's actually like in his route. Like I just really want to see them react to like the terrible things he's going to do. . . They're all awful in different ways that I'm really excited for people to see it - it's very funny to see everyone be like _Literally name any of the characters of the cast and be like "they're my little meow meow" and it's like, oh. good. I hope this continues once they learn more about the characters. Obviously they're all wonderful - right, the characters are all awful but they're also all wonderful".
32:26 : "the theme of monstrousness and how each character kind of approaches it differently . . . because they're all monsters, even if they're not literally monsters . . .it also plays into each character's brand of horror in their own way as well that ties into their monstrous nature."
This line especially (to me) hints at how Leander is likely not SPECIFICALLY a monster, but a human with a monstrous nature.
34:30: - Ais was the first character they made and each of the other characters build upon him, so they spent a lot of time getting him right. Vere was the easiest to create and they made him in a weekend. Kuras was the hardest to create (especially visually).
38:00 "This is a romance game and a big draw of the game is making a love connection with these characters - do you all plan on including platonic friendship routes in addition to romance routes, or is it strictly romance?"
The way that we planned out this game is that we wanted to focus on the intimacy of these individual relationships between the main character and the love interest and the route that they're on, right, so this is the way we had planned the game from the beginning. We really like poly romances, for example, and friendships, but we think that it wouldn't have made much sense for the characters in the story that we had written for them because this entire story - with who the main character is and why they're having to turn to these mysterious monstrous strangers - there's a level of intimacy involved in the themes and stories that we really focused on for how we're writing…
It's almost like a narrative design intentionality we did early on because each route that you'll be able to play from the main five cast is very driven and each character is like a ticking time bomb in their own way. So if you choose to romance Vere, Kuras's route still continues and you can see the effects of what not choosing Kuras is in Vere's route when you're playing Vere's route. So the world is meant to be very interwoven and interconnected where you can see the ripples of everyone's choices even when you're not romancing them and in that way we've designed this cast that's woven together. So if we did want to do a poly route, we would probably have to do entirely new characters . ."
43:30: "One of the fundamental goals of this game was to have, as you've been saying, a living world - a world that's evolving, and one of the ways that we wanted to communicate that was with the idea that these characters are not doing great… um, they're all in very very bad situations, uh, they're all essentially doomed if you do not go with them and it's seeing that carried out in each route that I hope will be really interesting for people.. it will be very sad, in a good way".
ARGHHH this is the WORST. This means that if you choose a character, you're essentially dooming the others. Though this will undoubtedly manufacture delicious angst, I'm soooo sad at imagining each of the other characters faltering and ultimately failing on their paths because you didn't chose them. Though, I wonder if there are some routes where multiple characters turn out ok, or if the entire cast is doomed as soon as you don't select them (in different ways depending on the route)?
54:30: "I also want to clarify too that even though we've been talking about blood a lot and all that kind of stuff and death and we love those parts of the story, um, if you get those endings there's a reason why, you know what I'm saying - you have to actively try to get those endings - poke the bear with a stick."
Definitely referencing Vere's bad ending in the demo. Personally I am too curious to avoid them, but it's encouraging that some of the MC deaths appear to be because you deliberately make dangerous choices, rather than simply "tricking" the player and surprising them.
Let me know what you think of these quotes, and the whole interview is definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it!
I really love seeing what people say about the posts we put out on social media. So for example, a while ago we posted Kuras's character reveal. And people really liked the fact that he can't cook. So for me it's really cute and innocent seeing people obsess over that fact. And I really just want them to see the contrast between that version of Kuras in their head and what he's actually like in his route. I just really want to see them react to the terrible things he's going to do.
Touchstarved eye art and design appreciation time :)
- i think it's really fun that leander's eye shines are consistently green while the rest's are white or left out
- both mhin and vere are the only ones with non-black pupils. They're also the only ones who have extra lines in their eyes. Considering they seem to be foils, maybe these have meaning 🤭 Vere's eyes have the special ability to see what happened to you. I wonder what the red of mhin's mean, if not just signifying bloodlust.
- ais and vere are the only ones with sharp pupils. Makes sense since they're obviously monsters while the rest are hidden
- it seems like mhin is the only one who consistently doesn't have eye shine. I wonder if that means mhin stands out from the rest in a certain way.
