Anyway, I’m going to be answering some RisAmo general, plot, and character-related questions that I’ve heard from people… Either through reviews, poll responses, or otherwise. Or ones I made up and just feel like talking about. So hopefully this gives people some more understanding of what went on in the story and answers some things that have been nagging at the backs of their minds. Feel free to contact either of us if you have more questions.

1. Did you and Auro make this game simply to troll otome game players? Was it supposed to be an April Fool’s Joke? Are you saying people who like “generic otome games” are stupid?
Did we want to troll people? Sure. We cackle maniacally at our computer screens whenever we see people get to the plot twist and respond with something along the lines of “WHAT?!?!” But we’re not saying that all generic otome games are stupid and that anyone who enjoys them are idiots. There are elements of romantic comedies that both of us find disturbing (blatant misogyny, mary sues everywhere, and bad decisions made by pretty much all characters), but these things are supposed to be a guilty pleasure that you don’t think about too much. Just because you like the stuffy Mr. Darcy kind of characters in otome games doesn’t mean you want your actual real life significant other to treat you like crap. I purchase and play a lot of otome games both in English and Japanese–I’ve played every Starry Sky game that’s been released and I think that franchise is the pinnacle of generic otome game. Yet I still enjoy the Starry Sky games a lot. So no, we don’t think otome fans are stupid; we ourselves are both otome fans and it’s otome games that got us into making VNs to begin with. We just wanted people to consider another point of view a little bit, to challenge their ways of thinking, and possibly also surprise them. (I think we at least succeeded at the last part across the board) Still, I don’t think of our game as an April Fool’s Joke because that would be saying that Ethan’s issue with not wanting to be a burden, Angelina’s uncertainty about her place in society, Liam’s deep–and yet also dark–feelings for his best friend, and Laura’s inferiority complex are also jokes… And even if the characters are fictional, I think those stories are as real as you or me.

2. Are you aware of the fact that Erewhon is an anagram for “nowhere”?
Yes, indeed. It wasn’t really meant to be symbolism or anything, though I suppose people can interpret things however they want.

3. Josh is a really boring name! Why is Pierre the only one with a fake name? Why did you choose the name “Josh”?
I’m sorry you think his name is boring. :C In order to play up the generic angle, we picked all of the characters’ names from the top 100 most-used baby names in America. Pierre’s the only one with a fake name because the rest of the names work just fine. However, the producers needed a princely French character and “Josh” is not a very princely French name–so they changed it and instructed his co-workers to even refer to him as Pierre in their off-hours. No wonder it stuck after a year!

4. Why is the prologue so long? And why do you call the other part the “post-prologue”?
Well, I actually tried to make the prologue as short as possible and some people already thought it seemed rushed. I don’t think I could have written it to be any shorter without the romantic elements seeming totally fake. For the post-prologue… Some have suggested we simply call it “the real game”, but somehow that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I suppose the prologue isn’t really canon, but it’s still part of the game. It’s 20,000 words of stuff and to dismiss it all as unnecessary/fake feels wrong. I think during development, we personally differentiated between the two versions of each character by saying “This scene is where post!Ethan interacts with…” so after a while it just stuck. So there’s not really a deeper meaning to it, that’s just the way it is.

5. So what did Josh say to Ethan when he drunk-dialed him?
Mostly dirty jokes and asking Ethan to come over and help him finish the rest of the beer. Though he slurred his words a lot, so Ethan couldn’t even really understand him half the time. As you might have noticed, Ethan’s an innocent soul, so he was really embarrassed–both for himself and for Josh–about the phone call.

6. So Josh has been acting in otome games for a long time, right? How did the players not notice him being in multiple games? What other characters has Josh played in the past?
Hahaha well. Look up the character Hibiki from the otome game Hanaoni and tell me he’s not the exact same character as Kazama from Hakuouki. And how many dark-haired guys with glasses do we have in otome games? We were making a subtle poke at how characters get reused a lot. I hope it’s obvious that the boys’ fake personalities were based on the three most common love interest tropes, as well. (the prince, the jock, and the megane) Josh has played a number of different characters ranging from an actual prince, to the popular guy at school, to a tortured artist. He’s also actually played a delinquent once and enjoyed that role since he basically got to be himself. He did a lot of high school games until he hit the age of 20 and started looking a bit too old to be a high schooler. But for the most part, thanks to his nice blonde hair and blue eyes, Josh has played the popular, princely kind of character in a lot of different games.

7. How does the “love energy” thing work? Does all of Erewhon’s energy come from otome games?
If you’ve seen the movie “Monsters, Inc.”, it’s sort of like that. I didn’t put much thought into the actual scientific processes, but if you look at the picture of the planet, you’ll see this pink glow to it… That’s the love energy surrounding the planet. It forms like a second atmosphere that protects the planet from its dying sun. Anything that makes people fall in love contributes to the energy supply. Of course, plenty of people fall in love all on their own, too. I wasn’t very clear in the writing, but no, otome games are not the sole source of the planet’s power. Considering how niche the fandom is, I don’t think the planet would do very well on that alone. Josh has a few friends who work in the eroge sector and they reaaaally don’t enjoy it. Josh gets annoyed enough just talking to a fake person all day.

8. Why does nobody seem to care that Josh beat that guy half to death?
Well, it doesn’t come up all that often in the story, but Josh used to be a real delinquent. He tries to keep his temper in check most of the time now, but he can fly into a rage whenever the people he cares about get hurt. So let’s just say that that wasn’t the first time something like that has happened. Liam and Ethan have known Josh for years, so something like that doesn’t bother them as much as it probably should. And the guy had enough energy to get up and run off, so he wasn’t that hurt. Of course, Josh did get his pay docked so that they could pay the guy damages and some hush money (behind the scenes), but he’s on contract and is a very in-demand game actor, so of course they’re not going to fire him over that. Who would play Pierre if they did?

9. What happens to Liam and Josh after Liam’s friendship/bad ending?
I like to think that Josh and Liam both end up happy even after this happens. Maybe a few years down the line, once it doesn’t hurt so much anymore, Liam can come back and be friends with Josh again. Do I think they can ever be best friends again? No. You don’t simply get over a deep, 10-year one-sided love… But Liam is strong and confident enough that I think he can eventually be happy with someone else and in the end, he’s just happy to see Josh happy. In all the post-prologue routes, Liam quits his job (as a waiter/busser) at Ristorante. I think that this is his way of distancing himself from Josh. So even though he is a little obsessed with Josh and very much in love with him, he doesn’t cause trouble once Josh goes for other people. He even helps out on the Josh/Ethan route. The bad ending is just a worst-case scenario where he has already quit, but Josh is still being insensitive/oblivious and clinging to him “because they’re best friends”. Liam, knowing that they can’t be together the way he wants and hurt by this, finally ends things instead of just fading out of view slowly. I imagine he would need a very long time to himself after that because he’s normally the type that just laughs things off instead of showing how he really feels. The bad ending is probably the most genuine/honest you ever see Liam in the entire game. Josh would also need a long time to get over it, but he’s naturally more optimistic, so I think it would be much easier for him. So yeah, the bad ending is just terrible for Liam. It pained me to write it and I’m glad (and yet also sad) that so many people have responded to it like they have.

10. Did you mean for Ethan’s post-prologue path to mirror his prologue path?
If you notice, there are quite a few parallels between the prologue and post-prologue in terms of scenes and dialogues. For example, Ethan gets sick in both of his routes basically due to studying too much. However, the aftermath and the reasons surrounding his illnesses are different. I guess I was trying to show that while most rom-com scenes draw from real life to a degree, there’s definitely a way of doing things that makes it a bit more touching and a bit less cheesy. Though honestly, I think the post-prologue routes are quite cheesy in their own ways… In my head, all of the friendship endings are canon and then Josh develops his feelings for one of his friends later. So if we did do an extension/sequel, all the routes would be sequels to their respective friendship endings, I think. (like Starry Sky ~after Autumn~)

11. So Liam is explicitly stated as being gay. Is Josh gay? How about the other characters?
Actually, Liam is 100% Josh-sexual. I don’t think he’d ever truly be able to fall in love with anybody else. That’s just the way it is. Josh is the type that doesn’t really care about a person’s gender, so he’s definitely more of a pansexual. If he likes someone, he likes them–plain and simple. Ethan is bi, but leans more towards girls in general. He likes Josh, but wouldn’t be terribly heartbroken to be rejected… He’d get on with it after not too long. Moving right along, Laura is straight and Angelina is also gender-blind/pansexual. In fact, I can totally see Angelina settling down with another woman and rejecting societal norms for females completely.

12. What other ideas did you have that didn’t make it into the game?
Gah. If I could have managed it in a month, the post-prologue would have been twice as long. I feel like things were really rushed and I wasn’t 100% satisfied with how Angelina’s route turned out, for example. The routes I wrote first, to me, are fresher than the ones I wrote towards the end of the month. I would’ve loved to include more scenes with just the five of them hanging out and being friends. Originally, the post-prologue wasn’t supposed to have any romance at all, so I thought up several scenes of them talking in the pub or watching movies at Josh’s apartment or messing around at Ristorante. Sadly, all that was thrown out the window and I cut things down to the bare minimum that I could hope to accomplish within the month. We toyed with the idea of a story where a Lily* player gets sucked into the game and has to get to know the characters all over again. Or Lily* being a robot. Or Laura being the main character. I wanted to talk more about the other planets and have some more sci-fi elements, but again we were constrained by the time limit. Well, hopefully you can look forward to some more interesting things in our later projects.

Designing characters is something I find to be very enjoyable. It’s fun to visually design a personality to create a physical person. What I am trying to do is visually communicate everything I can about this character to the viewer and I use all the visual tools at my disposal, from line to colour. I have to communicate who this person is, what they think, how they act, what their personality is like. This will need to work with the written information provided to create a greater whole, a more fulfilling character.

The process starts with Camille and I talking about the characters, who we want them to be and what their role is in the story. It’s usually a back and forth of questions, ideas and suggestions until we arrive on a solution. Characters will revolve around their purpose in the story, and so we discuss the plot in relation to them. Usually by this point I have a fairly clear mental picture of who I want the characters to look like. Sometimes this is not the case. Sometimes the characters don’t want to work with me at all, and other times they go off on the weirdest tangents. This time it was Laura who was a little difficult to pin down visually.

For this project we had 6 characters to design: Lilly, Pierre, Liam, Ethan, Angelina and Laura. But there were a couple other factors I needed to consider. One was speed. This project was for Nanoreno, we only had one month to get this done and sprites were only apart of that. I had to consider how fast I could get something like this done, so I had to try and pick a level of detail and difficulty I could achieve. I was already sure I was going to be using a fairly simple shading style. The other was that I was going to be designing for duality, as those of you have finished the game will know. I’ll go into that as I talk about each character.

*Please click on the images to see a larger version*

Lily:

Lily was the only character who was going to be a side sprite and the only character who wouldn’t have an alter ego. She was meant to be the epitome of, well, normal. Pretty, but not too pretty. Average and not unusual. Generally I tried to pick out a bunch of common features for heroines. Brown is a popular hair and eye colour. Short hair, bright eyes, smiles. She isn’t meant to be anyone in particular. These type of characters can be a little hard to do because of that. I’m NOT really meant to be communicating anything in particular about her, she doesn’t really have a backstory or even that much of a personality. Well, apart from clumsy and happy. I’m not a fan of the *self-insert* protagonists since I rather a strong, story driven one, so this was an interesting experience. There isn’t really much more to say about her. She is what she is.

Pierre/Josh:

The first of the dual characters~

In the first half of the game, Pierre is meant to embody the trope that is ‘The Prince Character’. He is elegant, charming, never gets angry ever. But in the second half he is a rough and ready chain smoker who become the main character. I had two different personalities that I essentially had to communicate with the same design. He really, really reminded me of the Sun Knight from Legend of the Sun Knight (Manwha). There was going to be two outfits, but I still had to make sure everything else would communicate okay. I started by designing him as the prince character, but always keeping his other side in mind. I gave him the blonde hair and blue eyes of a pure prince. I choose a ponytail because it could swing either way, from a refined man to the guy who can’t be bothered getting his hair cut (also, I have a thing for ponytails on guy characters… Well, no-one said I couldn’t draw things I like at the same time. It’s the same reason Liam has earrings). His pose was chosen because people cross their arms for many reasons. In this case it could communicate ‘relaxed’ in both forms, though I would say Pierre’s is more of a ‘friendly-relaxed’ and Josh’s is more of a ‘I-don’t-care-relaxed’. Pierre got to wear a chef uniform, which did suit his character as a prince because of all the white. In the second half I gave him a very relaxed, tough look, including singlet, tattoo and cigarette. I remember the first time I heard about this character I said I would have to make him a smoker because it goes against the prince character hahaha. Plus a character choosing to smoke says a lot about them and it’s not only bearded older men who do it.

This guy's double personality reminds me of Pierre.

Angelina:

Angelina is the sexy competition in the first half of the game, and in the second half she was meant to be a fairly relaxed, normal women. I’m not sure why I decided to give her red hair, but I think it looks great on her… I’m pretty sure I have a thing for red hair too on women. Originally, as you can see from the sketch, she was wearing a different outfit. I didn’t like this one too much, it was too casual and not classy enough for her first personality. So I gave her a very sexy and high class outfit for the first half instead (dark blue of course to complement her red hair) and a expensive pendant to show her family wealth. Her secondary outfit is very casual, jeans and a slightly baggy top. Angelina is a little self conscious about her looks so I think she would normally try to hide her body a bit and go for comfort. I also had her with her hair up so it would be out of her way as she worked. Her pose again was a fairly standard one because I knew I could draw it quickly and it would suit both sides of her character. Probably the most specific thing to Angelina that might not be very obvious is that she has two sets of emotions. One with makeup and one without. She even has freckles when she isn’t wearing it!

Liam:

Liam is the jock type in the first half, super friendly and a little dense about his feeling. I have a massive soft spot for this type of character so I had fun designing him~ In the second half he is very different. Cocky, arrogant and not above pushing people’s buttons. He becomes a model, so he had to be good looking. I gave him dark skin on a bit of a whim, plus it looked nice with uniform colour scheme. Shortish messy hair gave him the roguish charm. He wears the standard waiters uniform to begin with and in the second half I gave him a t-shirt and jeans. I figured a tight t-shirt would suit him because I think he would be the type to show off even in casual outfits. He has more muscle than the other two, both because of his role in the game and because he would have to keep himself fit to be a model. He did originally have a goatee, but he ended up with stubble to show how lazy he can be in the second half (I will eventually give a guy a goatee in of our games ///>u<///). His expressions for the first half had to be very bright and friendly, so there are big grins and big eyes. In the second half his expressions are a lot darker, his eyes more narrowed and he is more likely to have a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

Laura:

Laura was the problem character I had in the game. I knew who I wanted her to be, the shy character shows up a lot as a trope, but trying to figure out how to show that was a little harder than the rest. Her duality is probably the biggest change as well. I really wanted to show her going from being a shy wallflower to someone who was very strong willed and spunky. I eventually choose to have her fringe covering her eyes in the first half, which helped create the feeling she was a side character. Plus, I’ve always wanted to try doing it. It also gave me a good way of showing her real personality when she pins back her fringe. I gave her an eyebrow stud to show her more rebellious nature as well. Her and Liam are cousins so they have a similar look with their skin tone and hair and eye colour. Her casual outfit was something that I thought she would wear, a little tomboyish and easy to move in. Yellow is such a nice colour to go with darker skin, it compliments it so nicely.

Ethan:

Ethan was meant to kind of be the emo type in the first half, but he kind of ended up being more the jerk with the past instead. In the second half is is a super nice guy, too nice most of the time as people tend to walk all over him. I can relate to that since I have a hard time telling people no and I often end up working myself into the ground as a result. He originally didn’t have glasses but once I added them they just fitted so perfectly. Plus, you can’t have an otome game without a megane character. The word that popped into my head for him was ‘cold’. So I gave him pale skin, dark hair and grey eyes. Literally a cold colour scheme. His glasses for the first half are small and very refined, which fitted with his uptight personality. In the second half he is a totally different person and I wanted to represent that with what he choose to wear. I gave him indie-chic glasses and almost a preppy but relaxed look with the cardigan. His expressions went from being very sharp with lots of glares and frowns to being very soft. I think his expressions tend to give him the greatest change of personality.

BONUS:

This isn’t a character to do with RisAmo, but he has a pretty different thought process so I thought it would be good to discuss him. This character is for a short game that Camille is making for one of her classes, and there are a number of considerations with his design. He was described to me as an attractive but gritty middle-aged detective. His story is set a bit into the future as opposed to noir detective stories and the audience is the wider public and so there is a good chance they would not have come into contact with visual novels before. Since we want the audience to take the story seriously we decided to go with a realistic style so they wouldn’t dismiss it as ‘just a cartoon’. This was going to be an interesting experiment for me because realism introduces a number of unique problems when creating a sprite. Given the time consuming nature of the style, it’s also good to be trying this out on a small game.

The first thing I did was research. Attractive middle-aged men that is.

I swear this was for study.

I ended up focusing on Hugh Jackman, George Clooney and Gerard Butler since they all have a certain grittiness to them. Visual research is important to do. What I was specifically looking for were the visual cues for age, attractiveness and grittiness. I looked at their facial shapes, their eyes, their hair, their mouths, trying to pick out the specific shapes and lines that told me about who they were. Some of the things I found I needed to focus on where the shape of their jaw and the lines that formed on their checks and around their mouths. The thinness of their lips (fuller lips tend to be a more youthful thing). The way their eyes were slightly hooded and the way their brow was quite low. The lines around their eyes that indicated age. The way their stubble was formed and what it said about them. From this I started to sketch my character, doing my best to keep in mind those details.

I was very unsure of what style I was going to use. I was pretty worried about the issue of producing the different emotions in a realistic style with consistency. I first tried to keep it kind of loose and simple, but I wasn’t terribly happy with it. I was having trouble trying to figure out how to make the shadows consistent. After that I decided to go all in and see how I went with it. It was the first time I had painted something properly in a while. It’s time consuming, but the effects can be quite nice. It will be very interesting to see how it goes within a VN. Camille thought he looked a bit old in that version so I went back and softened the lines around his mouth and eyes to make him more age appropriate. I haven’t done his emotions yet but I think the best way to do it will be to duplicate the layers and change only what I need to change. That way I won’t have to worry about what I repaint not matching what shouldn’t have changed, like some of the skin shading. Might still be a little difficult, but I’ll see how it goes. Below are the steps he went through to get to where he is now.

And that’s all :)

I hope it wasn’t too hard to follow, sometimes my thought process isn’t the most linear in the world. Some other posts I want to make are on making sprites, making backgrounds from photos, making CGs etc, so if anyone has any questions or suggestions, I would be very happy to hear them :)

Thanks for reading!

First of all, welcome to the brand new Cyanide Tea blog! I’ve set up a redirect from my old dev blog for convenience’s sake, but this is going to be our primary blog from now on. Auro and I will not only be posting status updates on our various projects, but also talking about the process of making VNs, designing characters, that sort of thing… So keep an eye on this blog and I hope you find it enjoyable. (:

Moving along, I’ve just uploaded version 1.1 of Ristorante Amore to our website. This fixes the following:

• The sprite error that happens just after the CG in Liam’s post-prologue romantic ending.
• Various typos and a few detail mismatches/inconsistencies.
• The full-comp secret site link. It now actually works instead of just taking you to the RisAmo website main page.
• The game’s window icon. It now works properly on the Mac. (not sure if Windows users were having problems with it?)

Also (and this isn’t a bugfix, but a logistical change): right-clicking while in the game now takes you to the preferences menu. You can access save/load from there if need be. Pressing [P] will still bring up the preferences as normal, but hopefully this helps some people out a bit.

I’m pretty sure that addresses most of the minor problems people have been having with the game, so hopefully there’s not a need for a version 1.2. The sprite error was the only one that even brought up an error screen–and even then, only some of the time. Do let us know if you find that there are any other problems.

I’ve also officially released the .RPY files for people to use and learn from. I hope these are useful to somebody, though I personally find my code really messy. ^^;

Re: an extended version of RisAmo… Auro and I have been kicking ideas about it back and forth, but ultimately we decided that if it does happen, it won’t be for a long while. (at least not until after BCM’s done) We’re the types that always want to fix things and improve on things, but we’ve decided to try and accept that the game’s over. I think that, overall, people would rather see new VNs from us than to see us constantly rehash the same old content. NaNoRenO was a whole lot of fun (and hard work) and we learned a lot from it… We should just leave it at that. We’ve been very grateful for and humbled by all the responses to the game and we’re very glad that most people seem to have enjoyed it.

Aside from doing some planning on BCM and restarting our efforts on it, Auro and I are also working on a very tiny VN for a class I’m taking this semester. Of course, even though it’s for a grade, we’ll still release it for everyone else to play. It’ll be very short, though, taking no longer than 20 minutes to finish and having only 2-3 choices.

The working title we have for it is “The Elevator”. It takes place in the not-too-distant future and the story centers on a jaded, middle-aged detective. Every morning, he rides a rickety old elevator up to his office on the top floor of a run-down building. For the last couple of months, he has met a young woman every day in this elevator. She always gets off a few floors before him. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they spend the entire elevator ride in complete silence–but how will the relationship between these two people change?

It sounds a little odd and somewhat simple, but I hope that everyone enjoys it once it’s out. We should have that done by the first week in May. (well, that’s kind of when it’s due, so I need to have it finished by then!) That’s it from me! See you at the next blog update. ♥