All Sorts of Made Marion Goodies
almost 5 years ago – Mon, Apr 12, 2021 at 06:40:05 PM

Hi everyone! I have all sorts of goodies to report in today's backer update.

Survey Completion

As of this writing, 77% of you have completed your backer surveys. That's fantastic! Thanks so much for getting this squared away.

I'm locking the existing orders today (you should be getting a notice that this is happening) so that those of you who bought add-ons will have your cards charged when expected, instead of getting a surprise charge later on. If you need to make a change to your order after the lock, you can always contact us via Kickstarter or Backerkit. Backer goodies will still be available until January 2022, when I will transition us over to the pre-order store.

Have Your Say!

This week, I'm going to start getting feedback on various things that will let you make your mark on the Kickstarter rewards and the game itself.

First up is suggestions for themes for our wallpaper set. I have three possibilities already and would like to get one or two more before sending them out for you all to vote on the winner. We'll be collecting theme suggestions on our Discord. I've made a new channel called polls-and-developer-input where you'll find all these sorts of questions, so if you don't have the time or inclination to be an active Discord community member (I get it!), you can shortcut right to the part where you get to help influence the game.

Your Kickstarter Dollars at Work

We're blasting off with Made Marion's development, so I have some goodies to show off! First (and least visually spectacular) is the news that our prologue script's first draft is complete at around 12,000 words. The prologue takes place before the two common routes that star in our demos. It gives you the chance to meet Marion in her element, learn about her family troubles, and see the events that lead to her careening in a carriage toward Nottingham.

Our new team members have also produced some good stuff! We have our first completed cut-in art from Lawrichai, and it's animated! Messenger doves are very important to the Sherwood crew, so you'll see this cut-in from time to time. If the dove seems unusually focused and intelligent, well, there's a reason for that. You'll see!

We also have a bit of unique art for the prologue from Anna W. This is the portrait that Marion's father shows her when he announces that he's arranged a marriage for her. I wanted it created by someone other than our sprite artist (Anna B.) because all's fair in love and portraiture. Our fictional portrait artist has made a few minor "edits" to Geoffrey's look with the aim of making him more appealing to the ladies.

Up Next

That's it for today's update!  Next time we'll be able to share our first commissioned music piece, John's theme, and hopefully a peek at our combat sprites as well.

Surveys Are Going Out!
almost 5 years ago – Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 10:59:25 PM

Hi everyone!

Made Marion surveys are starting to go out!  We're doing our surveys and reward fulfilment through Backerkit, so you'll be seeing an e-mail from them. Right now we're doing the initial test surveys, which means about 50 of you will be receiving your surveys today. Once we've made sure everything is working fine, we'll send out the rest of them.

Along with surveys, you'll have a chance to purchase things from our add-on store. Early Birds, those of you who asked if you'd be able to pick up the Mega-Guide or Erotic Adventures, now's your chance!  You can also buy more copies of the game at the Kickstarter price, should you wish to gift one to a friend.

BETA INFO: Backerkit has a nice system that will make things run more smoothly for those of you who over-backed in order to join the beta. If you added $20 to your pledge for beta access, Backerkit will give you a $20 credit for the add-on store.  Just use that credit to grab the beta access from the store and you'll be all signed up!  If you didn't over-back for beta and want to join us, you can buy beta access from the add-on store as well.

Our beta will begin next year, and we'll probably be testing each route separately in order to focus our beta feedback. So if there are some routes that you want to save for the full release, you can!

That's it for now, please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about the survey!

Introducing our New Team Members!
almost 5 years ago – Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 05:29:30 PM

Hello everyone!

Our Kickstarter campaign funds should be delivered to us soon. It looks like we only have a few dropped backers, which is fantastic! In the meantime, I'd like to officially introduce you to two new team members who will be helping us fulfil the stretch goals that you all funded.

Lawrichai is a freelance 2D artist with game industry experience, having previously worked for Ubisoft. Lawrichai will be primarily responsible for our cut-in art. What are cut-ins?  They are smaller illustrations that will bring life to scenes that have action, but do not have a full-screen CG illustration. Our cut-ins will appear on screen like this:

Here are a couple sample cut-ins that Lawrichai prepared for us.

We've gone with a watercolor illustration style for our cut-ins, which works well with their parchment paper backdrop.

Anna W. is our second official new team member. Anna was already involved in the project as my first reader and the illustrator of the Erotic Adventures booklet (you can see some of Anna's work in previous updates), and will now be helping with some graphical needs in the main game such as animations and maps. Anna is a professional game writer who is finishing up an MA in Game Design and has several artistic talents as well.

Please give our new team members a hearty welcome!

We Did It! THANK YOU!
about 5 years ago – Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 01:41:20 AM

The Made Marion Kickstarter is successfully complete. We're fully funded, with all stretch goals reached, at over 46k and close to 1000 backers. That's really amazing for a studio's first time otome game, and we're so grateful that you all chose to put your faith in us!

What's up next? We'll receive our funds in early April, so in the meantime I'm finishing up the prologue script and working up our development schedule. Thanks to our stretch goals and "beyond stretch" goalposts having been met, I'm going to have some announcements soon about some additions to our team.

Once we're in the swing of development, I'll be posting updates once a month to keep you all appraised of our progress. Backers can also drop by our Discord server (invite in Update #7) anytime to say hi and check up on the project. It's a nice little community, so come on over!

The Final Weekend + No Wrong Answers
about 5 years ago – Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 04:43:07 AM

It's the Final Weekend!

What a month it's been!  In just a few days, our Kickstarter will be successfully completed and we're quite close to $40,000 CAD.  Thanks to all of you who have been retweeting, sharing posts, telling your friends, etc.  We've had excellent growth throughout the campaign and I never would have dreamed we'd be well over 2x funded!  We'll be putting those funds to good use in developing the game.

There are No Wrong Answers - Well, Only Some

I thought I'd take a minute to discuss a particular feature of our game that is different from many other romance visual novels: our role-playing choices.

Most romance games use an affection meter that's attached to their choices. When you make a choice in the game, you either make the right choice and your love interest's affection goes up, or you make the wrong one and it goes down. Fail to gain enough affection by the end of the route and you get a bad (or less than ideal) ending.

Made Marion works differently. For most of our choices, there is no wrong answer. You can freely pick the kinds of choices that you want Marion to make. Every route has a different general theme for its choices. For instance, for Geoffrey and Gui's route, Marion's choices lean toward being idealistic or pragmatic.

The types of role-playing choices you make will shape the way your romance with your love interest develops. About 3/4ths of the way through each route, you will come upon a final RP choice. If you've strongly chosen one type of choice or the other, this choice will already be locked and you'll proceed to your chosen ending. If your choices have been about even, this final choice will lock you to one of the two possible good ending segments.

Thus, both idealistic and pragmatic Marion can successfully romance Geoffrey and achieve a good ending to his route. An idealistic Marion may clash more often with Geoffrey's opinions, but that's not necessarily a bad thing (it's super fun - and perhaps he even likes it?). A pragmatic Marion will have a smoother relationship with Geoffrey, but will find herself targeted by some of the same forces that oppose him. This changes how your romance develops and the obstacles that Geoffrey and Marion face during the game's climax.

As for bad endings - we still have them! Some of you may have even run into a bad ending in the Nottingham demo and a neutral-ish early ending in the Sherwood demo. These endings will be one-shot choices rather than based on a meter, so you can read them and then go straight back and make another choice.

I hope this makes for a unique experience that allows players to feel free to express themselves or role-play as Marion while the read through the game. Plus, it gives us even more re-playability since there are two different ending segments for each route (and a slightly crazy maze of endings in Geoffrey and Gui's shared route).

The Made Marion Calendar

One of the biggest challenges for me in writing Made Marion will be making sure that the timing of major and minor events works out within routes and between routes. And some of our longer-term fans know that despite being a big computer nerd, I'm also kind of an analog person. 

An electronic solution for this kind of tracking just isn't working for me. Thus, I've purchased a big flip board pad to use for the game's calendar. I'll be using Post-it notes to track the events from different routes and make sure everything lines up properly.

For instance, very early in the game, Robin steals a shipment of bread that was destined for a noble's fancy banquet and distributes it to Nottingham's poor. If you're on Robin's route, Marion goes along on the heist. If you're on a Nottingham Hold route, Marion overhears Geoffrey discussing the heist with a retainer of his. And if you're on Meissa's route, you help Much the miller's son, who is dealing with the consequences of the shipment having been stolen. I'll be using my calendar to make sure that all these things happen within the correct time frame in all associated routes.

Here's the front page. It shows the Avalon calendar, which I cribbed from the Celtic Tree Calendar. It's a popular lunar-based calendar that's not historically accurate, but it works quite well for my purposes! The blue segment is early spring, during which the prologue is set. The green segment is summer through early fall, in which the main story is set.

Yes, I am not one of the team's artists.  There are good reasons for this!

This will be our last update before the end of the Kickstarter, so I'll see you all on the other side!