A romantic visual novel inspired by the legends of Robin Hood. Step into the shoes of Lady Marion as she becomes entangled in a battle for the future of Nottingham. Fight for freedom and fall in love!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Made Marion Keys Coming November 16, Early Access Launch November 17
6 months ago
– Wed, Nov 08, 2023 at 07:05:56 PM
Hi everyone!
I have just announced that our official launch date for Robin's route, aka Made Marion Early Access Launch, will be November 17.
Yes, all backers will receive their game keys in time for Early Access! I would never make y'all pay twice to experience the game. I will be sending out game keys on November 16 so you can be ready to play as soon as the Early Access build goes live.
Robin's beta test is going well and the Early Access build is complete except for three critical art assets. To ensure our artists had time to give these pieces the polish they should have, I set our release date to November 17. I will send out another announcement once the keys have been sent out, so I'll "see" you next week!
Cheers,
Becky, VC Games
Made Marion Development Update, October 2023
7 months ago
– Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 04:47:53 PM
Robin Beta and Early Access Cometh!
Happy spooky month, everyone!
Our excellent news for the month is that we are on-track to release Robin's route in early November as targeted!
Are you ready to storm the castle?
As of today, I have 1.5 scenes left to code in Chapter 3 (by far the longest chapter). I'll have the chapter 4s ready by the weekend of the 28th, when I'll start the full Robin beta. I'll give the beta at least two weekends (especially since the first is Halloween weekend), so as long as Steam certification goes well I will be releasing Early Access before November 15.
Please watch your inboxes!
Beta backers will receive a set of new beta instructions when it's time to download the beta. This will take you to your project downloads on Backerkit so you can easily find your beta key and redeem it if you haven't yet done so.
The Early Access code I will send out in November serves as your redemption code for all of Made Marion! Even if you don't want to play yet, I strongly encourage you to redeem your code when I send it out so that you'll have easy access to Made Marion whenever you want to start playing.
I will post an exact release date for Early Access on Tumblr (and Steam, and Itch) as soon as our beta client is ready and Steam has accepted us as an Early Access release.
Robin is ready for romance, are you?
Made Marion Development Update - September 2023
7 months ago
– Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 06:42:41 PM
The Road to Early Access Release
Hey everyone! We're closing in on our Early Access release of Robin's route! I'm on track to finish writing Robin's route by the end of September, so here's our schedule for the months ahead:
September: Complete Robin route script, it's looking like it'll be around 70,000 words once both Chapter 4s are done.
Early October: Coding Chapters 3 & 4, Made Marion featured in Steam Next Fest.
Late October: Robin Route full beta test and Steam certification process.
Early November: Early Access launch!
What can throw off this schedule?
1. Delay of critical art resources (we have a few more that are required for the full experience).
2. Steam certification difficulties.
3. Geez, I dunno, another global pandemic? I never know what's gonna happen these days.
I will keep y'all notified both here and (for more granular progress reports like Little John's Tuesday Tidbits, previously the Monday Mini-Update) on Tumblr!
When we launch in Early Access, all backers will receive their game keys! I'll repeat this later, but:
If you have an Itch.io key, please LOG IN to make sure your key is connected to your account. This will make it easy for you to download all the updates. I will probably require a login for key redemption so that nobody can accidentally screw themselves over. You will still be able to gift keys to friends if you bought extra copies! They'll just have to be logged into an itch.io account to redeem them.
The Made Marion Extras Menu
We completed one of the final major changes to our overall game systems this month. Our fabulous coding consultant Feniks/Shawna built our extras menu for us! You can access the Extras Menu from the Main Menu that appears when you haven't yet started or loaded a game.
As you can see, there are all sorts of goodies available in the Extras Menu. You can view the game's full-screen illustrations as they're unlocked, listen to the music from the soundtrack, read the love interest point-of-view scenes that unlock after you complete an ending, view the three movies associated with the game, and see your achievements.
Here's how the CG (full-screen illustration) gallery looks. This player has gone through the Sherwood common route and has unlocked the first of Robin's five illustrations. You can click on it for a full-screen view.
And here's the Achievements Menu. Our achievements work in-game (so Itch players can enjoy them too!) and will be connected to Steam's achievement system once the game leaves Early Access. I will add more achievements with each Early Access release, and they may not all be unlockable right away (in fact, that second locked achievement requires viewing multiple scenes across several routes).
Depending on budget, I may be able to hire somebody to draw unique pictures for the achievements later in the Early Access process.
And one final small but mighty game system update: You will now see choices that you have previously made in italics, so if you want to make sure to make different choices in your next playthrough, you can!
It looks like this player previously chose to trust the shadowy figure that saved them from being captured by Geoffrey's men. Shall they try running away this time?
Things are getting exciting! See you next month!
Made Marion Development Update, August 2023
9 months ago
– Wed, Aug 16, 2023 at 03:32:32 PM
Happy August! We've been lucky so far this summer in BC, but our luck ran out this week. My poor lil' portable AC has been working overtime to keep me operating during the heat wave, and the feline office staff is rather displeased.
Robin Home Stretch
Robin Chapter 3 is fully written and off to our first reader, and I'm working on Chapter 4. Or Chapter 4s? One possible Chapter 4 is titled Tournament of Truth, and the other is Tournament of Reckoning. They're a little shorter than the other chapters, but there are two of them, and things play out differently in them depending on your ending choice!
Final Trailer!
We worked with Foxdrift Studios for our lovely final trailer. This one is aimed more at being the game's intro than a Kickstarter video, and has a stronger focus on Marion and the love interests (plus, it has the final game art in it). Here it is!
Made Marion Development Update: July 2023
10 months ago
– Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 12:32:19 PM
Hello everyone! We're back to our regularly scheduled mid-month updates!
Beta Release Successful!
We released Beta 0.1 at the beginning of July and everything went pretty smoothly! We managed to catch and patch a lockup bug the night before release, and testers only found one more minor lockup bug (and no crash bugs) after release.
Our biggest issue as always is missing dialogue tags that cause a character's dialogue to look like it's narration instead. This happens due to the way I paste the script into Visual Basic, so when I write Will's script I'm looking at making some changes that will minimize these errors. Thanks so much to the testers who reported in on the errors they found!
As of this writing, only about 40 beta backers have claimed their keys. I know many people are waiting to join the beta later, but please claim yourbeta key ASAP. I won't be sending out keys again, because the key I sent this month is all you need going forward. It'll be much easier to have the beta client accessible in your Steam or Itch library than to have to find it when you want to join the beta!
Fee fi fo fum, I smell the bug of an Avalon. (This bug was fixed well before beta, but it was funny.)
What's On Deck
I have two more scenes to write for Robin Chapter 3, and it should be about 50k words at that point, so my prediction that the routes will be at least 60k words appears to be accurate. Since it looks like many people are waiting for the full route to be available before joining beta, I will wait and release Robin Chapters 3-4 together so the entire route will be playable in beta for our next release.
Speaking of decks, I've been testing the game on the Steam Deck, and it's playable, but the UI needs some improvements for gamepad control. I'm working with Shawna on these improvements, which should also be helpful for general useability and increased accessibility. We shouldn't have any trouble being Steam Deck certified by our Early Access launch!
Meanwhile, Arrapso is busy completing the secondary character sprites needed in Robin's route and Lawrichai is working on Robin cut-ins. Shawna is programming in the Extras menu as well as working on the gamepad issues. I'm commissioning a new trailer that will feature our final character sprites and will serve as the intro video to the game, so it'll have less narration/marketing language in it.
