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 Development Update, December 2022
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Dec 21, 2022 at 01:06:53 AM
Happy Holidays, everyone! Here's what we've been up to:
Animations Begin
We ran a search for a 2D FX artist in November, and are happy to announce that we have an artist for at least our combat animations, maybe more! Ze is half of the team that made Chronicles of Tal'Dun: The Remainder, which you should absolutely check out if you haven't. It's gorgeous, mysterious, and atmospheric. He's completed his first test animation for us and they're going to make our combat scenes look cool and dynamic!
Art Teasers
A few hints of the art that has been completed this month:
The waterwheel is attached to Meissa's cottage, and you can probably guess who owns the hand with the glowly purple hair behind it. The bared chest, however... you don't know him. And you won't until the game comes out.
Social Media Notes:
If you've been following us on Twitter, please be aware that I'm largely withdrawing from the site, for reasons I'm sure you can guess. I recommend following our Tumblr for the most content! For instance, I posted an official company statement about AI art the other day, and tomorrow I'll be posting an excerpt from a Winter Solstice lore story (to appear in the Made Marion Mega-Guide) starring Marion two years before the game begins. We also have a Mastodon account, which mostly posts my daily thoughts around developing the game and other game-related things (I'm on a server for game devs).
That's what we have this month! In the next couple months we'll be completing Robin's script and should be able to show a bit of Ze's work in action! Plus more sprite art, background art, and the continuing development of our animated lore intro.
Made Marion Development Update: November 2022
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 06:03:03 AM
Hi everyone! Thanks so much for your patience with our skipped October update. We're in that awkward stage of development where it's a lot of writing and behind-the-scenes work, so we just didn't have a lot to show last month.
The Writing Department:
I've hit my first major milestone in Robin's route! Here's hoping that writing goes ever faster from here on out. It's been a huge struggle for me since my bout with long Covid, because my brain keeps fighting me and making it difficult for me to pull out words. But I've been writing some fanfic and that's actually been helping me make more progress on Made Marion's script as I retrain my skull-encased electrified tapioca to string sentences together. Check our socials over the next month (or maybe just Tumblr, who knows how long Twitter will be up at this juncture) if you're a fan of Gilded Shadows and want to see me playing around with the crew from Quill's route. I'll post a link when I'm done!
The Art Department:
Our redesigned Nottingham sprites are thiiiis close to done. They'll probably be released fairly close to each other, as Arrapso is putting final touches on all of them. In the meantime, we have some lovely side characters to introduce!
Ysolt, on the left, may be familiar to some of you who check our Discord. She was a possible backer-designed sprite who wasn't claimed by our character design backers, so we collected suggestions from our Discord participants for her design!
At the start of the game, Geoffrey's old Lady Chamberlain is about to get married and quit her job. He needs somebody to run Nottingham Hold, which is partly why he was closing his marriage contract with Marion's father. What happens when his prospective bride disappears or runs away with the Sherwood rebels and he never meets or is rejected by "Lady Anne"? He hires the recently-widowed Lady Ysolt to be his new Lady Chamberlain. She works for him on every route except Geoff/Gui's and Alanna's. She looks quite competent, doesn't she?
On the right is Fawzia. She is many things: freebooter turned smuggler, Meissa's friend, unsung hero of the internal revolt that ended the Nibirian War. She's the reason Meissa has so many nice Nibirian fabrics and art objects in their home. She also helps supply the Rebellion. As someone who left her native Sunjata due to her lack of citizenship status in any city-state, Fawzia is a fan of freedom movements. Fun fact: She will be a love interest in our third planned game, Fatebreaker, which is set during the Nibirian revolt. Sorry to those of you who would like to romance her now - never fear, you can romance her slightly younger self later!
The Programming Department:
Every time I swear I'm done with screens (any of y'all who have played with Ren'py know what I'm talking about), I remember that the darn things can be very useful sometimes.
In our demo, a game over greets the player with a black screen and the name of the ending they have just received in our normal dialogue box. That's not particularly attractive, so I've added a special ending screen so you can mourn your poor choices or celebrate your good ones.
Neutral endings, like the one pictured above, come with a sepia tone screen. Good endings are full color and bad endings are black and white - perhaps with a bit of blood splatter for those really bad endings.
We are Hiring!
We are currently looking for a freelance 2D Visual FX artist to join our team for a series of commissions over the rest of development. We're looking for some simple animations to spruce up the game, such as sword swing FX during combat scenes and some magic spell effects. Please see our job announcement and if you or anybody you know is a freelance artist with animated VFX skills, contact me via Twitter, Tumblr, or Discord (I don't recommend KS because we're moving quickly and it doesn't always alert me when I have messages).
That's the Made Marion news from November! See you next month!
Made Marion Development Update, September 2022
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 03:32:08 AM
Hello everyone! This month we just have a mini-update with some teases for you.
A sketch of some lovely armour from our animated lore intro:
Who's this? Could it be... a fae? But normally, Marion can't see the fae...
A hint of the chevalier with the most fabulous hair (and, apparently, the most fabulous collarbones):
And special for our long-time Tumblr followers, you know who this is:
I'm very close to my first major writing milestone on Robin's route. If my technology stops blowing up (we had *another* incident with my brand-new computer and my rather old monitor failing to get along), things should start going faster with the writing from here!
See you in October!
Made Marion Development Update, August 2022
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 12:52:46 PM
Happy August! We have several goodies for this month.
Semi-Final Release Date:
I've mentioned that I'd make a more final decision on our release date this summer, as we've been delayed by my bout with long Covid and some health and work-related issues on our art team.
I've officially set our release date as 2023. I will not announce a more specific date until we're ready for Steam certification, so once you get a real date, you'll know the game is coming soon!
I'm so sorry we weren't able to meet our original release goal. This dratted pandemic sure has been a thing. :( Still, we'll be releasing less than three years after our KS, which isn't bad!
Now for the Goodies!
IRL lore tidbit! Celtic crosses like the one on the fountain are pre-Christian. As always, no real world religions are depicted in Made Marion.
Check out this neat garden background from Sandra! She's riffing off actual Medieval gardens, which were generally quite practical. This is the garden in Nottingham Hold, with a bunch of veggies and herbs for the kitchen as well as the kennels for Geoffrey's beloved hounds in the back. There's a more decorative section off-screen, which you can see in our rose garden background (where Marion often finds herself meeting up with Gui on his route).
This month I had the chance to record three bardic tunes as sung by Alanna. This was thanks to our Beyond Stretch funding - it was a lower priority for our backers than ambient sound and the animated lore intro, but since those are both in great shape and I found a very affordable studio, I was able to squeeze in all three major Beyond Stretch 1 goals!
Here is the professional recording of Greensleeves (Thanks, Green Room Studios!), and I hope you'll agree that it sounds way better than the version that's in the current demo. I'm saving the other two pieces to be discovered in the game itself. One will be sung by Alanna in a tavern scene that plays out quite differently on a few different routes. The other is exclusive to Alanna's route. The backing music is genuine traditional instruments (lute, bodhran, bells) played by Quebec musician Mathieu Lavoie.
New Computer Time!
Development was briefly interrupted this month as my ancient PC finally decided to give up the ghost. The most recent Windows 10 update was just too much for poor Rasputin (alas, it truly was the greatest love machine). I originally thought Rasputin was 10 years old, but turns out it was more like 12. I'd been planning to get a new PC, so this just moved up the timetable.
For transparency, Kickstarter funds were NOT used on my new computer, but I wanted to show it off because it's so pretty. Meet Monáe, the new power behind Made Marion's development:
Yes, I always name my PCs, and yes, unlike my previous one, this one is named after one of my heroes.
That's the report for August! Next week I'll be dogsitting for my folks out in the lovely North Cascades countryside, so I'm using it as a writing retreat and hope to get some serious work done on Robin's route. See y'all in September!
Made Marion Development Update, July 2022
almost 2 years ago
– Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 04:28:40 PM
Hello everyone! Just a quick update for July so I can get back to writing today.
Development of Robin's route continues apace. We'll be hosting a Q&A on Tumblr where you can ask him questions starting tomorrow.
Lawrichai has made a fantastic storyboard video for our animated lore intro (it's our unique retelling of the Arthurian legends, which serve as the way the kingdom of Avalon was founded). It's so much cooler than what I was envisioning in my little non-visual-artist head, with neat angles and a valiant Arthurian army and stuff! Here's a teaser for the art from the intro, King Arthur's crown.
Our lore intro tells the official Avalon version of its founding, with King Arthur as the hero who founded the Pact between humanity and the fae, as well as united Central Avalon and Brittany into one nation and raised the Wall that separates Stennland from the rest of the continent.
If you want the other side of the story, we have a short story from the point of view of the rebellious Morganna, former Queen of Brittany who did not believe in the Pact, in our Made Marion Mega-Guide!
The inestimable Arrapso (our sprite and CG artist) and our animation maven Edhie will be able to rejoin the project in August, so we'll have more art to show you soon.
