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