[Otome] The Sky Ripper [Steampunk Pirates]

[Kessie]

I want to make you proud, Father.
As I take to the skies, I hope you see me there, your child, in your image.

TypE
GxB Romance, Adventure & Mystery Visual Novel

SeTTinG
An era of Victorian Steam punk with a pinch of science fiction.

ThE StoRy
Emma H. Weal is the adopted daughter of a well known Detective who died unexpectedly, leaving her his will and business. In an effort to carry on in her father's footsteps, she has been seeking detective work left and right only to be rejected, spat on and ridiculed. She begins to realise that things have drastically changed now that she's on her own but is not discouraged to pursue her father's career despite her lack of knowledge and expertise.

As word spreads that the orphaned girl is desperate for work, she is by some unknown force that we shall call luck and chance offered an important task by a family of aristocrats that makes her stomach want to hurl: Investigating pirates..
Emma loathes pirates though she has never met one.
"A group of bloodthirsty, thieving, greedy, cut-throat, merciless swines they are!"
but for a hefty sum of course that makes it all seem worthwhile.

After accepting the curious task and sneaking on board the pirate ship Novalique to investigate the aristocrat's claims of possibly locating a kidnapped person inside or at least further leads in the case of the missing person's whereabouts, little does she know the adventure she's in for when she takes too long and the ship takes off, cornering her with a crew of the Most Wanted pirates to ever sail the skies.

*Gulp* "Is it too late to jump?"


ThE ChaRACTeRS
 Emma H. Weal – Main Character – *Stowaway/ Detective – Has a strong sense of justice and moral obligation as well as a respect for the law like her father which is the sole reason (along with pirates being plain intimidating) why she was reluctant to take on the aristocrats’ task of snooping on board someone’s ship without permission or grounds of authority to do so. Regardless, she takes on the task for the lack of work and claims it’s a ‘stepping stone’ in the field of detective work compared to sitting around and doing nothing/ she’s getting out there and gaining experience.

The Pirates/ Crew of Novalique

o Luther A. Claxton - *Master Gunner. A mocking, egotistical jerk who makes fun of people especially Emma but is that really all he is about?
Quote: “Don’t push your luck mate, it could push a bullet in you.. really, it could.”

Luther's concept by v3-kei

o Claude N. Bridle - *Ship Captain. He's everything a captain should be; serious, strict, commanding but when he's not controlling the ship, what does he get up to?
Quote: “Running a ship is like.. eating candy. It’s sweet, satisfying.. sometimes a sticky situation here and there but nonetheless, sweet and satisfying!”

Claude's concept by v3-kei

o August U. Riggs - *Engineer. Hard to deal with and short tempered, but a crazy genius no less. Is there possibly anything normal about him that Emma can relate to?
Quote: "You think I'm weird don't you.. I think we're all a little bit on the weird side."

August's concept by v3-kei

o Miles R. Cobbe – *Quarter Master/ Cook. He’s intimidating, threatening and looks like the scariest pirate on board the ship with his height and brute strength to match but is there no softer side to find?
Quote: "What are those twig looking things doing where your arms are supposed to be?"

o Walter D. Reeves – *Doctor. He acts like a role model citizen out of place on board a pirate ship and as an older brother figure that Emma never had but does he know more about a life of piracy than he's letting on behind the eye patch he's wearing?
Quote: "Underneath a pirates' tattered clothes, bruises and disfiguring scars from a life of battle.. could very well be a gentleman, y' know?"

o Joanna J. Payton – *Swab/ Boatswain - Has a mechanical owl named Totes and actually enjoys her role swabbing the deck as she has obsessive compulsive disorder to a certain degree. What runs through the mind of a shy, timid girl like her?
Quote: "You take one look at me and think: 'Pirate!' But I take one look at you and think: 'Commoner'. Who is the boring one now?"

o Helene L. Roughran - *Sailing Master. Has a crush on the captain that he is oblivious to. She’s lively, bubbly and full of energy. Everything she does is done with heart and absolute precision but is the only reason because she wants to get noticed by a certain someone?
Quote: "Jolly good day to cut some throats... you should have seen the look on your face, blehh."

The Aristocrats

 Lady Agatha A. Paige
The goody two shoes of the Paige twins who convinces Emma to take on the task as a 'win-win situation' for both the Paige family and to continue the memory of the deceased Detective Weal.
Quote: "If you don't find him, no one will. Please find our friend... pretty please with a sack of gold on top.

Agatha's concept by Tag-

 Lord Cyrus B. Paige II
The rude one out of the Paige twins who could care less about pleasing people and is more concerned on pleasing himself but has somehow taken an interest in the case of the missing aristocrat.
Quote:"Always hiding behind your father's name hm? but what have -you- done besides hasten the collapse of his legacy?"

Cyrus' concept by Tag-

The Navy/ Federation Fleet

 Commodore Octavius S. Lupton
He also has a sense of justice that appeals and relates greatly to the main character Emma but is the Navy really trying to uphold justice or are they actually full of underlying hypocritical corruption as they sought out to capture Pirates?
Quote: "You know my father lost an eye to a Pirate, and he always did say strange things like an eye for an eye.. I think you know what i'm getting at. Pirates get what they get simply because they asked for it when they chose to be pirates.

Mystery Character

...only two ways to find out this section..

Mystery's concept by Tag-

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

The team whom I am always thankful for~ <3:

Main Writer: Kessie
Co-Writer: Gamer_Templar (not on lemmasoft)
Ideas Bouncer, Poetry & Song Writer: mmstar
Proofreader & Editor: merdeamour
Programming Helper: PyroTyguy
Gui Coder & Designer: Shad12ow
Steampunk Specialist & Ship Layout Designer: Byte (not on lemmasoft)
Sprite Artist: Tag-
CG Artist: FlawedFlare
Costume Concept Artist: Itwasneveradream
*Note: Character Appearance Concepts were split evenly between all artists above.
Special Object Artist: nero279
Background Artist: v3-kei (?), crestforge
Composer: Joshii (not on lemmasoft)

and here's a dab of GUI! (Please note that screenshots have been resized to fit the pixels rule)

and a ship layout of the Novalique we hope to incorporate in the game:

Novalique airship layout by Byte

Backgrounds are also starting to cook:

Background

If you would be interested in helping make this idea a reality, feel free to check out our recruitment thread:
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 38&t=19373
All hands on deck!

Otherwise, feel free to comment
We're always enthused to hear what you think and your critique could help us improve as we work on it.



Thanks for the comments and dropping by! See you around lemmasoft.

[myapple]

Oh man, i'm a huge steampunk fan @_@
Also loving the strong female protag. This looks like a really interesting project~ I'll be keeping an eye on it for sure!

Do you have the middle names for all the characters picked out already?

[Kessie]

Oh man, i'm a huge steampunk fan @_@
Also loving the strong female protag. This looks like a really interesting project~ I'll be keeping an eye on it for sure!

Do you have the middle names for all the characters picked out already?

Aww thanks! I definitely wasn't expecting a response so soon, gets me excited too .
Yesh I do have the middle names picked out but I was debating whether or not to keep them since I haven't played many VNs with mention of middle names at all.. do you have an opinion on that? :O I'd be happy to hear it~! ^.^

[myapple]

Aww thanks! I definitely wasn't expecting a response so soon, gets me excited too :D.
Yesh I do have the middle names picked out but I was debating whether or not to keep them since I haven't played many VNs with mention of middle names at all.. do you have an opinion on that? :O I'd be happy to hear it~! ^.^

Hmm... well I really like characters having middle names, eheh. It's great that you have them all picked out already :D
It might be cool to include them if you have a character profile screen or something in game? I guess it's kind of hard to incorporate them otherwise though, unless they are called by their full name in the script of the story somewhere ^^;

[Kessie]

Aww thanks! I definitely wasn't expecting a response so soon, gets me excited too .
Yesh I do have the middle names picked out but I was debating whether or not to keep them since I haven't played many VNs with mention of middle names at all.. do you have an opinion on that? :O I'd be happy to hear it~! ^.^

Hmm... well I really like characters having middle names, eheh. It's great that you have them all picked out already
It might be cool to include them if you have a character profile screen or something in game? I guess it's kind of hard to incorporate them otherwise though, unless they are called by their full name in the script of the story somewhere ^^;

Oh yeah, that's a great idea ^.^ Character profiles~! I'll be keeping that in mind for sure.
I think it would be too tedious to read their full names over and over in the script so character profiles sounds really good to me.
Thanks for the feedback .

[Shad12ow]

Steam Punk? Pirates? Romance in the sky? What more could you ask for?
My favorite themes combined!
Your characters looked solid to me. Pretty good.
Well, good luck to you!

[Kessie]

Steam Punk? Pirates? Romance in the sky? What more could you ask for?
My favorite themes combined!
Your characters looked solid to me. Pretty good.
Well, good luck to you!

Thank you I'm really happy to know that the characters still appear solid enough (since I left out a lot of major spoilers that would have captured the characters more in depth. >.<) but hopefully we can work on character profiles in the meantime as mentioned above to show the details (that we can show outside the VN that is) more presentably and accurate .

Appreciate the support! ^.^b

[Boyfriend]

Hi hi! Steam punk isn't my thing but if you are including voices I'd audition!

[Kessie]

Hi hi! Steam punk isn't my thing but if you are including voices I'd audition!

Hey, thanks for dropping by.
Not too sure if it will include voice acting since we're still in the earliest stages of making the VN but if we do consider voice acting in the future, I'll keep it in mind to send you a PM.

[ofdawnandtwilight]

This seems so good ^^

The only otome game containing pirates that I know of is Pirates in Love and as much as I enjoyed it, this sounds far better and a plus for a seemingly witty heroine A steampunk setting based always catches my eye but it's hard for me to actually pay attention to it since I've never really enjoyed seeing so many metal and machines in one place but oh this sounds really good.

I'm looking forward to any progress you'll post and I'm oh-so-tempted to offer my service as an artist but I'm still an amateur and I'm scared if I happen to bail out in the middle (people really hate that, I've learnt that the hard way ^^; ) so in the meantime I'll just watch this from the sidelines. Just curious though, what kind of style do you prefer for this game?

[Kessie]

This seems so good ^^

The only otome game containing pirates that I know of is Pirates in Love and as much as I enjoyed it, this sounds far better and a plus for a seemingly witty heroine A steampunk setting based always catches my eye but it's hard for me to actually pay attention to it since I've never really enjoyed seeing so many metal and machines in one place but oh this sounds really good.

I'm looking forward to any progress you'll post and I'm oh-so-tempted to offer my service as an artist but I'm still an amateur and I'm scared if I happen to bail out in the middle (people really hate that, I've learnt that the hard way ^^; ) so in the meantime I'll just watch this from the sidelines. Just curious though, what kind of style do you prefer for this game?

Thankyou, really appreciate the compliments .
Also thankyou for the mention of Pirares in Love. I haven't played it but to have our idea compared to a professional commercial work's is a very big compliment already. we'll certainly do our best.
I understand that things come along that can cause delay.. (really I do >. <) but if you're less busy later on and are up for it, by all means shoot me a PM or post ^^. It's going to be a big game from the looks of things and we'll need all the help we can get .

In regards to style, the way I see it is that I can't afford to be picky. Whilst we want and are accepting quality art, I like to keep in mind that as you've mentioned briefly, there's extra detail required which may be harder to capture (eg. Machinery) and that I am not paying for any work . So to answer your question, I am not holding a preference on style and am willing to work with the enthusiastic artists who apply to the project, in the style that they can offer so long as it is consistent with one another and fits the atmosphere of steam punk.

[ofdawnandtwilight]

Ah, I see. It's just that I've been imagining the characters in Western style so I thought that I might not be up for the job from the beginning ^^;

(By the way, Pirates in Love wasn't that enjoyable for me, good but not so much to be remembered or maybe that's just me for playing only one route) And since Japanese VNs tend to play the Mary Sue card or the nice and naive ones -not that I hate them, just tired of them- I'm pretty sure I'd like your game better

Anyway, I'll be stalking this for more updates! Good luck on finding help, hope this becomes a reality than just an idea

[WickedRaccoon]

You had me at steampunk,but also pirates? You know how to make someone's day!
The character description and plot makes me more tempted to play this, and since it triggered my interest,I'll keep an eye out for this!
Wish you good luck!

[Kessie]

Ah, I see. It's just that I've been imagining the characters in Western style so I thought that I might not be up for the job from the beginning ^^;

(By the way, Pirates in Love wasn't that enjoyable for me, good but not so much to be remembered or maybe that's just me for playing only one route) And since Japanese VNs tend to play the Mary Sue card or the nice and naive ones -not that I hate them, just tired of them- I'm pretty sure I'd like your game better

Anyway, I'll be stalking this for more updates! Good luck on finding help, hope this becomes a reality than just an idea

Oh I understand now ^^; The steam punk fashion is I suppose western but with the artists we have received, it'll still have that anime-ish element in terms of appearance (?).

Why thank you I also understand how the protagonist in those VNs can often be made a certain way to account for why the males pay her any attention (eg. damsel in distress) and am glad that my idea for a protagonist is appealing xD.

Thank you again for the support .

[Kessie]

You had me at steampunk,but also pirates? You know how to make someone's day!
The character description and plot makes me more tempted to play this, and since it triggered my interest,I'll keep an eye out for this!
Wish you good luck!

Haha yay xD.
And thank you I really was worried that I hadn't supplied enough information for the characters (since I had to shorten it to avoid spoilers >.<) and to be able to have generated interest from it already is reassuring.

Thanks for the support .