Lemma Soft Forums

Setting
The 19th century.
Victoria is Queen of Anglia.
William Darwin is Prime Minister.

Steam-powered technology has spread across the world like wild-fire, enabling global trade and travel of the grandest scale. Ships travel the skyway with ever more interesting cargo - transglobal goods, contraband, princesses - perfect treasure for sky pirates, many of whom operate without a piracy license. Land transport, on the other hand, is dominated by trains, though the locomobile is slowly gaining traction with forward-thinking gentry and nouveau riche.

Protagonist: Emma Fay

Emma is a Lady's Maid, but she was raised by her grandmother, a successful governess. This has given Emma skills that she never dreamed would be useful in strange situations, like say... dealing with sky pirates.

Specialisations
At the start of the story, you can choose a specialisation in three different areas: academics, social graces, and forbidden science. These specialisations unlock additional scenes, solutions, and dialogue options thoughout the game.

Love Interests
There will be 2 love interests, a nobleman, a male pirate, and a female scientist. You can also finish the game without romancing anyone, focusing on your friendship with Miss Eveline instead.

Choices, Choices
I have opted for a mixture of VN-style choices and RPG-style choices, where some heavily impact the story, while others just add a bit more flavour to your interactions. For those choices that affect the grand scheme of things, there is a slightly different graphic, so you always know whether your decisions are big or small.


Endings
There will certainly be consequences to your actions. When you get to the end, you will see the results of your actions throughout the game, but this won't result in "an ending" in the traditional sense. It's more like a stack of things. This isn't actually in the game but say if you caused a war to break out, and you rescued the Queen, and romanced a mechanic, then you'd get the "romanced mechanic, rewarded by Queen, but live in a world of war" ending. Whereas you might have gotten an "all alone, rewarded by Queen, in peacetime" ending, etc.

Backgrounds
Only 1 background, I'm afraid. They're not my strong suit anyway, but also extremely time consuming. I am using an image drawn during the era that is now in the public domain - with a couple of photoshop tweaks. I know that doesn't exactly sell the game, but I thought I'd be honest about this.

Statistics (28/May/2015)
The game contains 673 dialogue blocks, containing 7,723 words and 43,927
characters, for an average of 11.5 words and 65 characters per block.

The game contains 42 menus, 75 images, and 15 screens.

(That's an average of 1 menu every 184 words!!!)

Release Date
This project is not my main project, I'm working on it on-and-off while doing other things, such as Stranded Hearts and other projects. As such it will probably take a while. I hope to commit a lot more time to it in the future, once I've released a few more shorter VNs. In the meantime... here's a demo!

The game looks cool. Reminds me of the Anime Emma: A Victorian Romance for some reason. As for your background problem, maybe ask for some help on Lemma Soft in the Recruitment section. I'm sure someone could help you so you'll have some more backgrounds. Anyway, good luck with the game and I'll play it when it comes out

Hmmm. Decent writing? Steampunk setting? Consider me interested, though I hope there's at least one ending that does not require a romance.

Looks super interesting, I'll be looking forward to your progress.

Fenrir34 wrote:Reminds me of the Anime Emma: A Victorian Romance for some reason.

This was my first thought as well. Steampunk is always cool though.

Laiska wrote:

Fenrir34 wrote:Reminds me of the Anime Emma: A Victorian Romance for some reason.

This was my first thought as well. Steampunk is always cool though.

same here, same here, not only because of the setting and the protagonist's name.

but welp, I'm interested in this.

good luck

@Fenrir34 & Laiska & ppppantsu
Ohhh, I loved Emma: Victorian Romance. Very cool to hear you're reminded of that! The protagonist of this story does share the name and profession, but the story itself has very little in common. If I could create something as good as E:aVR I'd be pretty chuffed though!

@Fenrir34
That's a good idea - thanks for the advice! I might pop into the recruitment section once a couple of chapters have been released. While of course I have the full intent of finishing this project, I couldn't ask someone else to contribute their time to something without putting in time and effort first.

@Mad Harlequin
Yep, there will be non-romantic endings! In fact, one of the first choices you make in the game is whether Emma aims to be married or to be an independent woman. But I would say the general emphasis of the game is about 50-50 when it comes to romance and adventure. If you don't enjoy romantic stories it might not be the game for you?

@daikiraikimi
Yay! Thanks for the encouragement! I hope you'll like the first installment!

Steamgirl wrote:@Fenrir34 & Laiska & ppppantsu
Ohhh, I loved Emma: Victorian Romance. Very cool to hear you're reminded of that! The protagonist of this story does share the name and profession, but the story itself has very little in common. If I could create something as good as E:aVR I'd be pretty chuffed though!

you can do it~! *W*

not to mention, I'm fascinated with steampunk and pirates and whatever, so this should be good.

if you have problem with backgrounds, you can search for free sources or recruit someone. OAO

Steamgirl wrote:Yep, there will be non-romantic endings! In fact, one of the first choices you make in the game is whether Emma aims to be married or to be an independent woman. But I would say the general emphasis of the game is about 50-50 when it comes to romance and adventure. If you don't enjoy romantic stories it might not be the game for you?

Oh, I'm capable of enjoying a romance if it's done well (meaning the characters should have strengths and weaknesses and not throw themselves at each other after five minutes). I was just wondering if there would be non-romantic paths through the game.

Thanks for your reply!

Steamgirl wrote:Yep, there will be non-romantic endings! In fact, one of the first choices you make in the game is whether Emma aims to be married or to be an independent woman. But I would say the general emphasis of the game is about 50-50 when it comes to romance and adventure. If you don't enjoy romantic stories it might not be the game for you?

Oh, I'm capable of enjoying a romance if it's done well (meaning the characters should have strengths and weaknesses and not throw themselves at each other after five minutes). I was just wondering if there would be non-romantic paths through the game.

Thanks for your reply!

This sounds really fun! It's nice to see the point of view from a servant.

If you need help with anything (even backgrounds?), you should check out the Recruitment forum. I'm sure there would be many interested in this project!

ppppantsu wrote: you can do it~! *W*

not to mention, I'm fascinated with steampunk and pirates and whatever, so this should be good.

Thanks so much for the encouragement! I love Steampunk too - wish more games came out in that setting, I'd snap them up in a heartbeat!

Mad Harlequin wrote:Oh, I'm capable of enjoying a romance if it's done well (meaning the characters should have strengths and weaknesses and not throw themselves at each other after five minutes). I was just wondering if there would be non-romantic paths through the game.

Hehe, yeah I just thought I'd clarify because I'd hate someone to be disappointed if they dislike romance. I can't promise the romantic branches will be done well - but I'm certainly going to try! There might be some throwing of self onto the protagonist in there, but perhaps not for the reasons you might think... The men and women in this novel very much have interests of their own and their world does not revolve around some lady's maid.

Green Glasses Girl wrote:This sounds really fun! It's nice to see the point of view from a servant.

If you need help with anything (even backgrounds?), you should check out the Recruitment forum. I'm sure there would be many interested in this project!

Yay! Thanks! Hope you'll enjoy it!
I'll keep an eye on the recruitment forum for sure, but until I've got at least 1 chapter done I don't think I can ask anyone to contribute to the game for free. It just doesn't feel right. Luckily the "update" button will always be there so I can always add more content like backgrounds later!

Steamgirl wrote:Yep, there will be non-romantic endings! In fact, one of the first choices you make in the game is whether Emma aims to be married or to be an independent woman.

Thank you. There are times when the main character will lose at zero trust, and thus they need friends and relationships in order to survive an ordeal. But more often than not, I don't think finishing the story without the main character having a significant other should be equated with a bad ending. The MC can have other goals, and they can be a whole person even if they're single.

Steamgirl wrote:I can't promise the romantic branches will be done well - but I'm certainly going to try! There might be some throwing of self onto the protagonist in there...

Look for story inspiration and research material. Don't just stick with your favorite genre, style, or format. And after you find stories to think about, ask yourself what they did / didn't do well. Consider writing down what you want to include / avoid in your story.

There are some writers who create Mary Sues and Mary Sues who are always right, and who get all the love, power, and time in the spotlight. However, just about every author includes a little of themselves in their characters. You can be invested in your characters, have things in common with them, and portray them in a sympathetic way. In other words, identifying with characters is not necessarily bad.

gekiganwing wrote:Thank you. There are times when the main character will lose at zero trust, and thus they need friends and relationships in order to survive an ordeal. But more often than not, I don't think finishing the story without the main character having a significant other should be equated with a bad ending. The MC can have other goals, and they can be a whole person even if they're single.

Couldn't agree more! Equally, I think it's possible to have a "bad" ending if the protagonist ends up in a "bad" relationship. I'm thinking, for example, of Pride and Prejudice, where if Elizabeth had accepted Mr Darcy's initial proposal, they probably wouldn't have had a happy ending.

gekiganwing wrote:Look for story inspiration and research material. Don't just stick with your favorite genre, style, or format. And after you find stories to think about, ask yourself what they did / didn't do well. Consider writing down what you want to include / avoid in your story.

There are some writers who create Mary Sues and Mary Sues who are always right, and who get all the love, power, and time in the spotlight. However, just about every author includes a little of themselves in their characters. You can be invested in your characters, have things in common with them, and portray them in a sympathetic way. In other words, identifying with characters is not necessarily bad.

Thanks, that's great advice! I'm trying to write the kind of story/game that I would like to read/play myself, so I'm cherry-picking the things I like in novels and games and try to avoid the things I dislike. But like anything, I probably won't know how well executed the game is until after it's finished. I lack practical experience no matter how many games, novels, and visual novels I read/play. Not that that's going to stop me trying, of course!

Steamgirl wrote:Equally, I think it's possible to have a "bad" ending if the protagonist ends up in a "bad" relationship. I'm thinking, for example, of Pride and Prejudice, where if Elizabeth had accepted Mr Darcy's initial proposal, they probably wouldn't have had a happy ending.

You're probably right about that. At that point, neither of them has grown enough yet to realize the merits of the other. Your example reminds me of Jane Eyre, now that I think about it. If Jane had accepted Mr. Rochester's invitation to elope and be his lover, she'd be throwing away her honor and her common sense in pursuit of completely unrestrained passion.

But like anything, I probably won't know how well executed the game is until after it's finished. I lack practical experience no matter how many games, novels, and visual novels I read/play. Not that that's going to stop me trying, of course!

I'm just as inexperienced, but I hope that, as the owner of a second pair of eyes, I'm able to help you in some way.