Lemma Soft Forums

Demo: https://quibble-quills.itch.io/miss-bul ... mer-ladies
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/48 ... mer-ladies

Miss Bullard’s School for Former Ladies is the only Old Continent boarding and etiquette school for women of “unfortunate circumstance”, who are not quite as normal as they once were, but still wish to enter society as convincingly human as possible.

You play as Lillian Graham, the daughter of a respected trader from the New Continent, who attends the school after fits of nightmares and possessed sleepwalking deemed to have magical origin. While it is unclear what is happening to you or what will become of your humanity, your job is to unravel the mysteries that surround you and the location itself. Separated from society and moved to a new place at such a trying age can be intimidating…but perhaps you will not have to face it alone.

You’re in the target audience if you enjoy Victorian ‘gaslamp’/dark fantasy themes, lesbian romances, and stories with a focus on lore and character development that weave the romance into an overarching plot.

Dateable characters (click for zoom):
If you enjoy playing the demo, please consider supporting the game! I’m aiming to raise $2000 by next month to allow for this game to be developed in full.

And to keep updated, please follow on my tumblr and on my twitter! Thank you!

Some questions if you have played the demo:
1. How was your gameplay experience overall?
2. Who is your favorite character?
3. Run into any bugs, typos, or errors?
4. Who or what would you be most interested in learning more about in a full game, if anything?

Today, I tried searching for the phrase visual novel on Kickstarter.com. Miss Bullard’s School did not appear in the search results. I don't know why this happened.

I like the drawings for this project. That said, since it's a supernatural Victorian era world, I wonder if another art style might be more appropriate. What if it looked more like Max Ernst's A Week of Kindness, or perhaps the book In a Dark, Dark Room?

QuibbleQuills wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:55 pm

Miss Bullard’s School for Former Ladies is the only Old Continent boarding and etiquette school for women of “unfortunate circumstance”, who are not quite as normal as they once were, but still wish to enter society as convincingly human as possible.

It seems your fictional universe includes magic and demihumans. How many people in your fictional world know that magic is real? Is it a secret to most people? Or does everyone encounter things such as necromancy?

QuibbleQuills wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:55 pm

You play as Lillian Graham, the daughter of a respected trader from the New Continent, who attends the school after fits of nightmares and possessed sleepwalking deemed to have magical origin.

As of this writing, your Kickstarter page does not contain much information about Lillian. Is she a defined character with her own goals, hobbies, concerns, and so on? Is her personality determined by the reader's choices? Is she a blank slate character? (As I've said in other posts, I think that all of these ways to portray a protagonist can be done well.)

QuibbleQuills wrote:No ‘bad endings’ once set to a specific route; instead, each route has two possible endings that are different but equally positive. Once set on a character’s route, answer the way you’d like rather than fret over answering ‘incorrect’, and you will reach the ending you likely prefer.

I like this idea. It suggests that your story will have only good endings, and there will be no failed relationship endings. I think that I'm intrigued because I have mostly read '90s - 2000s galge in which the protagonist's choices either lead them one step closer to a relationship with a heroine, or one step closer to a "protagonist alone and depressed" bad ending. (I have experienced relatively few VNs which have blind choices, and the reader can only guess what will happen after making a decision.)

gekiganwing wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:34 pm

Today, I tried searching for the phrase visual novel on Kickstarter.com. Miss Bullard’s School did not appear in the search results. I don't know why this happened.

I like the drawings for this project. That said, since it's a supernatural Victorian era world, I wonder if another art style might be more appropriate. What if it looked more like Max Ernst's A Week of Kindness, or perhaps the book In a Dark, Dark Room?

QuibbleQuills wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:55 pm

Miss Bullard’s School for Former Ladies is the only Old Continent boarding and etiquette school for women of “unfortunate circumstance”, who are not quite as normal as they once were, but still wish to enter society as convincingly human as possible.

It seems your fictional universe includes magic and demihumans. How many people in your fictional world know that magic is real? Is it a secret to most people? Or does everyone encounter things such as necromancy?

QuibbleQuills wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:55 pm

You play as Lillian Graham, the daughter of a respected trader from the New Continent, who attends the school after fits of nightmares and possessed sleepwalking deemed to have magical origin.

As of this writing, your Kickstarter page does not contain much information about Lillian. Is she a defined character with her own goals, hobbies, concerns, and so on? Is her personality determined by the reader's choices? Is she a blank slate character? (As I've said in other posts, I think that all of these ways to portray a protagonist can be done well.)

QuibbleQuills wrote:No ‘bad endings’ once set to a specific route; instead, each route has two possible endings that are different but equally positive. Once set on a character’s route, answer the way you’d like rather than fret over answering ‘incorrect’, and you will reach the ending you likely prefer.

I like this idea. It suggests that your story will have only good endings, and there will be no failed relationship endings. I think that I'm intrigued because I have mostly read '90s - 2000s galge in which the protagonist's choices either lead them one step closer to a relationship with a heroine, or one step closer to a "protagonist alone and depressed" bad ending. (I have experienced relatively few VNs which have blind choices, and the reader can only guess what will happen after making a decision.)

Hello, thank you for the message!

Apparently, kickstarter adds tags to projects themselves if you tweet at them. I have tweeted at them as they requested, but it is not showing up in the search results yet.

Thank you for the art style feedback. At this time I have no plans to change the artists I work with so the style will likely remain the same in the finished work. However, my greatest focus over style is on accuracy of the clothes and architecture, both of which drew inspiration from photographs and paintings of the time.

Magic is known by the people in this universe but mostly viewed as a danger or a nuisance, since it’s very difficult to control. Some schools like necromancy try to harness it, but the immense difficulty prevents major progress from being made. Although the game itself will go into these details both in the demo and in the full script.

Lillian’s personality is largely determined by player choice. This is so her perspective on the school and habits can change depending on which route you take, and allow for a more unique gameplay experience than a character who can only develop in one linear fashion.

Thank you! I completely agree that choices which only have one ‘correct’ outcome for a character are both unrealistic and limiting in player experience. Likewise, aside from one bad ending (very difficult to get and still not necessarily 'depressing') all the endings will be good endings even if they differ in events that take place.

Wow, this VN looks very nice! I'd recommend adding some screenshots/character art here to entice people, as a lot of users here like seeing images on the thread.

I wish you luck on your Kickstarter, you might receive a PM from me in the future about your demo!

Thank you! I'll definitely add some screenshots in. Hope to hear back from you!

The demo is currently not available through the itchio app on windows machines. You need to tag the demo specifically as a windows version through the creator dashboard for it to allow downloads.

Tags added; not sure why the tag was lost as downloads have been working fine prior, but thanks for letting me know.