The Pirate Mermaid [GxB][Fantasy] - New Demo Out!

[Nebty]

Whooooa, this is looking amazing! Mikali, my baby~ I see that he's acquired some nipples to go with his new sprite. ;) Shiny hair is interesting, though it happened so regularly it bugged me at first. Then I thought it might be some sort of merperson Bioluminescence. Is Mikali an Anglerfish? A...very adorable Anglerfish? That'd be pretty cool.

The improvements to anatomy and the tweaked expressions are wonderful. I love that cheeky look Mikali has in the blue coat outfit. He just looks like such a sweetheart~ Wizard's sexy over the shoulder glance is also much appreciated. Not quite sure what to make of the new guy. Guessing he's going to be the "dangerous" one? Well, further on the dangerous scale than the wizard (who seems to be mostly snark). His design is very nice, and I'm interested to see more of him.

*thumbs up* Keep doing what you're doing. Thank you for the update.

And those CGs are such a tease! :P

EDIT: whoops, should've read the spoiler a few pages back. "Roguish bad boy", eh? Very interesting~ I want to see how he and Mikali interact. Are they rival heirs to the throne? Princes of different kingdoms? Childhood friends who've drifted apart?

Poor Wizard though, he seems like he's going to be left out of all of this merperson political intrigue. XD

[flaminghippo]

Holy shiz! This has come a long way since its beginning; it's looking really great. I really like the MC, too. Seems to have a good head on her shoulders.

Really looking forward to seeing more of this!

[AERenoir]

It looks so so pretty!! <3 I'M LOVING THE LITTLE EMOTES LIKE THE HUFFY SIGH CLOUD AND THE GLOWING STUFF.

Please teach me >.<

[Bexy]

I recently registered on this forum ('cause our team (of 2 persons xd) tries to do a VN for the NaNoReno 2014) and I saw this post. I remember I had tested your demo and I thought it was really cool
Your project has really took consistance since the demo ! I love the third character *_* and the style of drawing is became really great.
Good continuation !

[Doomzilla]

I played your demo when it first came out, followed you obsessively for awhile, and since then had assumed the project got dropped. I'm really glad I was wrong! I love the new art, the backgrounds in particular are gorgeous. And whoa to that word count, no wonder it's taking a while to finish! I'm looking forward to playing the finished game. Good luck!

[Flowers from Nowhere]

I'm glad you're keeping with this. Everything looks awesome!

[OfHoneyIronandWine]

So..I see that there hasn't been any activity since mid March....just wondering what's going on with the project... hopefully it'll be released soon! can't wait to play Cheers~!

[Arowana]

So..I see that there hasn't been any activity since mid March....just wondering what's going on with the project... hopefully it'll be released soon! can't wait to play Cheers~!

Oh hey, sorry about not posting here recently! We've gotten overly lax about updating this thread (we will remedy that in the future, promise!), but we are definitely still active. Nellie has been posting art previews on her twitter if you're interested. I will also do another summary/reply post shortly.

At the moment, we are looking to get some feedback on our new GUI. We decided to switch to a widescreen resolution (because all the cool kids are doing it), so I'm in the process of remaking all the screens right now. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to let us know!

New textbox coded this weekend (+ new MC sprite)! It expands to show the quick menu below, and collapses to hide it. The icon on the namebox changes depending on your karma/moral alignment - neutral gets the compass we used in the demo, good gets the dolphin, and evil the skull.



Choices and confirmation screen. Choices have a new effect where the selected choice gets highlighted by staying on the screen a little longer. ^^



Save/load screen and options.



Stats screens, freshly made today! Not sure if the left screen is too difficult to understand, or else if the text strip is redundant? And does the fact that only half of the "moral compass" is used throw anyone off?



Will post another update on art and writing once we finalize a few things. Thanks for being so patient!

[wyverngem]

Wow, you guys are out doing yourself. The new gui looks amazing. Keep up the good work.

[try10]

Beautiful! The part with good karma and evil karma is very original.

[Larite]

Aww, it looks so awesome, cannot wait to play in full version of this game! I like karma's icons and MC's log, its are wonderful ideas. And MC's sprite is beautiful, of course!

[Cafechan]

You had me at "female pirate". The GUI looks incredible, I'm so excited for this!!! The MC's portrait is lovely!!

[fioricca]

Ohmygosh I'm so sorry it took me forever to write a reply here, I'm so swamped with work x_x Thanks for uploading the images on a different host! I'm SO HAPPY FOR THE WIDESCREEN DECISION YOU HAVE NO IDEA. I'll be able to play it at full screen on my laptop and there won't be any black bars by the side ;o; awesomeeee

The new UI is awesome!! I miss the rolling navigation wheel/compass already though, that was really fun. There's also something about the bold, thick black/dark borders that makes it feel very comic/retro. I think the UI is really endearing and I can't wait for a demo update now.

Super ecstatic that this project is still ongoing -- it's still one of the games I look forward to the most! I love your team so keep up the great work!

[Lunacore]

Wow. The Art is simply amazing i mean just look at those backgrounds >O<
Really looking forward to the release.. D:

[Arowana]

Thanks for the comments and feedback on the GUI, everybody! Here is some more recent progress that we wanted to share. Lots of images ahead.

First off, new sprites for the main cast, excluding Jack, are finished! Prince Mikali was posted earlier, but here are the remaining three.

The (still nameless D:) protagonist, in both pirate and mermaid forms. Looks like she will be dressing up for something fancy later. :3

The (also nameless xD) sorcerer. If you don't mind small spoilers, or fanservice, you can see some of his other variations on Nellie's twitter.

The sorcerer's route involves learning magic, and there's a variety of different spells. Here are a few examples (animated in the game).

Last but not least, there's this upstanding member of merfolk society (and the third love interest).

Nellie and I were actually discussing his color scheme for a while, and we wanted to know what you guys preferred. Green or red (or something else)?

Also, new background! This is the forest on the sorcerer's island. If you pick his path instead of one of the mermen, you'll be spending a lot of time here. Not pictured: the cute little butterflies flying around the bushes.

On the writing side, the current wordcount is ~170k. I'm currently taking a break to focus on GUI design and coding in all the new assets. I've also set up a nice new sprite system based on Asceai's awesome cookbook entry, and am having lots of fun with new expressions and animations.

I think that wraps it up for now. There are several other things we are hoping to get feedback on, but we'll post about those a bit later. Thanks again to everyone who is still following and supporting us!

***

I’m terribly sorry about how long it’s taken to respond to all the replies! ^^; It’s been rather busy and it takes me a while to think of what to say (I’m socially awkward like that), but we always love hearing from you guys.

@ Mad Harlequin
Mwahaha, just as planned. ;D Glad to hear you like the expressions! The new MC sprite also has some faces I’m pretty fond of.

@ Hazel-Bun
Will do! I hope your games are also going well.

@ try10
Thanks! I also think the BGs are lovely.

@ daikiraikimi
Lol! Maybe you will turn into a lobster instead!

@ Nebty
Thanks for bringing up the hair shine effect! I was wondering if the hair shine would be distracting because it isn't synced to the light in the background. The in-game rationale was that it's a manifestation of his magic (that's why the merfolk all have such long hair - to store their magic ). The real reason is because I, like Jack, am obsessed with shiny things. xD Would it be better if I increased the interval between shines, or reduced the brightness? Or should I just remove the effect completely?

And yes, Malik is definitely the "dangerous" one! He's the one who'd get along best with an Evil Path MC. At least two or more of your guesses for his relationship with Mikali are also pretty close. ^^ The sorcerer does have reasons to be interested in the mermaids, so he won't be completely uninvolved, especially not in the final path.

@ flaminghippo
Thank you! We are trying our best to make improvements, so hopefully it will pay off. ^^ And I’m glad you like our MC because I think she’s a lot of fun to write! (we still haven’t decided on a default name for her ahaha...)

@ AERenoir
Ahhh, you like the animated emotes? That’s awesome! Nellie and I think they’re cute and have been putting them in all our games, but not many people seem to notice them. ^^;
Most of them are just simple ATL. This is a nice tutorial if you are interested in doing something similar.

@ Bexy
Welcome to LSF! (Though I guess you have already been here for a while since that post, haha.) I hope your project is also going well – the different art styles seem pretty cool!

@ Doomzilla
Oh no, sorry about that – It’s our fault for being so inconsistent with updates, but I’m happy you found us again! We originally thought this was going to be a short, fast game, but...yeahhhh...

@ Flowers from Nowhere
Thanks for the support – I’m glad you’re still following us as well!

@ OfHoneyIronandWine
Thanks again for reminding us to update more often!

@ wyverngem
Glad you like the new GUI! We had to redo it anyway since we were switching to widescreen, so it was a good opportunity to try something new.

@ try10
Good to hear – we thought the karma stat would be an interesting way to add variation in the MC’s personality and storyline. I just hope people won’t think we’re trying to be judgmental of their choices. ^^

@ Larite
Awesome, I’m glad you like the new stats pages! It'll be fun to write all the commentary for the MC’s log, hahaha. I updated the “moral compass” a bit more based on suggestions – hope it’s okay!

@ Cafechan
Thanks a bunch, and best of luck with your game as well! We, er, took a lot of liberties with the history of women in piracy, but then again, it is a game with talking parrots and mermaids. xD

@ fioricca
No worries, I’m glad you’re still following us! Thanks for giving us the heads-up about imgur being blocked. I actually think you were the first to suggest we go widescreen. After seeing all the black bars on phones and videos, I totally see where you were coming from now. Should have heeded your wisdom from the start. X'D

Oh hmm, I’m not sure if the retro comic look is what we’re going for, so I will back off on the black outlines. And wow, you really liked the spinning compass? I took it out because players said it was distracting, and I was afraid I was the only one who liked it! The revamped animation is currently a more subdued shine effect (gifs below), but I’m open to other suggestions. Thanks for the encouragement, and best of luck with your games as well (Lemon is looking amazing!)

@ Lunacore
Thanks for your support! I’m very fond of the backgrounds as well. <3