Spacefur: RUNAWAYS [Scifi/feelings/drama][GxG]

[Spacefur]

MadameAzure finished all the sprites! I'm so happy I could cry... Here's the crew (and their passenger), lined up together for the first time:



I can't wait for you guys to meet the rest of the cast...

[Zelan]

Wow, they look AWESOME lined up like that. I must say I am a fan. ^_^ Are you planning on making this the title screen? It would work pretty well, although I guess it would probably be a good idea to have Lucia in the title screen, too.

Also, Xiodan is making me think of Katara from Avatar for some reason. I'm not really sure why, though, since they have very different personalities and Katara's not an adorable bunny. Maybe it's the hair/ears.

[Spacefur]

Well... it's done. The whole cast is done, their sprite sheets complete. Really brings a tear to my eye. Thanks so very, very much to the lovely AZURE. Think about commissioning her if you ever need an artist ! viewtopic.php?t=34164

[Pando]

Oh my god believe it or not but I think my favorite character in the cast is 4ng3l4.

Sassy old lady who definitely looks like Angela Lansbury in the "Murder, She Wrote" TV show?
COUNT ME IN !!

(edit: it's only hours later I realized that given the name of the character, this probably was the inspiration. I KNEW IT)

I like the art style. Some details are surprisingly relevant such as the "rust stains" you can see on the backgrounds walls.
It's this kind of detail that tells a lot about the backstory and the setting (from the looks of it, we're talking more about a Han Solo's Millenium Falcon type of ship than Picard's Enterprise, know what I mean ? ).

I came to wonder while looking at the pictures though: when exactly is the story set (I understand it is set in "our" world) ?
Because if it is very far away in the future, props like the NASA sticker or the "Man on the Moon" poster may not seem very relevant.

I must admit I'm usually not exactly a fan of Humans x Furries kinds of story (I tend to prefer "fully animal" worlds like in Blacksad), but maybe I'll give it a try nevertheless.
I hope it won't hinder the potential of the game to the eyes of haters (to take a completely different example, you've got to see some of the shit games like Shiness have to go through on some forums recently just because there are furries in it... it's awful).

I wish you all the best luck ! I hope the game is going to be great.

(4ng3l4 RULES !)

[bellice]

I'm excited to see where this is going! I don't much care for furry animal people, but GxG trumps pretty much everything for me, so I'll be playing the crap out of this. (To get slightly off topic, you know what bothers me about furries? It's not the animalistic properties or the looks or anything, I'm bothered by the lack of LIPS. Because kissing with a maw sounds hard, man. That is literally the only thing that concerns me about it. )

Anyway, I wish you luck in finishing this! (It seems like you're making good progress and the art looks great. The Captain shall be mine, just so you know.)

[Zelan]

I'm excited to see where this is going! I don't much care for furry animal people, but GxG trumps pretty much everything for me, so I'll be playing the crap out of this. (To get slightly off topic, you know what bothers me about furries? It's not the animalistic properties or the looks or anything, I'm bothered by the lack of LIPS. Because kissing with a maw sounds hard, man. That is literally the only thing that concerns me about it. )

Anyway, I wish you luck in finishing this! (It seems like you're making good progress and the art looks great. The Captain shall be mine, just so you know.)

IT DOES THOUGH. I feel like there would be a lot of extra tongue action going on with anthro characters, y'know?

Like Pando above, I don't really have a problem with anthro characters, but I really prefer for a story, or at least the relationships, to be either all human or all anthro. Human x anthro just kinda... straddles a fine line between an innocent relationship and bestiality, so I've always felt a little conflicted about it. Since this game isn't planned to be 18+, though, I'm setting aside my reservations and just trying to enjoy the story. c:

[Spacefur]

I came to wonder while looking at the pictures though: when exactly is the story set (I understand it is set in "our" world) ?
Because if it is very far away in the future, props like the NASA sticker or the "Man on the Moon" poster may not seem very relevant.

Sugar here! I'll let Wee answer more precisely about the timeline because the game is set in his tabletop rpg so that's his call! But I'm the one in charge of the backgrounds so I can answer for the props! While the NASA is definitely not relevant anymore for pretty much everyone in-universe, there's a plot reason which will be unveiled in one of the paths. I can't say much more because spoilers.

Also I'm really happy you noticed them, makes my efforts feel worth it! And I just realized I've never posted the final version so... there you go:

I must admit I'm usually not exactly a fan of Humans x Furries kinds of story (I tend to prefer "fully animal" worlds like in Blacksad), but maybe I'll give it a try nevertheless.

To get slightly off topic, you know what bothers me about furries? It's not the animalistic properties or the looks or anything, I'm bothered by the lack of LIPS. Because kissing with a maw sounds hard, man. That is literally the only thing that concerns me about it.

Like Pando above, I don't really have a problem with anthro characters, but I really prefer for a story, or at least the relationships, to be either all human or all anthro. Human x anthro just kinda... straddles a fine line between an innocent relationship and bestiality, so I've always felt a little conflicted about it. Since this game isn't planned to be 18+, though, I'm setting aside my reservations and just trying to enjoy the story. c:

I can answer all these too! The human x furry thing was definitely a concern for me, especially at the beginning of the creative process when we weren't sure how PG we wanted to be. For a long while, Lucia was written as a raccoon, actually. But it bothered me that all the men would be human while all the women would be furries (Angela appeared later in the creative process and she doesn't really count, since she's not really sentient). The solution would have been to make everyone a furry (Marcus was this close to be a Muntjac) but then it would remove one important feature from the Spacefur rpg, aka Humanity being a mix of furries and humans (and post humans, but that's another can of worms for another game). Eventually, we decided to not make the game +18 and Lucia was written as a human instead.

Yesh that was confusing, hopefully Wee will explain better. In the meanwhile, here are the drawings our concept artist had done for the romance options:



Obviously that's not the final product, especially since the designs changed a lot, but that's the kind of feel we want, intimate and cute.

[Wee]

Wow, they look AWESOME lined up like that. I must say I am a fan. ^_^ Are you planning on making this the title screen? It would work pretty well, although I guess it would probably be a good idea to have Lucia in the title screen, too.

Thanks for the kind words ! About the screens, we don’t know yet. The current demo (limited to internal use for now) has Lucia featured on the start menu screen, and this picture used for the title screen during the opening credits. We have no idea what it will be in the final product.

Also, Xiodan is making me think of Katara from Avatar for some reason. I'm not really sure why, though, since they have very different personalities and Katara's not an adorable bunny. Maybe it's the hair/ears.

Since Avatar takes heavily from Chinese, the association would make sense, but Katara is more inuit/sireniki, so I don’t know. As long as you don’t liken her to Azula or any other bad guy, I think we’re cool.

Oh my god believe it or not but I think my favorite character in the cast is 4ng3l4.

Bien entendu !

Sassy old lady who definitely looks like Angela Lansbury in the "Murder, She Wrote" TV show?
COUNT ME IN !!

(edit: it's only hours later I realized that given the name of the character, this probably was the inspiration. I KNEW IT)

I started typing this answer a few days ago, before your edit, and only pick up on it now, so in the meantime you found out. Yes, she’s based on Angela Lansbury ! I was a nightmare for our artist because she NEEDED to be recognisable, but at the same time, it couldn’t be too different from the style of the rest of the crew. Well, since she’s on a screen, I guess we had more leeway

Jessica Fletcher forever !

I like the art style. Some details are surprisingly relevant such as the "rust stains" you can see on the backgrounds walls.
It's this kind of detail that tells a lot about the backstory and the setting (from the looks of it, we're talking more about a Han Solo's Millenium Falcon type of ship than Picard's Enterprise, know what I mean ? ).

Yep, it’s definitely more the ship of a Malcolm Reynold type of captain than a Jean-Luc Picard. Sugar, who does the BGs (even though she HATES IT HATES IT HATES IT) was crying when you started saying good things about her work.

I came to wonder while looking at the pictures though: when exactly is the story set (I understand it is set in "our" world) ?
Because if it is very far away in the future, props like the NASA sticker or the "Man on the Moon" poster may not seem very relevant.

Ok, just so you know, that’s a trick question. You asked for it.

===START OF IRRELEVANT BACKGROUND EXPOSITION===

The game takes place in 2182, but it’s an alternate universe where humanity got invaded by an alien empire in 1987. It wasn’t “our” 1987 either, they already had the modern internet, called UniTel (which was based on a better version of our french Minitel) and were in the process of uniting the world under a new world order.

Anyway the Kendrassi empire arrived and “stopped” human culture, more or less, slowing it down, and made the human race go faster in certain areas. By 2010 the Moon had a few dozen bases on it, and the first Martian city had been constructed. It was all for their own benefit of course, the empire benefit, of which the Sol system was now part. Then the empire left because they had problems elsewhere, and humanity started to reclaim their own life.

After that, over the next hundred years, stuff happened that is irrelevant to the VN (well, except for the fact that half of Humanity got transformed into anthropomorphic animals in 2081 by an unknown stellar radiation that bathed the whole space sector).

Now, in the last few decades of the 22nd century, there is what they call the “Old Earth Revival”. It’s very trendy and fashionable to get obsessed over the last age of pre-kendrassi humanity : The 80s ! So, ship designs look old, people dress up like… well, you’ve seen the pictures.

ANG3L4 and all other InfoSiCs are modeled on celebrities from the late 20th century because of that. That design decision started before the Old Earth Revival : passion about that era of Earth was still limited to some subcultures and communities, to which the first InfoSiC programmers belonged.

The Old Earth Revival is that passion becoming mainstream, and is an overwhelmingly popular trend at the time of the VN.

===END OF IRRELEVANT BACKGROUND EXPOSITION===

So, the nasa sticker and the TIME cover "Man on the Moon" are actually like people having a "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster on their wall. It's from WWII, it's not relevant to 2016, but it's relevant to their personal interests because of a current trend

Ok so, all of this wasn’t important for the VN at all, but I really wanted to explain.

And to answer a question that you didn’t really ask, about the plausibility of the universe (I understand you’re fond of Star Trek like me, so I know you like when a sci-fi universe is believable and rigorous, especially since it takes place in our universe) : if Star Wars is space fantasy, then Spacefur is space pulp.

It takes place in our universe (well, a version of it), so yes, there’s Earth, and most star systems have the names we know (Delta Pavonis, Tau Ceti…), BUT it’s as much the real universe as the worlds of Dan Dare, Cowboy Bebop, Captain Future, Space Battleship Yamato, Perry Rhodan, that kind of thing. It looks like it, it has a lot of recognisable elements from it (compared to the total disconnection that something like Star Wars does), but it works under a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, for the sake of ADVENTURE.

I hope this answer is satisfying for the sci-fi enthusiast I see in you. I don’t “wing it” and make things up as I go without caring about how little sense it makes. There are reasons.(for example in the room BG, the nasa logo is the modern one, post-80s. That’s because the Kendrassi occupation didn’t “kill” the human space program, they just took control and made them do what they wanted, just like any colonial power. So Nasa evolved and its logo too, resembling ones in the real world).

By the way we wanted to thank you for actually showing so much depth of analysis and interest in the setting. As we already stated, it’s a personal tabletop roleplaying game setting that I’ve been developing and GMing for years. It has some necessary background information and depth that are irrelevant to a VN, where people can just take things “as is”. Show, don’t tell.

(4ng3l4 RULES !)

Ouaip, totalement.

uncertainty about humans and furries mixed together

the same

the same as well

Finally to answer this particular topic : I hope you give us a chance. There will be no 18+ content, and even a kiss seems unlikely. There will probably be a CG for the last moment of closeness and intimacy in each route, but more like hugging or lying together hand in hand.

I think my co-author just explained better than me anyway. And in much less words.

[bellice]

Oh, I think you guys misinterpreted my statement - I personally have absolutely no problem with pairing a human with a furry. Since I usually prefer playing a human even in settings with different races, I'm glad you decided to do it this way. (And having the game be 18+ wouldn't bother me either. I like cross-species romance.)

No, my comment on the lack of lips was just a general one and wouldn't change if the MC was a furry as well. I have the same problem with the Orcs in Skyrim - love them, but can't help thinking 'those teeth would be really hard to incorporate into smooching'.
(To hear that kissing might not actually happen in the game seems like kind of a bummer, though. Smooching is the nicest part of romance games.)

That said: LOVE those new pictures. They're well-done, even if they're just sketches, and the second one makes me wanna grab someone and cuddle.

[Zelan]

Thank you both for answering all of our questions! ^_^ I love your background lore. And I certainly have no problem with suspension of disbelief for the sake of ADVENTURE - I love a good romp through a sci-fi world, and it's nearly impossible to be 100% scientifically accurate and still have a fun story.

Thanks as well for respectfully addressing our uncertainty when it comes to human x anthro relationships. ^_^ Since this is going to be pretty light in terms of intimacy, though, I don't think I'll have a problem with it. I'm looking forward to the demo and to the final game! You two have been working super hard on it for months now, and it'll be cool to see your final product.

[Spacefur]

Oh, I think you guys misinterpreted my statement - I personally have absolutely no problem with pairing a human with a furry. Since I usually prefer playing a human even in settings with different races, I'm glad you decided to do it this way. (And having the game be 18+ wouldn't bother me either. I like cross-species romance.)

No, my comment on the lack of lips was just a general one and wouldn't change if the MC was a furry as well. I have the same problem with the Orcs in Skyrim - love them, but can't help thinking 'those teeth would be really hard to incorporate into smooching'.
(To hear that kissing might not actually happen in the game seems like kind of a bummer, though. Smooching is the nicest part of romance games.)

That said: LOVE those new pictures. They're well-done, even if they're just sketches, and the second one makes me wanna grab someone and cuddle.

Oh okay! Sorry we kinda expected people to be weirded out by it, as Pando said some people tend to overreact to these kind of things. As for kissing, well, it's mostly because I'm not even sure how it'd work tbh XD and I think that a forehead touch can be just as loving as tongue wrestling, haha XD

The new pictures are actually pretty old, haha ^^' They're from the artist that did all of our concept arts, but sadly she won't be available to work with us on this project anymore, for health reasons. We instead hired MadameAzure, who drew these beautiful sprites!

We're currently waiting to be done with the writing to hire a CG artist, because we want to pick important moments to illustrate and rather than try to shoehorn them inside the plot. So these sketches might end up having no relevance at all but I still love them XD

Thank you both for answering all of our questions! ^_^ I love your background lore. And I certainly have no problem with suspension of disbelief for the sake of ADVENTURE - I love a good romp through a sci-fi world, and it's nearly impossible to be 100% scientifically accurate and still have a fun story.

Thanks as well for respectfully addressing our uncertainty when it comes to human x anthro relationships. ^_^ Since this is going to be pretty light in terms of intimacy, though, I don't think I'll have a problem with it. I'm looking forward to the demo and to the final game! You two have been working super hard on it for months now, and it'll be cool to see your final product.

No problem, as I said it was also a concern of mine (I loved dating Garrus as much as the next nerd, but he doesn't reminds me of my pets so that's a plus XD). I hope you'll like the demo

If that makes you feel any better, in Spacefur 2 we plan on having human options too If everything goes according to plan, there'll be some light hints of what the next game will be about too.

[Spacefur]

Louise, the third member of our little ragtag team, is currently working on our GUI and graphic identity...



This is just a mock up and not the final product but I'm really digging the general silhouette of it.

[Zelan]

The GUI kind of reminds me of Ben 10's aesthetic. ^_^ Great show. And it matches your theme dry well, although I might suggest different colors (maybe blues, since that's mostly what you've been using for your logo).

[Spacefur]

No worries, as I said this was just a mock up so we could decide on the general silhouette So far, seems like we're going in that direction:

[Spacefur]

Just a short message to let you know the staff is back from vacation and we'll be releasing the demo really soon (complete with unfinished background sketches, yay!)