naivesprites

Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today!
Because of the holiday spirit, the team has decided to unlock TWO of our add-ons on Kickstarter. Today we’ll be unlocking our Digital OST, all songs created by Geoff Moore, and a newly designed poster by Darkenmarr.
Our digital OST is $9 USD, so all you would need to do to add it in is adjust your pledge to include the $9 USD to you current pledge amount.
The poster will be of a new design (TBD) by Darkenmarr and is set to $11 USD. If you don’t have a physical item tier, you will need to include shipping costs on to that. Please add $5 USD for US and Canada and $10 USD for the rest of the world on top of the $11 addition to your current pledge amount.
We also would like to announce that we were Greenlit on Steam!

Hello everyone! With the spirit of the Holidays in full swing, we are happy to announce that because of popular requests we have added a new tier to our Kickstarter!

Our new $75 Honeysuckle Tier gives our backers access to the Backer-Only updates, their names in our credits, 5 wallpapers, 2″ metal keychain, and 1 body pillowcase of their choice.

All of our body pillowcases will be fully colored and double-sided!

Gwyn's "sexy" side of his pillow case
There have been a few computer issues this past week that have caused a bit of a delay, but we’re hoping to get the majority of the body pillowcases’ art done as soon as possible. To see the first sketches of our body pillow cases, check out this update on our Kickstarter!

We would also like to remind every one of you wonderful people about Steam Greenlight! If you have not done so yet and you have a Steam Account, please vote for A Very Important Date.  Every vote counts and the team would appreciate it greatly!
 

Our Third Kickstarter Update, Milestone Info, and a Few Games to Check Out
We’ve been super busy with Kickstarter and game related ordeals over the last day, but we’re happy to say we’ve hit 10% on our Kickstarter! We posted an update about it on there. Check it out here.
This update also comes with the news that our first milestone will be 100 backers. Once we hit that, we unlock one of our higher tiered items for everyone! Remember our backer tiers start at just $1!
We’re also planning a special winter image of our cast! This will be released as a special gift to all of our backers if we can hit 50% by December 15th.
We also want to take time out to mention two other visual novels, one still in the midst of their Kickstarter campaign.
The first, from YesterJoy Games, is Legend of Rune a boy love/yaoi title. I played through it a few days ago and I was wholly impressed. Please check out their demo and consider pre-ordering the game.
The second, </reality>, from Fancy Fish Games, is visual novel that tackles the concept of existence and VR. The game isn’t afraid to try new things and succeeds with all of them. Download their demo here and please consider backing their Kickstarter.

Don’t forget our Thunderclap! Find it here.

Hello to all of our wonderful fans!
We’re happy to announce our updated demo is out and released on our itch.io page!  Here’s what we have added:
Save/Load feature Choice options Quit Menu that allows you to go back to the Main Menu 3 Chapters for Gwyn and Emil for a total of 6 chapters 26,088 Words in total for about 3 hours worth of story 3 New static sprites 7 New backgrounds 1 New song by Geoff Moore Because of how long it was taking to implement some of these features, we were unable to add in the Fast Forward feature for the updated demo.
For those that plan to play Gwyn’s and Emil’s chapters, you’ll want to save in the Prologue when Alison says "Um... I guess I’ll work with…”
To pull up the menu bar, press ESC or P keys.
Our mobile demos will be released in a few days.  We’re currently working on fixing a bug in our Android demo.
We’re going to send our Kickstarter campaign information in in a little bit so it can be reviewed.  After the approval process, we’ll let everyone know about it through all of our social media pages.  We can’t wait to show you what we have in store for all you Very Important fans!  Stay tuned for that announcement! 

Great theme song! Please keep up all of your hard work!

Re-introducing Gwyn and Alison (MC)!

I tried to watch the stream but my connection is far too bad for it to be worthwhile
However, I managed to catch a few horribly jerky moments of what I think was Alice being drawn, so it's cool to see where that fits into the cover art! Love the work done on the dress in particular.

The team has been very, very busy lately, both with the game and life situations.  We do apologize for not updating this thread lately.  Though we do have good news!  Our sprite artist has been working on remaking our sprites and recently we've re-introduced three of them on our social media pages: Emil, Harlan, and Rory.

The team has been very, very busy lately, both with the game and life situations.  We do apologize for not updating this thread lately.  Though we do have good news!  Our sprite artist has been working on remaking our sprites and recently we've re-introduced three of them on our social media pages: Emil, Harlan, and Rory.

Hello!  Chibi Subaru from Naive Sprites is here to respond....
Thank you for playing our demo and your review!  We're happy to hear that you enjoy it.  Chibi Alison in the tea cup is my favorite out of the chibis!  I was happy that our current sprite artist was able to make them in time for the demo.
We do plan to have a Log feature while playing the game when it's released so that people can read over the script.  I was using TyranoBuilder to make the demo and not knowing any coding, I wasn't able to make this function for this demo.
For the font, we didn't realize this issue so it's helpful when people point it out to us.  Justin and myself looked over the demo before releasing it, but since we know the story by heart at this point, we didn't notice the problems with the commas and periods looking the same.  We'll be changing the diagloue font for the next demo.
Luckily we found a new programmer and got the contract signed.  We don't know if this will push back our intended release date or not.  We hope not, but you never know.
Thank you 

I'm certainly interested in how this one turns out after playing through the demo! The dialogue is well-written and I really like the artwork - in particular the route partition screens and the 'thank you for playing/credit' designs, which I thought were really nice. Little drawn Alison in the cup is pretty cute too!
I understand it's just a demo, but a function to go back through dialogue would be nice as I overshot one or two lines. The other thing I'd say is consider changing the font that is used in the dialogue, as the commas look almost identical to the full stops and this occasionally makes it seem like it's written clunkily, when it's really not.
I'm afraid I am unable to help with the programming, but I wish you the best of luck with the rest of production and I hope you're able to finish it!

Sorry I haven’t been posting in here with updates!  We have been working on fixing some things, re-organizing our departments, and trying to fight the never-ending barrage of schoolwork.
Some updates about our progress:
Sprites
First off we’d like to announce that our sprites are getting a complete overhaul courtesy of our new sprite artist, darkenmarr!  Don’t fret though, just because they’re getting some new looks, their overall design will stay the same.  Here’s a little preview of Gwyn and Connor (minus his eyepatch) sketches.

Gwyn

Connor (another employee at the Looking Glass Cafe)
We plan to update the sprites on here one by one as soon as they are completed.
 
Until we get all the sprites remade in darkenmarr’s style, the asks we do on the tumblr will still be using our old sprites for the sake of continuity.
Other Art
 
So far, we have 21 background pieces finished with our BG artists currently working on another three backgrounds at the moment.  We have all the backgrounds for our demo and most of the backgrounds for the first main story.

Lordless' on the left and Furude's on the right
Because our original GUI concepts shared some similarities with another game that was released, Justin and I are re-sketching our GUI design.  We hope to show a mock of this very soon.
 
Writing
 
Writing wise, we have one main story completed and another that only needs choice commands and sprite changing notes.  We believe that this story is about 90% completed.  Justin is currently writing Gwyn’s epilogue while I’m fixing Rory’s main story as I found some issues in the plot.
Game Production Timeline
We currently have a timeline for our production, but this could change at any time due to any technical difficulties and life events with any of the team members.  Our demo should be out around March and then our Kickstarter will follow shortly after.  Our production schedule, unless changed at some point, looks like this:
End of October, 2015: Prototype Version End of January, 2016: Playable Version End of March, 2016: Alpha Version End of May, 2016: Beta Version End of August, 2016: Version 1.0 Music
 
The person we’ve been talking to about music samples has been having some issues with ideas for it, so he has dragged a friend into helping him.  We are hoping to get some sample work from them at some point.  If anyone is interested in doing our music, you can drop us a line since we haven’t locked anyone into this position yet.
 
Other
 
We’ve also started a Patreon to help with funding while giving back to our fans.  If people do want to help us out, please visit our tumblr for the link to our Patreon.
 
We are also in talks with our new sprite artist to sketch out our asks from our tumblr and loading them up on tapastic.  This is still in talks, but it is something we are excited about trying.

I'm on a couple of facebook groups aimed at otome games.  I know these games as usually aimed for the younger crowd, but you see so many older fans playing visual novels.  At first when I started playing them I felt a little weird since I didn't think many around my age were into them.  Luckily, this isn't the case and I made a lot of new friends.  On the business end, I saw more people around my age wanting to make these games than younger people, at least that was my experience when I was searching for people to team up with me.

Thank you and welcome to the forums, too.

This looks really good. Good luck! 

Welcome, nice to see adults in their 30s being interested in VNs, enjoy your stay~

Link to our Kickstarter  
Here’s the link to the demo (Windows, Linux, and Mac): https://naivesprites.itch.io/a-very-important-date
  You’re invited to The Looking Glass, Mimsboro’s finest restaurant.   Join my four employees and myself as we take you on a wonderful journey through the café world.   New in town?  The Looking Glass is a grand place to start fresh.    Troubling day?  Cleanse the nonsense of the world with one of our special herbal teas.   Looking to meet new people?  When the sun sets, The Looking Glass becomes the most vibrant hotspot in town.   But the heart of The Looking Glass isn’t the world class cuisine or nightlife, it’s our employees.  Take time to get to know each of us and you’ll make friends for life.  Our magical personalities are sure to relieve the doldrums of everyday life.   So mark your calendars, my new friend, you wouldn’t want to be late for this will be [A Very Important Date]!   - Gwyn Arkwright, Owner of The Looking Glass Cafe     A Very Important Date is a café romance set in a strange, yet familiar world, with loose ties to Lewis Carroll's Alice stories.  But this isn’t the typical Alice in Wonderland styled story!  While A Very Important Date takes a few notes from the Carroll classics, you don't have to be a big fan of them to enjoy this game for its rich dialogue, witty humor, and unique art style!
Our story follows Alison Sunderlund, an average small town Ohio girl.  By day she can be found working as a server in a local café and by night she takes care of her house and family: her dad and younger brother.  Though she doesn't have a lot on her plate, the life she has gives her very little free time.  But Alison's life changes one morning when she wakes up sitting under a tree in a brand new world.
Confused, Alison sets out to discover more about her new surroundings, accidentally stumbling upon the Arkwright estate, home of Gwyn Arkwright and The Looking Glass Café.  With no place to go and a way back home seeming impossible, Gwyn, being the kind soul that he is, gives Alison a job and a place to stay for the time being.  Everything's peachy except... now Alison must choose which of The Looking Glass' five employees will train her!
Will Alison stick with what she knows and remain a server?  Will she a cut a new path as a cook's assistant?  Will she wipe away her past burdens as a low-level dishwasher?  Will Alison ever figure out what strange world she's in?  Will she ever return to her old life?
Will she want to?
  All stories* are written by Noëlle Hyzy, the winner of Voltage Inc.'s 4th Annual International Script Writing Contest for Romance Apps. The full finished release of A Very Important Date will feature:

* 5 suitors (with 4 more planned)
* Expressive animated characters
* 12 chapters for each Suitor's Main Story
* 3 possible endings per Main Story
* 3 chapter Epilogues for each Suitor
* 40+ hours of content across all stories
* ≈50,000 words per Main Story
* 300,000+ words across the whole game
* At least 6 CGs per Main Story
* Main character CG options
* 14 amazing tracks from Composer Geoff Moore
* 60+ beautiful backgrounds
* Episodic content 
* Will be available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android                        
    Naïve Sprites is an up-and-coming visual novel developer that makes games for iOS devices.  The company is housed in Franklin, Ohio, but it has six talented artisans from all across the world on its team.  Our mission is to provide visual novel readers with strong, female-led stories that are entertaining, engaging, and do away with "damsel in distress" cliché.   Chibi Subaru:  Project Director, Executive Producer, Writer, Conceptualizer Justin V: Co-Writer, Editor, Art Editor, Background Concept Artist Joe "Bonesy": Marketing & Advertising kooriesque: Character Concept Artist darkenmarr: Sprite and CG Arist furude and lordless: BG Artist IchBinJager and WolfBorg: Programmers
Geoff Moore: Composer   Season 1: Main Stories
Current word count: ≈266,000

Gwyn FINALIZED
Outline: 100%
Writing: 100%
Editing: 100%

Emil FINALIZED
Outline: 100%
Writing: 95%
Editing: 95%

Rory
Outline: 70%
Writing: 60%
Editing: 10%

Harlan
Outline: 80%
Writing: 75%
Editing: 25%

Sven
Outline: 100%
Writing: 80%
Editing: 0%

Season 1: Epilogue

Gwyn
Outline: 50%
Writing: 10%
Editing: 0%

Season 1: Sequels

Gwyn
Outline: 20%
Writing: 0%
Editing: 0%

CGs: 5%
Sprites: ≈ 50% (For Demo: 95%) - Undergoing Redesign in Live2D
Backgrounds: 46/?? (For Demo: 100%)
Music: 5/14
In-Gameplay UI: 95%
Rest of GUI: 45%
Coding: ??%
  12/28/2016 12/11/2016 12/6/2016 11/29/2016 11/19/2016 11/18/2016 11/16/2016 11/13/2016 8/24/2016 7/19/2016 4/26/2016 4/1/2016 3/31/2016 1/1/2016 12/16/2015   You can follow our progress and learn more about A Very Important Date by visiting the links below: Facebook Tumblr Twitter DeviantArt