Crimson Veil News

Hey everyone! I hope you're all enjoying your extended weekend if you're in the U.S., just like I am!

This week has been quite productive for me on the game development front. I'm thrilled to share that I've managed to write all of Bianca's scenes. And, they're not just written but also completely scripted, except for one slightly more complex scene, which I plan to dive into tomorrow.



Writing for Bianca was a unique challenge because, among all the characters in the game, she's the one the players know best. I wanted to avoid the risk of it feeling repetitive, so I decided to explore a different, unseen side of Bianca. This approach breathed new life into her character, and once I started, the creative ideas just kept flowing. To top it off, I've even finished the colors on Bianca's max affection illustration!



$5 and up Patrons can check out the full version right now. Your support is greatly appreciated!

https://www.patreon.com/MKRUdesign

But that's not all; I've also begun scripting some of the earlier scenes for the Shattered Sanctity Quest. This questline is going to be an exciting one, and I can't wait to see where it takes our characters.



Seraphina has become one of the few characters who I prefer in her human form. (She'd probably look great as an ancient vampire...) So, to showcase some more scenes of Seraphina as a human, I created additional expressions for the Nun NPC so that she would have someone to bounce a conversation off of… Until she meets with Mila, of course.

Lastly, while I have continued to write lore entries, I've been pondering the role of the church in this new world. Its history and connection to the kingdom of Fallholt have been fascinating to think about in my spare time. Definitely happy about making this quest because its potential for expansion into other aspects of the vampire route is great!

Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm for the game. Your feedback and encouragement fuel my creativity, and I can't wait to bring you more exciting updates soon!

Until next time, everyone!

Evening, everyone! Thank you so much for the feedback you provided last week with Dorian’s new design. I went back and adjusted his pose and I think I struck a good balance between the old pose and the new one.



I’m going to have to adjust his sprite too since it still reflects his old design. I’ll get on that shortly…

This week I mainly focused on the design of Blutig Waterway. Not just the design of the dungeon, but also with some optional environmental storytelling. I hope that players will check out the small notes and objects I’ve laid about this place as it will detail some intriguing revelations.



Journal entries have been what my mind has chosen to focus on this week, as I’ve unfortunately been having trouble writing compelling dialogue. My brain’s been in a bit of a funk, writing wise. My goal for this upcoming week is to at least finish writing Bianca’s support conversations.

I did finish coloring one of the sketches I shared last week. Here is a teaser of Ophelia’s max affection illustration.



$5 and up Patrons can check out the full version right now, if they like.

https://www.patreon.com/MKRUdesign

And that’s all I have to share with you this week (aside from this silly image I made when measuring Dorian’s scale).



Take care everyone!

Happy Sunday, everyone! I hope you’re all well!

One of the characters I’ve felt disappointed by design-wise for a long time is Dorian. I don’t consider myself very good at drawing male characters, so I rarely draw them. However, after drawing Alvin for the last update, I decided it was time that Dorian got a refresh to his design. Check out the comparison below!



Similar to how I updated Amber a few years ago, I’ve updated Dorian and fixed some of the issues I had with his design, particularly his pose. I also fixed up his hair and suit a bit. Let me know what you think of this new design. Do you think it improves on the original? Is there anything I should fix before I finalize the design? I’m still tweaking the expressions, so feedback is certainly appreciated.

Onto some more art news, I’ve got 2 sketches ready here. One for Ophelia and the other for Bianca!



These will be unlocked in-game once you have reached maximum affinity with the two girls, obviously.

Lastly, I want to announce that I have commissioned Jun Harvel on twitter to make an adaptation of Bianca’s Diary as a mini doujin. It will be a 9 page comic and once it’s done, I will be releasing it publicly for free! Check out some of the rough sketches of the comic below.





I’ve enjoyed Jun’s work for some time, so I’m glad to have the opportunity to have him work on this. I’m very excited to see the final result, I hope you are too!

That’s all I have for you this week. Until next time, everyone!

How’s everyone doing this week?

As for me, I was really in the mood to color Sigrun this week and tweak some small things in her design, such as her face. Her eyes were previously too big, and while I found them kind of cute, it didn’t really fit the personality I was going for.



She won’t be showing up in the game until the following update, but I still wanted to share the flat colors with you all anyway. I’ve been experimenting with shiny and blushed skin with my characters lately. I really like the effect it has on characters with relatively pale skin, such as Sigrun. This is the first time I’ve tried adding some blush to ears and I like it's subtle effect. Skin texture is an area in my art where I’d like to improve the most, since I tend to hyper focus on it, when looking at other artists' work.

As for Besilly Cathedral, I decided I wanted to expand on this older area. Since I did pretty much all I could do with this place in the main route, I decided to create a new area and expand the lore of the cathedral itself.

You’ll start off by entering the cathedral through the previously inaccessible second floor. From here you can get a quick view of the familiar church below.



But below the cathedral lies a large underground sewer known as Blutig Waterway. The waterway harbors an inner sanctum, a place where holy ones can meditate to restore their light powers and where many ancient rituals once took place. There are many dark secrets within this place that members of the clergy have taken to their graves.



The origin of this place dates back centuries and is the birthplace of the local town’s bloody superstitions…

I hope this small taste of the next update has piqued your interest! Until next time, everyone!

Hello again, everybody!

This week, my focus was on Ophelia! She’s finally got a spiffy new sprite!



Modifying Ophelia as an event was a tricky thing from me to sort out. I’ve had to change how she works as an NPC to get her to work with the new Pet system that I added in the last update. For starters, Ophelia will be able to join you as a playable character as early as the start of Chapter 2. However, increasing her Bond Level will no longer change what items she has in stock. That will now change based on story progression, for balance reasons.

Ophelia’s Bond Level can still be increased by sparring with her. And speaking of which, her battles have been modified too.



You can now see what level Ophelia is when fighting her. Her level matches yours and with higher levels comes newer skills that she can use with or against you. This should make her a reliable training buddy throughout the course of the game.

I’m still writing her support conversations, however. This week has been difficult to sit down and concentrate on drafting dialogue, so I made progress where I could. Adding in newer party members to the game comes with a lot of work to the game’s systems. Things such as individual “most liked food/alcohol” values, date conversations, Pet progress conversations… Several common events need to be tested and updated. While I did create these systems in a manner that makes them easy to update, it’s still rather tedious and requires extensive testing.

But enough complaining from me… I’m going to try and get the remaining conversations for Ophelia done this week and then begin working on the updated Besilly Cathedral. I came up with an interesting idea for the place this week to make revisiting this old location feel fresh once again.

That’s all I have for you this week. Until next time, everyone!