Save the Villainess: An Otome Isekai Roleplaying Game News

[p]Dear Villains and Villainesses,[/p][p]Have you been staying cool in the face of the scorching summer sun? This is Tanya and Emily, the duo behind Save the Villainess, and we’ve been keeping our fans on full blast in our faces. While doing so, we accomplished a lot of fun goals and are ready to share them with you, along with a revealing interview with our character artists at Somate Studio![/p][p][/p][p]Let's begin with a first glimpse of Ashe Firalis, a character in one of the beautiful portraits that will show up in our game. Her animated portrait will show up in House during the storyline and will play a critical role by the end of the tale. Thank you to OmegaScales for commissioning this portrait through Kickstarter and supporting our game! [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]This portrait was created by Somate Studio, who created all of our beautiful character designs and sprites. Later in this update, you can read an interview we did with the Project Manager of Somate Studio where she walks us through her design decisions regarding our game. She’ll even share some fun tips for beginner artists! [/p][p][/p][p]This month, we completed a large slate of programming! First, we programmed the closing sequences for chapter 2 and the opening sequences for chapter 3. Each chapter sequence takes about 5 to 10 hours to complete and tells a different “story” using symbology taken from tarot. Tarot plays a key role in our game because it became an increasingly popular form of divination in the late Victorian and early Edwardian time periods that inspired our game. [/p][p][/p][p]Chapter 1’s tarot symbology is the Wheel, while Chapter’s 2 tarot symbology is the Tower. Can you guess what Chapter 3’s tarot symbology is, based on the preview below?[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]To go with our art, our chapter also includes a thematically fitting quote about inner struggle and acceptance by Carl Jung. Carl Jung was an influential psychologist who wrote about the importance of coming to terms with one’s lifelong struggle to understand and accept oneself. Since this is one of the cornerstones of our game, we’ve included many of his quotes in it! [/p][p][/p][p]Additionally, we programmed scene 21, an animation-heavy scene that can be broken down into 4 interwoven sequences which build upon each other to tell a haunting story that you must analyze for clues regarding the original Jane Neville. After all, how can you avoid the tragic fate of the original villainess if you do not understand what happened to her in the first place? [/p][p][/p][p]We also revised and edited our existing writing for scenes 22, 23, and 24 to prepare them for programming next month. These scenes all contain important clues to the mystery that build upon past scenes. One of these scenes also includes an optional tutorial for a new gameplay mechanic we wrote about last month. This tutorial contains all new banter by fan-favorite character, Voice. Voice may even have some interesting things to say if you keep saying taht you don’t understand their instructions…[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Let’s conclude with an interview we conducted with the Project Manager of Somate Studio. Somate Studio is the art team we partnered with to create all the character designs from Save the Villainess. They have also worked on the character art and design for games such as Peachleaf Valley and Volantes. We are thrilled to share more about their work with you – with additional love to the wonderful people on our game’s discord server who supplied these questions! [/p][p][/p][p]Question 1: What's your favorite character or outfit in this game?[/p][p]Somate Studio: There are many things I enjoyed about working on this project. But the first thing that impressed me was the main character, because she's a villain type. At that time, this trope was super popular, and I thought it was really cool to create such a character. I really like Jane's facial proportions; I'm drawn to unique facial proportions, like Anya Taylor-Joy's. While not entirely based on her, as we still closely followed the story's description, she was part of the inspiration for Jane's face.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Question 2: Who was the hardest Love Interest or Character for your team to draw/create and why?[/p][p]Somate Studio: The most challenging character to create, in my opinion, was Edmund. We wanted to convey a clean, profound face—a sharp yet friendly and unpredictable look that most important royal characters embody. We paid a lot of attention to his facial expressions, neat hairstyle, and standing posture. His clothes were also intentionally made to look more modern, rather than close to military uniforms or tailcoats \[editor: from the Victorian period], because I wanted to portray him as a rational future monarch who wouldn't be conservative with old ways. That's what I think, but I'm not sure if that's been conveyed. Overall, though, we're satisfied with the result.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Question 3: Who was the easiest Love Interest or Character for your team to draw/create and why?[/p][p]Somate Studio: The easiest character to create was Izel. He's always been our forte: a cool, handsome, very Northern-type character.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Question 4: Who are your favorite villainesses?[/p][p]Somate Studio: I like the femme fatale character archetype, so my favorite villainess recently is Makima from the Chainsaw Man series. [/p][p][/p][p]Question 5: Are there any art details you are especially proud of in Save the Villainess that you want to point to?[/p][p]Somate Studio: What I'm most proud of, I think, is that we paid a lot of attention to making the characters' clothing as authentic as possible when compared to the Edwardian era which served as inspiration. Of course, this is still a story with fantasy elements, so it still needs costume details to reflect that. And naturally, balancing the aesthetic of the era with the old-fashioned atmosphere was also a consideration. I'm also proud that all the costumes look like they could actually be sewn into real clothes.[/p][p][/p][p]Question 6: Do you have any tips for beginners who are starting to learn how to draw art?[/p][p]Somate Studio: I think most advice emphasizes that people should start with the basics, and I completely agree with that. Even if you're a professional, honing your fundamentals is something that always needs to happen, because habits can easily lead to basic mistakes. However, this is easy when you're already familiar with it and know where you're going wrong and what you need to do to fix it. But for a beginner, it's clearly not easy at all.[/p][p]When you don't know where to start, studying art from masters is a good beginning. When you learn this way, your brain constantly asks, "How did they do that?" When you find the answer, you'll feel satisfied and confident to move forward. And even if you haven't found the answer, you'll still be looking for it. It's during these times that your interests and abilities will become clearer, and the path forward will emerge. At that point, deciding who to learn from, what to learn, and which tools to use will ultimately determine the kind of artist you want to become. And importantly, maintain stable mental health! This profession often struggles with psychological issues. I consider it part of... occupational hazard, lol.[/p][p][/p][p]Question 7: What kind of software or tablet do you use to draw?[/p][p]Somate Studio: We usually use Clip Studio Paint. I'm not used to drawing directly on a screen, so I still use screenless tablets, like before.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank you again to Somate Studio for working on Save the Villainess and for the wonderful interview. We look forward to sharing new character designs from them in the future as our game continues to develop![/p][p][/p][p] Finally, we wanted to finish with a recommendation for a new game by our friends at DEADline Studios.  They recently published PIG: The Game, a short and deliciously dark horror horror game where you must pay or perish. In this game, you'll challenge the mysterious Alleyman to a deadly dice game. Will you win more time with your roles... or lose what little time you have? [/p][p][/p][p]You can play PIG: The Game for free on Itch.io. If you enjoy this dark little treat, please consider checking out their other horror games, including Fool's Paradise. If you love beautiful, bone-chilling horror games, all their works are fantastic! [/p][p][/p][p]Finally, please remember you can always catch us at the various sites below: [/p]

• [p] Our discord server - come chat with us and hear what other players have discovered about our game!
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• [p] Our mailing list - we send free cards featuring new banter from our main characters every month. This June, everyone will discuss what kind of flower represents their love in this season of Pride.
  [/p]
• [p] Youtube, Bluesky, and Tumblr - our main social media accounts
  [/p]

[p]Thanks again for joining us for another lovely month and update, friends. We’ll see you in June with more fun updates on our game!

With Much Love,
Tanya & Emily [/p][p]Best Laid Plans Productions, Inc.[/p]

[p][/p][p]Dear Villains and Villainesses,[/p][p][/p][p]This is Tanya and Emily, the co-developers behind Save the Villainess. We hope you’re having a great time during this first month of summer and not allowing the sun’s rays to scorch your delicate villain or villainess skin. Even as you continue your summer frolics, we have some fun updates and surprises! [/p][p][/p][p]This June, we programmed scenes 19 and 20 which are pivotal scenes that you will receive based on the choices you made in the previous scenes. Scene 19 is a multi-sequence scene that plays out as a three-part tragedy. It is one of our more elaborate bad endings and features new animations, lengthy dialogue, and a tragic final twist. The more you’re willing to explore difficult consequences, the more you’ll learn! [/p][p][/p][p]Ben has always wished for Jane’s courage… but is the cost of it too much to bear?[/p][p][/p][p]Chapter 20 is the alternate scene that you will receive if you make different choices throughout the last few deduction sequences. You’ll get to see a different side of Jane - one that has had it with constant threats and is willing to strike back! [/p][p][/p][p]Pictured: One villainess who is DONE with the men trying to destroy her.[/p][p][/p][p]We also ran some experimental writing and coding tests and discovered that we can incorporate two new gameplay elements into our future scenes. These gameplay elements have now been added to our existing script outline and will offer exciting deductive challenges for those who wish to challenge themselves by playing in the harder detective mode. Otherwise, you can always use the in-game story mode and/or our free walkthrough guide to solve all of the puzzles/deductions.  [/p][p][/p][p]Welcome to Emily’s History Corner, a new segment that we ran in previous streams but are now bringing to our updates! This segment allows us to share some of the fun historical details that have shaped our story, our visuals, and our characters. For June, Emily will share more on our use of floriography (the technical name for the language of flowers) in Save The Villainess. [/p][p][/p][p]Save the Villainess is a historical fantasy game that takes place in Carcosa, a magical kingdom that is patterned after England in the late Victorian and Early Edwardian time periods. We incorporated the Victorian interest in floriography, which allowed people to give different meanings to plants and flowers and use them to demonstrate affection, friendship or even threats. We use flowers and plants in Save the Villainess to communicate subtle meanings about our characters.[/p][p][/p][p]Can you figure out the meanings behind the flowers on Izel’s list?[/p][p]
Victorians sometimes created small bouquets ( called “tussie-mussies”) to wear as corsages or to give to their lovers. Depending on where a woman pinned a tussie-mussie, she could communicate whether she was interested in the suitor who sent her the bouquet… or whether he should leave in disgrace. Can you decode the symbolic tussie-mussies we wove into Jane’s costumes? [/p][p]
Thanks again to Somate Studio for weaving symbolism into our characters’ designs![/p][p][/p][p]As a tribute to the Victorians and as lovers of plants and symbolism, we’ve incorporated Victorian and contemporary use of plant and flower language in our game. We’ll write more about that process in our upcoming art book. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for the floral messages of love and destruction lurking within Save the Villainess.[/p][p]
[/p][p]You’ll never know when symbolic plants will appear on the stage![/p][p]We wanted to finish by wishing you a Happy Pride Month! As women writing a story centered on a pansexual protagonist who can fall in love with a wide range of love interests, this month means a great deal to us. We wanted to share our joy through our beloved nonbinary suspect and love interest, Servant.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]As you can see, even someone who is a little… uncertain about normal human emotions can see the beauty of this holiday. So Happy Pride, friends. May you continue to love with all your heart! [/p][p][/p][p]Finally, please remember you can always catch us at the various sites below: [/p]

• [p] Our discord server - come chat with us and hear what other players have discovered about our game!
  [/p]
• [p] Our mailing list - we send free cards featuring new banter from our main characters every month. This June, everyone will discuss what kind of flower represents their love in this season of Pride.
  [/p]
• [p] Youtube, Bluesky, and Tumblr - our main social media accounts
  [/p]

[p]Thanks again for joining us for another lovely month and update, friends. We’ll see you in June with more fun updates on our game!

With Much Love,
Tanya & Emily [/p][p]Best Laid Plans Productions, Inc.[/p]

Dear Villains and Villainesses,

This is Tanya and Emily, the developers behind Save the Villainess. We’re here to end the month of May with an update on the development of our game. We’re also celebrating the birthday of our exquisite (if rather poor) Duke of the North, Izel Kuzey. Come bask in his tales of life in the cozy, charming, only slightly deadly North!



This month, we completed programming the very complex scene 18, which is a multi-part puzzle that draws upon information revealed to you in scenes 16 and 17. If you love the idea of interrogating three gorgeous suspects to make logical deductions about their secrets, this puzzle will delight you! If you’re not, you can always turn on story mode or use our free game walkthrough to complete this program and enjoy the dramatic end to the scene. We hope to keep you as invested in Jane’s survival as Jane herself!

Plus you get some great safety tips from Izel. Remember not to mix fire with phosphor!

We also wrote scene 20 (which gives a pay-off to your decisions in scene 18) and revised the existing outline for the upcoming interconnected scenes 21 to 25. These scenes contain a great deal of important world-building and context for the strange, fantastical kingdom of Carcosa. We revised these scenes to deepen your understanding of Carcosa and the powerful, ruthless noble families who lead it. After all, the more you know about the dangers of the people and creatures around you, the more capable you are of saving your villainess.



This month, we’re celebrating the birthday of Izel Kuzey, our beloved Duke of the North. Enjoy a video of him speaking about his birthday below!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Izel is our subversion of the classic Duke of the North character. When you think of that character, you typically think of a cold, hard man who has three words and two facial expressions a week. Yet while Izel is not the most emotionally expressive person and (like any good Duke of the North) has his fair share of family tragedies in a harsh, monster-infested land, we wanted to make Izel a far more entertaining and unusual character.

Between the feet fish and the werebear assassins, it's a wonder that Izel didn't die years ago.

Izel is as neurodivergent as Jane is… and like her, his skills shouldn’t be underestimated. After all, you can only survive a land as horrifying as the North if you think in ways that no one else can anticipate. If you pay attention to Izel’s words, there are very interesting things to discover about him. So keep listening to what Izel has to say… and what he doesn’t say.

Izel also might have an unexpected amount of romance in his soul!

Are you ready to go on your tour of the scenic North? Just remember to get some gold to tip your friendly Kuzey hosts and avoid eye-contact with the feet fish…



We were also featured in the Indie Assemble event on Steam, hosted by Excaliber. Indie Assemble features over 1,000 indie games from over 600 studios across the world. Thanks again to Giorgio Catania for organizing this great event for small indie developers like us!

Finally, please remember you can always catch us at the various sites below:

• Our discord server - come chat with us and hear what other players have discovered about our game!
  
• Our mailing list - we send free cards featuring new banter from our main characters every month. This May, Jane, Edmund, Izel, Ben, and Servant wish Izel a happy birthday - with the best/worst pun we've had so far!
  
• Youtube, Bluesky, and Tumblr - our main social media accounts
  

Thanks again for joining us for another lovely month and update, friends. We’ll see you in June with more fun updates on our game!

With Much Love,
Tanya & Emily
Best Laid Plans Productions, Inc.

Dear Villains and Villainesses,

This is Tanya and Emily, the developers of Save the Villainess. We have a lot of fun game updates to show you this April. We're celebrating Jane's birthday, showcasing the end of the Dream Lovers tournament, and have footage of a special ‘date’ with the tournament winner. Stay tuned for more mayhem and madness!



This month was a great month for those who love to delve deep into intricate plots with plenty of suspense, character interactions, and mysteries! Our writing and programming focused on our game’s mysteries, with us first revising, editing, and then programming Scene 16.

Scene 16 is a complex and fun multi-part puzzle that will lead to an upcoming in-game climax. For this scene, we edited and reworked items from our existing bedroom background so that they could be used as part of a point and click puzzle.

As is a key goal of our game, both the correct and incorrect choices in the scene offer something interesting for your play of the game. If you make the incorrect choice, you’re one step closer to a bad ending but might discover some easter eggs and clues to the larger mystery. If you make the correct choices, you’ll be rewarded with very special scenes featuring characters you already know…



We also completed the writing and programming for Scene 17, which features Jane and a special guest while providing hints of dark secrets and surprises.

Additionally, we worked on writing and editing Scenes 18, 19, and 20. All these scenes needed to be co-edited together because the mystery deduction choices that appear in Scenes 16 and 17 are linked to the outcomes you experience and the deductions you can complete in Scenes 18, 19, and 20. Ultimately, we set up a complex set of interwoven conditional deductions that will allow you to learn much more about the relationships the villains had with her possible former fiancés. This newfound knowledge may be touching or troubling, depending on how you interpret it…



This April 6th, we celebrated our villainess Jane’s birthday! Jane is our loving tribute to all of the many neurodivergent women we have known and loved. She’s a little bit of Katarina Claes from My Next Life as a Villainess, a little bit of Princess Mia from Tearmoon Empire, a lot of our own experiences as neurodivergent women on the autism spectrum… and her own weird, complicated, brilliant, and very subtle self.

Ultimately, Jane is a person who is trapped in a terrible situation who can still finder her way to freedom and justice with your help. We hope you can see a reflection of yourself in her desire to survive no matter what horrors the world tosses at her.



As you can see, Jane is determined to love herself on her birthday despite the forces against her. You can join our mailing list and email us for this month's character cards to learn what Edmund, Izel, Ben, and Servant would say to Jane on her birthday!



This month, we had the pleasure of seeing different people play through Save the Villainess’ demo in great detail.

First, Chirkrasia played through our entire demo. She brought her beautiful voice and a brilliant artist’s eye to the game and discovered some recurring motifs and details we hid into our backgrounds and character designs. Tanya also spent about an hour chatting with Chirkrasia and other viewers in each stream. You can see more of her Save the Villainess streams on her twitch videos page.

Second, Amyseekmeout is creating a detailed playthrough of our demo under the [Save the Villainess → #stv-playthroughs-threads → Amy’s Demo Playthrough] section on our discord server. She and other brilliant players have discovered several hidden secrets, including food choices that shout out to Marie Antoinette (one of our major inspirations), hidden themes of revolution, and the importance of bear traps. To help her discover more secrets, please check her playthrough thread on our discord.



This April, we completed our dream lover contest with a final round between our two most popular love interests – Izel Kuzey, Duke of the North, and Servant, the mysterious maid/butler of the House. They had a fierce battle but in the end, Servant won the vote for the Dream Lover among our non-villainess cast.

Izel had an interesting response to his defeat.



Won’t you please donate a few gold coins to a Kuzey grandmother and save a three-headed raccoon today?

Meanwhile, Servant was initially puzzled by your desire for them… until they decided they understood just what you meant.



Even better is that Servant’s reward for winning the title of Dream Lover was a ‘date’ with Jane. So what happens when a slightly terrifying maid meets with a survival-minded villainess?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

All hail the two best lovers in the land!

Finally, please remember you can always catch us at the various sites below:

• Our discord server - come chat with us and hear what other players have discovered about our game!
  
• Our mailing list - we send free cards featuring new banter from our main characters every month. This March, Jane, Edmund, Izel, Ben, and Servant talk to you about their favorite reading materials in honor of National Reading Month!
  
• Youtube, Bluesky, and Tumblr - our main social media accounts
  

Thanks again for joining us for another lovely month and update, friends. We’ll see you in April with the winner of the Dream Lover tournament and with more fun updates on our game!

With Much Love,
Tanya & Emily
Best Laid Plans Productions, Inc.

Want to know more about Save the Villainess? Watch OtomeAddicted play a slice of our demo!