Save the Villainess: An Otome Isekai Roleplaying Game News

Hello Fellow Villains and Villainesses,

This is Tanya and Emily, your friends at Best Laid Plans Productions, Inc. We hope you have had a wonderful autumn and (if you celebrate) a fantastic Indigenous People’s Day and Thanksgiving ahead of you. We’re here to share our November 2024 updates for Save the Villainess!

✦ HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEN! ✦

This month, we celebrated Childhood Friend Ben’s birthday on November 16th! To commemorate this special event, we tormented – er – teased Ben through Jane in the special video below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you want to continue celebrating Ben’s birthday, feel free to come to our game’s discord server, where people have made him birthday presents and received thank-you cards. You can also create a fanwork (like a poem, piece of art, etc.) for him and receive a personal thank-you card from Ben.

We’ll be celebrating the birthdays of our major cast members through the year so stay tuned for more!

✦ THANKSGAMING ON STEAM! ✦

This November, we had the honor of being featured in the Thanksgaming Live Steam showcase, presented by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and Women in Games International (WIGI).

You can see the livestream we did with our IGDA host Ash at the link below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We thank IDGA and WIGI for featuring us in both their Steam showcase and in the Thanksgaming live event. It was a pleasure to work with the amazing people there!

✦ GAME UPDATES! ✦

We have also been busy working on Save the Villainess! Right now, we are going through the stretch goals and materials that our amazing Kickstarter backers have helped support.

This month, we created dossiers for the new art materials (including teenage sprites, shirtless sprites, item art, and backgrounds used in puzzles) for our artists. This way, they can begin working on the new art materials that we will eventually animate and program within our game. We look forward to receiving this beautiful new art from our talented artists and showcasing it in future updates!

✦ BACKERKIT SURVEYS DUE NOVEMBER 30! ✦

Save the Villainess’ BackerKit surveys are due on November 30th. If you have not completed your BackerKit survey yet, please do so to lock in your Kickstarter order. We cannot fulfill your order if you do not submit your BackerKit survey by the end of the month!

✦ SUPPORT! ✦

We also wanted to showcase Sigh of the Abyss, a wonderful indie romantic fantasy visual novel that just released! We backed this game on Kickstarter and love it.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Sigh of the Abyss is a lush visual novel that invites you to embrace the monster within while engaging in inclusive romances. Befriend charming allies, defy bitter rivals, fall in love. Your choices will save or condemn mortals, shaping the fate of a city as beautiful as it is cruel.

You can try out its free demo and purchase the game on Steam.


✦ FOLLOW US! ✦

Finally, if you’d like to keep in touch with us beyond our updates, you can follow us in the locations below. We’re always friendly and love to chat so come talk with us!

✦ Follow us on Bluesky
✦ Subscribe to our Youtube channel
✦ Join our discord server
✦ Join our mailing list for free monthly character cards - This November, we're sending out character cards that tell you what presents everyone would send to Ben for his birthday bast. If you want to know how loves and loathes our resident childhood friend, this is the set of cards to get!

Hello Fellow Villainesses and Villains,

This is Tanya and Emily, your friendly neighborhood game developers behind Save the Villainess. In this update, we will share some special tricks and treats for Halloween... as well as important news about our BackerKit survey for our Kickstarter backers!

✦ CELEBRATING HALLOWEEN WITH SAVE THE VILLAINESS ✦

Firstly, we’re ready to share something spooktacular – our annual Halloween celebration! This year, Jane (our villainess) will ask Crown Prince Edmund Alpin, Duke Izel Kuzey of the North, Lord Ben Buren the Childhood Friend, and Servant the servant what their secret fear is.

She obviously won’t use their answer to knee-cap them if they come after her. She’s not actually evil… right?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

For more videos, you can always subscribe to our Youtube channel.

✦ KICKSTARTER BACKERS: EXPECT A SURVEY SOON! ✦

If you are one of the lovely people who backed us on Kickstarter, please expect to receive a BackerKit survey in your Kickstarter email very soon.

This BackerKit survey will “lock in” your Kickstarter order and even allow you to preorder extra digital goods from our game! Please expect this survey to come to your Kickstarter email address very soon – and please complete the survey by November 30, 2024! If you do not complete the survey by then, you may have issues receiving your Kickstarter order.



You can also pre-order some digital goodies for our game through the survey, including:

✦ Digital Illustrated Artbook ($20 USD): The art book contains sketches, illustrations, and details on the art of the game. You will find character design information, detailed information on the backgrounds and world-building, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we designed the look and feel of the game.

✦ Digital Illustrated Lore Book ($20 USD): The lore book contains detailed descriptions of the characters, families, and world of the game. Learn more about Jane's history, explore the Kingdom of Carcosa, dip your toes into the many horrors of the haunted House, and learn about Carcosa’s most dangerous inhabitant… feet fish!

✦ Digital Illustrated Walkthrough ($20 USD): The illustrated walkthrough contains all the details and information you need to collect every secret and ending in the game - from the most horrifying bad ones to the most romantic ones.

✦ Digital Character Diaries ($20 USD): The character dairies contain never-before-seen details on how characters other than Jane experience the story... as well as how they truly feel about Jane the villainess. These diaries contain major spoilers for all the routes and characters!

If you're interested in these items but didn't back us on Kickstarter, don't worry... you can pick all these goods up once the game is out!

✦ INTERESTED IN MORE ON SAVE THE VILLAINESS?✦

If you're interested in learning more about Save the Villainess, please feel free to join our discord server. We developers are on almost every night and happy to chat with you!

You can also subscribe to our mailing list and get special backstage information, cute photos of a villainess kitten, and the ability to request monthly character cards from Jane, Edmund, Izel, Ben, and Servant. This month, the characters will tell you what they want to dress up as for Halloween - the answers may shock you!

Finally, we wish you a horrifying and hilarious All Hallow’s Eve. May you end up with all the tricks and treats you desire by the end of this month.

With Heartfelt Halloween Horror,
Tanya & Emily
Best Laid Plans Productions Inc.

Dear Villainesses and Villains,

This is Tanya and Emily, the two-person team behind Save the Villainess. We hope you are having a wonderful end to your summer and a cozy, comfortable start to your fall. We have some wonderful news to share with you as Save the Villainess leaps into its post-Kickstarter period.

First though, we want to thank you again for supporting us and our project. We have been working on Save the Villainess since 2022 and it is a true labor of love that came from our decades spent writing apart and our years spent writing together.

Save the Villainess comes from our fascination with famous historical villainesses like Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette, whose tarnished reputations and tragic endings inspired us to write the story of a historical villainess who gets to triumph over her own enemies. Along the way, we enjoyed playing with many of the tropes of villainess isekai series and working with a mix of genres, including dark comedy, romance, mystery, and tragedy.

However, we could not create Save the Villainess if we did not have your support. Every time a player like you helped us by joining our mailing list, sending us an email at our contact @ bestlaidplans . net email address, wishlisting our game on Steam, leaving us a rating on Itch.io, joining our discord server, and supporting us on Kickstarter… you have helped our tiny indie team immensely.

Thank you for making it possible for us to continue developing Save the Villainess. Without you, this game would not exist in the future!

We hope you will say in touch with us by coming onto our Discord server to chat with other players and with us (Tanya is there almost every night) and by getting the special monthly character cards from our mailing list. Feel free to reach out to us via our email at contact @ bestlaidplans . net or through our discord server. We look forward to chatting with you!



We had a very busy September! After finishing our successful Kickstarter campaign, we had to work through several post-Kickstarter logistical tasks. Thankfully, we have reached many important goals and are now ready to use Backerkit to deal with post-Kickstarter outreach.

If you are a Kickstarter backer, you will receive a survey from Backerkit sometime in October asking you to confirm your current order for Save the Villainess. You will also be able to order more digital goods from our online shop. Feel free to check our Kickstarter update post for more information.



Please note that we will not be taking late pledges. So if you did not join our Kickstarter campaign, you will not be receiving a Backerkit survey and cannot pre-purchase the game key or other digital goods. However, we will continue giving our mailing list supporters sneak peeks and monthly character cards. You can also purchase our game and merchandise on Steam and Itch-io when the game is released.

We look forward to sharing updates with you every month through our Steam page. We'll share some fun pieces of world-building, such as why Jane chants about being "serene" (it's tied to trends of the actual Victorian time period!), fashion trends that inspire the clothing our casts wear, and the inspirations behind the haunted manor that Jane is trapped in.

If you want more sneak-peeks into our game (such as more puns from Edmund, new survival strategies from Izel, lore on childhood experiences from Ben, and additional bits of morbid banter from Servant), please join our mailing list. You can also request special monthly character cards from there as well!





We also want to share a wonderful and comprehensive review of Save the Villainess' demo by Amjara of the amazing Otome Lovers curator group on Steam. This curator group is a collection of brilliant and insightful players who review a wide variety of games, including otome games (of course!), visual novels, hidden object games, simulation games, and more.

Please visit and subscribe to their curator group to find more great reviews about games on Steam. We have discovered so many hidden gems through them!

We also have added more videos on our Youtube playlist of Save the Villainess streams. Wonderful creators like Reaperbabe, Otome O'Clock, Liu-Fen Wang, Empress Rogue Red, Aerin K., Resting Peach Face, and Lilith Meia have uploaded their playthroughs. Please check them out and see the other amazing streams they have uploaded!



We want to end by showcasing some other amazing indie visual novels which have recently been released, are on Kickstarter, or are about to be released. Please consider supporting these games – they are all heart-felt and gorgeous works of art!



Obscura, a gorgeous and deliciously dark romantic fantasy visual novel, just released its second chapter for two of the love interests this month! This visual novel allows you to descend under a mountain to the marketplace below, where everything has a price. As a newcomer to the market, you will meet the four enticing masked men who can each give you what you need. But beware: they have their own hidden motives and uses for you…

Obscura’s Chapter 1 is free and contains hours of content to enjoy before you go onto Chapter 2. It is available on both Steam and Itch.io – plus, if you buy a copy on Itch.io, you will get a Steam key for free. If you love dark and mature fantasy stories, potentially deadly romances, and alluring men who hide secrets behind their masks, we urge you to give Obscura a try!



If you enjoyed Save the Villainess, we also recommend trying Sigh of the Abyss – a beautiful dark romantic fantasy visual novel and roleplaying game. In this game, you play a woman with many secrets and shadowy surprises who can charm various allies, defy bitter foes, and fall in love with a gorgeous and inclusive cast of characters… or embrace the monster lurking within her.

Your choices will save or condemn mortals, shaping the fate of a city as beautiful as it is cruel. If you enjoy a wonderful choice-driven narrative set in a gorgeous historical city with an inclusive cast of characters, please try Sigh of the Abyss. There is a free demo available on both Steam and Itch.io, and the full game will be released on October 11th.



Interested in more in-development games on Kickstarter? If so, we recommend Lost in Limbo, a gorgeous dark romantic fantasy game that is currently on its last day of Kickstarter!

Lost in Limbo is a lush visual novel that challenges you to face the nightmares of your childhood and unveil the truth behind your summoning to the realm of Limbo. To survive, you must fight your way back home with the help of seven majestically beautiful but potentially dangerous deities who have sworn to be your protectors. Will love be the key to your freedom, or the first chapter of your downfall?

Lost in Limbo has a beautiful demo you can download and much more information on the game itself on their Kickstarter page. If you love lush, lore-rich romantasy stories, please check them out on Kickstarter!



Finally, we wanted to share more about another great visual novel – Bitter Silver – that is a love letter to Cowboy Bebop and Telltale Games and that tells an intimate story with personal stakes for the main character, Lucia Lopez. Lucia is a queer, Afro-Latina woman desperate to find answers to a personal curse alongside her misfit crew, Zap Matters, her nonbinary, half-alien partner in crime (and love), and Hobbes, an aroace talking robot cat.

You can get to know your crew through one-on-one conversations and ultimately define who Lucia is as a bounty hunter by the choices you make that will branch the story, from her background to how you take down bounties. If you’re interested in going on a thrilling, choice-driven, action-adventure with Lucia and her friends, you can back Bitter Silver on Kickstarter today!

Hello Villainesses and Villains:

This is Tanya and Emily, the two developers behind Save the Villainess - our animated visual novel. We wanted to thank you all for taking the time to support our game’s development on Kickstarter.

Thanks to your support, we were able to fund our game and to reach 4 stretch goals:

✦ Shirtless sprites for the male love interests

✦ Teenage sprites and extended flashbacks for the main cast

✦ More poses for the characters

✦ More animated animals

As first-time developers, we are truly grateful for your support as we navigate the process of creating our first game - an animated visual novel that seeks to immerse you in a world of magic, mystery, dangerous love interests, and a villainess who must use every ounce of determination she has to survive.

On our Youtube channel, we have posted 4 sneak-peeks of post-demo alpha game footage streamed with special guest stars for you to enjoy up to the end of Sunday, 8/25. You can see our villainess interrogate Servant, investigate her bedroom to receive stunning information on two suspects, and finally take tea and talk murder with Edmund and Ben.



You can also follow us on our mailing list or join our discord server. On our mailing list, we send out monthly cards from our characters about special topics of the month. Furthermore, we’re active on our discord server and drop by frequently there. You can also reach us via Kickstarter comments (where we have addressed several important topics), through the Kickstarter messaging system, and through email at contact @ bestlaidplans . net.

We will also send a fulfillment survey to our backers in the coming weeks. Please wait for that survey - we will put up an update on Kickstarter about it.

Finally, we want to thank you again from the bottom of our hearts for your support. We look forward to creating the best version of our animated romantic dark-comedy murder-mystery villainess isekai game possible.



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We also wish to thank our indie developer colleagues who were part of the Magic & Mystery cross-promotion. If you enjoy visual novels that have a mix of romance, mystery, and lore-rich fantasy, please check out the following games:

✦ Alaris: Discover secrets long forgotten, and nurture relationships waiting to bloom. In a game inspired by the lore of Dragon and Fae, make choices that can shape your story, relationships, and even personality. Will you be brave, kind, wise, charismatic? Only you know the answer to your fate.

✦ Dual Chroma: Journey alongside the Second Prince of the Galens Empire to unlock ancient secrets in this romantic fantasy adventure visual novel with a dark twist. With multiple endings and immersive battle sequences, will you write your own destiny, or repeat the mistakes of those whom history has forgotten?

✦ The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe): The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe) is a lore-rich, choice-driven visual novel inspired by Irish myths. Venture into Tír na nÓg, the Celtic Otherworld, in order to retrieve your family's stolen valuables... and get swept up in deadly fairy politics and a whirlwind romance along the way.

✦ Lost in Limbo (New Demo Out Now!): Kickstarter Pre-Campaign Page - Face the nightmares of your childhood and unveil the truth behind your summoning to the realm of Limbo. Fight your way back home with the help of seven deities sworn to be your protectors. Will love be the key to your freedom, or the first chapter of your downfall?

✦ Mask - Beyond Lies: Transported in in another world, a masked person guide you through the day to the exit to go back to your world. But will it really be this easy ? Mask - Beyond is an Otome game that features four love interests.

✦ Obscura: Descend under a mountain to the marketplace below, where everything has a price. Meet the four men who can each give you what you need, but beware: they have their own hidden motives and uses for you. OBSCURA is a dark fantasy romance VN that asks how far you'll go to get what you need.

✦ Pearlglow Cafe: Step through the magical doors of Pearlglow Cafe, a cozy otome visual novel about new beginnings, gentle romances, and the power of food. Experience life as Juniper Brooks as you choose your cafe's daily special and build relationships with the vibrant townsfolk.

✦ Sigh of the Abyss: Embrace the monster within in this dark fantasy visual novel with inclusive romances. Befriend charming allies, defy bitter rivals, fall in love. Your choices will save or condemn mortals, shaping the fate of a city as beautiful as it is cruel.

✦ The Silent Kingdom: The dark tale of a princess who must corrupt her own soul in order to save her kingdom, reaping death and sorrow along the path.

✦ Snow White Ashes: Lose your heart in this dark fairy-tale romance! Once upon a winter night, you enter the woods in search of a beast. But the hunter you find is so charming and sweet–is he truly the monster you seek?

✦ Thorn for the Villain: Reincarnated as an Extra in an Otome Game?!: An office lady is reincarnated as Teresa von Ambrose, originally a spriteless extra character in the obscure otome game ‘Eternal Blessing of the Stars,’ where most of the endings end up with Asmodia Kingdom in shambles one way or another. Armed with knowledge of the game’s future, Teresa decides to intervene and erase the event that triggered the beginning of the original story.

Hello Villainesses and Villains!

This is Tanya and Emily, the two villainess developers behind our upcoming animated visual novel, Save the Villainess. We’re excited to announce that there’s only one day left to support this game’s development on Kickstarter. To celebrate, we have several interesting videos to share!

We hope you have had a chance to check out our demo on Steam and Itch. Our demo has:

• Roughly 3 to 5 hours of gameplay
  
• Animated characters, backgrounds, cut-scenes, and clues
  
• 1 witty and neurodivergent villainess, 1 investigative puzzle to solve, 1 piece of furniture to fight, and 1 bad ending to enjoy
  
• Variable difficulty - play in story mode for in-game clues or detective mode for a challenge
  
• 4 suspects & potential love interests: Edmund, Izel, Ben, and Servant

You can also see recorded streams of Save the Villainess’ from some of the 150+ streamers who covered our game on this Youtube playlist.

To celebrate the end of our Kickstarter (on 8/21 Wednesday at 9 am EST), we also have been streaming some post-demo alpha game footage with guest stars Blerdy Otome, the Vorpal Sword Entertainment Syndicate, and EpyksLion. In the videos of these streams, you will discover more about Servant and the mysterious haunted House where Jane is trapped, as well as go on a new investigation into Jane’s bedroom to learn more about her supportive “patron”. You can see already completed streams on this Youtube playlist.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We’ll also hold one final stream tonight on our Twitch channel.

✦ Tuesday, 8/20, 10 PM EST: Join us and Aither to take tea and talk about murder with Edmund Alpin & Ben Buren

All streams will be posted up on this site for a limited time, until the end of 8/21 (the last day of our Kickstarter campaign).

Finally, please support Save the Villainess on Kickstarter now to help our game reach more goals, such as more romantic CGIs (including with Servant), more animated mysteries, and even more animated bad endings. This is the last day of our Kickstarter campaign and your final chance to pick up goodies such as discounted bundles and in-game animated portraits. This is also a last opportunity to support our game’s development and to get access to Kickstarter-backer-only updates with special sneak-peeks of our game.



Thanks again for your interest in saving the villainess. We look forward to sharing the last of our surprises tonight!

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