Insist on the Plot

We’re hosting an Otome sale this week! From September 10th to the 14th, get up to 50% off Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome or OZMAFIA related goodies!

MangaGamer

Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome (Digital) - 40% off, $14.97

Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome (Hardcopy) - 30% off, $17.47

Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome (Hardcopy Bundle) - 30% off, $34.97

Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome (Wallscroll) - 30% off, $20.97

OZMAFIA (Digital) - 50% off, $17.48

OZMAFIA (Hardcopy) - 35% off, $25.97

OZMAFIA Character CD, Caramia (Physical CD) - 15% off, $16.96

OZMAFIA Character CD, Axel (Physical CD) - 15% off, $16.96

OZMAFIA Character CD, Scarlet (Physical CD) - 15% off, $16.96

OZMAFIA Character CD, Kyrie (Physical CD) - 15% off, $16.96

OZMAFIA Original Soundtrack, Vivace! (Physical CD) - 15% off, $33.96

Physical editions of both Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome and OZMAFIA include a free Steam key card with purchase!

Steam

Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome (Digital) - 40% off, $14.99

What began as series of a yuri drama CDs spanning six different couples has culminated in this expansive tale of sweet, heartwarming stories from girls in love! How would you like to follow along as their romances develop? Jump into the perspective of 15 different girls for a first hand experience of their relationships growing over time. Will the three newest characters, Tamaki, Yuno, and Saeka manage to resolve their complex feelings for each other? Who of the trio will end up together?

They say love can transcend all boundaries, but is that really true? The twins Ichika and Futaba have always been inseparable, even as they developed their own interests and hobbies. Their love is strong and they’re always supporting each other, but can it hold up to accusations of codependency? Are the twins truly codependent as their Mother fears, or could the truth be something sweeter, something forbidden? Can the twins weather the storm and keep their flame alight, or will everything change for good? Find out in eyephon’s Sisterly Bliss!

We’re proud to announce VA-11 Hall-A KIDS™! 

The first step in taking our budding franchise into a brave new family friendly direction. More details here:

NaNoRenO 2018 starts today! The annual visual novel making jam begins, and you should totally participate! Use the tag #NaNoRenO2018 so we can find each other.

Join the Jam: https://itch.io/jam/nanoreno-2018

Already started another project, but still want to use this month to sprint with us? Use the tag #IntRenAiMo!

Looking for a team to join (or want to start your own?) Crowdforge Team Builder LemmaSoft Recruitment Thread

Looking for free resources (art, music, GUI to use for your VN?) LemmaSoft Creative Commons Forum

StoryDevs has been in development for quite a while and I’m eager to get it to a stage where other people can use the site without me having to do particular things for them (especially stuff like adding/editing profiles). In light of this, here’s a simplified roadmap I’m following to get the site there:

First thing that’s needed is editors for each section of the site. There is a fancy work-in-progress editor but it’s gonna take a while to finish so I’m working on a simpler one first.

The account system needs to be re-implemented. There are some changes I want to make under the hood to isolate personas from each other (so that even if the database is compromised you can’t tell which personas are owned by the same person) but it’s making switch between personas tricky. I need to work on this more.

A home page needs to be made which explains the site quickly and clearly. In addition, it can aggregate new and featured people, posts, and resource from different areas of the site.

Bring mobile version of the site up to speed with the desktop version.

Fix a handful of minor bugs, mostly visual stuff.

After those steps the live version of the site can be updated. This will give a more correct impression of what the site is about. The version that’s live at the time of writing is kind of wonky and doesn’t work on mobile. Minor bug fixes aside, it was last updated in mid-2016 — yikes!

Finally, invite a handful of people to use the site to create their own profiles. I’d like to start small to make sure things are working as expected and then slowly grow outwards. Eventually there will be a launch for the general public but I’d like to set up the correct tone for the site early on.

So that’s the general plan for the next few months. How long it will take me will pretty much depend on how much money I have — the more I have, the less outside work I have to take on. Right now I’m working on step 1: making the editors.

Creating Editors

Creating a text editor for the web can be involved if you want it to look decent and function well. As mentioned above, I’m working on a nice text editor which is of the what-you-see-is-what-you-get variety. The kind where you can selected some text, hit ctrl+b and it’ll bold it in the editor, without markdown or BBcode.

The fancy editor has some other features planned, like an auto-generated table of contents that allows each section to have private notes. And a custom text selection effect which obviously very important! Here’s how that fancy WIP editor looks at the moment:

Above: full shot of the library editor showing it’s document overview on the left and editor on the right.

Above: close-up of the animated text selection.

The fancy editor still has a long way to go so I’m working on a simpler editor that just uses the default browser text widget, meaning that initially only markdown will be supported for text formatting. The simplified editor looks somewhat similar, and will be what people will use for text editing for a while yet.

Creating and editing talent profiles will be more involved than this, requiring multiple inputs, adding files, etc etc. That’s an update for another time.

StoryDevs is a place for developers of story-focused games and visual novels to find each other and collaborate. The site is under development but handle reservations are open: www.storydevs.com/reserve

YurinYurin’s A Kiss for the Petals: Maidens of Michael is now available on MangaGamer.com! Customers who wish to own the all-ages version of Maidens of Michael on Steam can grab their copy later today!

Amidst the flirtations of couples, established and spontaneous ones alike, excitement was brewing over the informal student poll to decide “St. Michael’s Best Couples.” Not having a girlfriend, Risa didn’t think the matter concerned her… Until she and Miya were chosen as a pair!

Naturally, Risa denied having any sort of romantic relationship, but the classmates who endorsed them simply smiled gently with the reasoning of refined girls brought up in respectable families, saying, “You always appear to be having such fun.” Although the two agree to go along with it for appearance’s sake, it turns out they’ll also be stuck on a committee with four other couples, planning events for the upcoming holidays of Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

On social media this week, we celebrated yuri manga and light novels! It’s always a good day to read about ladies in love. 💕

Kase-san and… is an adorable, fan-favorite manga about sweet Yamada and cool Kase-san falling in love and navigating a growing relationship. Bloom Into You is a moving yuri about Yuu, who’s sorting out her feelings on love, and the girl who has feelings for her–student council president Nanami. Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid has a great anime we all love, and the manga’s still going strong: 5 volumes and counting! Akuma no Riddle: Riddle Story of Devil is an action yuri!  The series is now complete, and boy, what a ride. There’s an anime for this one, too! The creator Milk Morinaga introduced so many people in the West to yuri manga, with title after title of wonderful love stories including Girl Friends, Gakuen Polizi, Hana & Hina After School, Secret of the Princess, and Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossom Pink.

And we’re excited to be bringing our Strawberry Panic light novels (Vols 1-3) to digital platforms this spring! These were the first yuri light novels out in English. Pre-orders are already up at some ebook retailers, like Kindle!

If you don’t have Kindred Spirits yet, absolutely get this.

Backstage Pass is currently 25% off at all the usual places for the WINTER SALE, YAY!

https://sakevisual.itch.io/backstage-pass

Mangagamer’s doing a sale until Dec 22, mostly on the kind of games that are as much sex as possible plus a few random older titles. The vast majority of them I have not played, and the one or two that I have are generally not the kind of thing I would recommend here :P (Look, once in a while I check out mindless smut, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I can’t honestly tell you it was a great game and you should play it.)

The one exception - which IS still very 18+ but is potentially of interest to some readers - is the Sono Hanabira New Generation yuri game, which is currently 25% off.

The game features three sets of couples - you have to play through the ‘main’ couple first, and after completing their story you unlock the ability to start the stories for the other two. There are choices to make, but it’s not a choice of love interest, it’s just choices to determine whether you progress all the way to the good ending or not. This is not a game with horrifying bad ends if you do it wrong, it just ends early. If it doesn’t end early, it eventually moves from ‘romantic drama’ to ‘lots of sex scenes’.

Note: one of the couples is a pair of twins. They are not the ‘main’ story so you don’t have to play their route if that bugs you, but they will be flirting as a side couple anyway. I don’t want to spoil their plot but I can say they weren’t entirely raised together.

Patreon Launched!

StoryDevs now has a Patreon page to allow you to support my work! Enough people have asked me how they can support the site that I decided to try it out. Even if you can only pledge $1 it still helps! From what I hear the majority of successful Patreons are comprised of smaller pledges.

There’s only one reward tier at the moment: $1 per month will get your Patreon name added to a permanent “thank-you” page on the site. A couple of addition ideas I had for rewards were:

Reserve up to two handles per email address (maybe something like $5 per month?)

A special role on the Discord server.

Again, haven’t thought too deeply about it yet. If anyone has their own ideas I’m open to them.

400+ Reserved Handles

Really happy to have crossed this milestone a while back! Your StoryDevs handle forms the link to your profile so reserving one allows you to ensure you get what you want. If you plan to reserve a handle please remember that you must confirm your email address — sometimes the confirmation email may end up in spam or take several minutes to arrive.

Interface For Switching/Editing Personas

What StoryDevs calls “personas” are basically built-in support for alt-accounts. Sometimes you want two or more accounts for a website either for privacy or because you want to keep things separate. This can be annoying to manage since you need multiple email addresses, multiple passwords, and can only be logged in as one at a time.

Personas allow you to create a new identity that looks like a completely separate account to the public. Unlike separate accounts, however, personas are be centrally managed, edited, and switched between via one account. You can create a new persona instantly without additional email verification.

In the future there will be a drop-down menu next to your handle in the upper right, in the header. It will be similar to the one on the left of the account view, allowing you to switch between your identities from anywhere on the site. I haven’t got around to adding it yet though!

That’s all for now — I’ve done more work on the site between posts but I’ll save that for another post! Again, if you can spare a dollar or two for the StoryDevs Patreon I’d really appreciate it!

StoryDevs is a place for developers of visual novels and story-focused games to find each other and collaborate. The site is under development but handle reservations are open: www.storydevs.com/reserve

✿ Lilies Volume Three is Now Live! ✿

Lilies Volume Three: Golden Lily is a compilation of wordless lesbian romance comics drawn by artists from around the world. Lilies is an open submission anthology, so read on to learn how you can contribute to future volumes!

✿ 24 Amazing Artists ✿

Anisa Sherzai, Appleatti, celry, Choco, Dojo, FallingMist & Mythee, Haeji Lee, Johanna Hagström, Julia Hutchinson, Juliette GMM López, Kimberly Wang, Liam Donnelly, luiysia, Miupoke, Mo, Nina Arena, Rita Martins , Rosie Haghighi, Schnekk, Seara, SerenaSa, Shannon Quartuch, Sireesha Reddy

We’ve sent out a special announcement email to all partcipating artists. Contact us if you didn’t receive it!

You can read Lilies Volume 3 and support our artists and editors by paying $2 (or more!) for the PDF copy on Gumroad, or by purchasing a physical copy of the book from Lulu (links below).

$2 PDF on Gumroad (partial colour)

$25 Print copy on Lulu (black and white)

Curious? Volumes other than the most recent volume are available free or for an optional donation. Download volumes one and two to see what we’re all about!

Atti, Anna, and all our artists put a lot of love and time into these anthologies, and we appreciate all your support!

✿ Join Lilies! ✿

We’re also accepting submissions for Volume Four, which has a “Spooky” theme! Check out our FAQ or Submission Details to learn more, and reblog our announcement post to tell your friends! 

Love,  Anna & Atti