Lettuce Waltz

An extremely sketchy sketch! The art for the common underworld route (covering days 7-10, same as the kitsune common route) and Shuye’s route is being worked on. Writing-wise, we’ve progressed to Haiyue’s route.

It was nice seeing some of you at AnimeFest 2018 last month! Special thanks if you dropped by the visual novel reading room. I gave away a few vintage Spirit Parade stickers, which was fun. (We’ve still got lots of those, so don’t be afraid to ask for one.) Now that we have a launcher and I know I can showcase multiple games, I’ll definitely be working on including a Spirit Parade demo next year if we do the VN room again.

Some random screenshots from the first half of Shuye’s route, which is being coded and scripted. Lucky and Iwao’s sprites are still placeholders!

Hi everyone! Thank you for your patience as we continue working on Spirit Parade. 

We’re all hard at work on Shuye’s route. The CGs, Underworld BGs, and extra art (for the minigame, sprites for the side characters) are being worked on. The script's first draft is nearly done now, too, just need to finish off the two good endings before moving into editing and sprite coding.

Mikio's route has been released and is available for play.  Mikio's route has 5 endings and there are 7 new CGs (plus a couple variations) to find! Spirit Parade costs $20 USD. Buying the full game will allow you to play every route as they are released. You may also purchase Mikio's route separately for $5 USD.

Unfortunately, there is no patch from the previous version to this one. However, we have now implemented patching through itch.io, so from here on out if you use the itch.io app, you will be able to download patched updates instead of having to redownload the whole file every time something changes. We hope this makes it easier to play the game in the future as more of the routes are released!

Q: I preordered! How do I find my download?

A: You should be able to access your download/preorder by finding the confirmation email sent to you when you preordered or by logging into itch.io. If you can’t find the email or have some other problems locating the download page link, please follow the instructions on this page.

Q: Will you be releasing walkthroughs for the game?

A: We do not plan on releasing walkthroughs. Dedicated players often do this anyway, but there are so many different ways to achieve the endings and variations in the story, depending, that we think it’s best to let players reach the endings organically. As a rule, each character has 2 bad endings (an early and a late), 2 good endings (stay or go), and 1 normal ending. The status screen should definitely be used to check on how much the characters like Nara! We encourage asking the community for help, but we devs are, of course, available to give hints or provide assistance when necessary.

Coming soon to a computer near you...!

Mikio’s route will be released one week from today, next Friday the 9th! All of the art has been completed; there just needs to be a teensy bit more testing and final polish before we push this drunkard out the door.

The standalone version of the route will be available on release day for $5, same as Hayato’s. If you’ve already purchased the full game, you will get this new content free of charge, of course. Please purchase the full version of Spirit Parade if you’re interested in having all the routes!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered! It was really tough deciding between such strong entrants, but we’re here to announce the winners. These characters will be seen in the Underworld routes of the game!

Hi, thanks for your interest! Since including pictures/character designs is optional, it’s completely up to you what you decide to include. Whatever you think needs to be better elaborated on (beyond your character profile) with a picture is up to you.

Of course! The characters from other games that cameo in Spirit Parade (via the restaurant/underworld cafeteria mini-game) are:

Adrian and Luca from Nachtigal

Auralee from Autumn’s Journey

Xallaun from Princess of Ruin

Hey guys! Lore here. It was pointed out to me that there isn’t a whole lot of info about the structure of the Underworld/hierarchy of the death gods yet, so I thought I’d post up some so that people have something to work with for the contest!

Important point: technically, all of the employees in the Underworld are death gods. This includes the sillier-looking (type 2) character submissions. However, that doesn’t mean they’re all on Shuye or Haiyue’s level! 

Think of the Underworld like an office building. You’ve got your CEO (King Enma), your finance/marketing/design teams (Diaochan), and the people creating and shipping the actual product (Shuye, Haiyue would be like managers in this scenario). Even so! You’ve still gotta have janitors, the people working in the company cafeteria, the secretaries, etc! So your character(s) don’t have to work directly with Shuye or Haiyue, they could be in a completely different department!

Diaochan is the head of the DIU, or the Diyu Intelligence Unit. This is basically the same as the CIA in the US or similar intelligence/spy/covert ops. The department oversees the others, gathers information, and intervenes discreetly when necessary. They create and organize the files on every soul, and also regularly audit the field gods, such as...

Haiyue and Shuye! They are more functional death gods, sometimes referred to as the field gods. The two of them and their respective departments actually go out and reap souls, get rid of ghouls, etc. Of course, there are way more souls in the world than Enma and these departments can deal with. The game alludes to other Underworlds, possibly from different cultures and locations. Shuye and Haiyue tend to deal more directly with problem cases and delegate the rest, but Shuye takes on a lot more work for himself than Haiyue.

King Enma (also referred to as Lord Enma) is the ruler of this particular underworld. He is ultimately the one who decides the fate of every soul that passes through, weighing their good vs bad deeds throughout their lives. Diaochan answers directly to Enma. Haiyue and Shuye don’t technically have supervisors, but usually communicate with King Enma through Diaochan, as King Enma is often too busy to talk directly to his subordinates.

The character still belongs to you, but we will own the commercial rights to it if your character is chosen as a winner. We mainly ask for the right to use the character in Spirit Parade, which is a commercial project. We will, somewhat obliquely, be profiting off of your character in that sense. However, our commercial rights are limited to using them as a Spirit Parade supporting character only. Your character will not be getting a route or anything like that, but will be more than just a cameo.

I asked Rins, who said that she’d be fine with her art of the character being used for personal purposes—banners, avatars, etc. (same as the rest of the art in the game, really) However, as we will own the commercial rights to the design, you would not be able to use the character design for your own profit.

That said, we are asking for submissions of new characters created specifically for the contest and they have to fit into the Spirit Parade universe. On top of that, they will have a history with our characters, so I’m not sure how much use they will have outside of the context of Spirit Parade anyway. 

Also, the catch to all this is that we’ll only be using the two winning characters, so if your character isn’t chosen, we won’t be using them at all. We will claim no ownership to those characters. At that point, if you wish, you can change up their histories and remove their connections to Spirit Parade and do whatever you want with them.

Thank you! We’re so glad you enjoyed it. 

Hello, everyone! While we work on Mikio’s route, we would like to host a contest in the meantime to get ready for the upcoming Underworld routes. As you may have noticed in the common and Hayato routes, there are quite a few notable side characters that help move the story along and really help immerse players in the world of Spirit Parade.

While we have the main plot points for the Underworld routes planned out already, we need your help in bringing a little extra color to the palace of King Enma! Thus, we’d like to invite you guys to join us in our:

Spirit Parade: Create a Character Contest!

Contest Entry Period: Tuesday, October 24th, 2017 12:01 AM CST through December 17th, 2017 at 9:00 PM CST

Theme: We will be choosing two winners for this contest. The first character will be a humanoid character that works alongside the dateable characters in the Underworld routes as a death god. (type 1) The second character will be a more silly, fun Youkai like the supporting characters seen in the common route and Hayato’s route. (type 2) Please make sure that what you come up with fits into the world of Spirit Parade!

How to Enter:

Please submit entries to us via e-mail at [email protected]

Entries must be a character bio. You are essentially creating a Spirit Parade original character!

If you are an artist, you are more than welcome to include a drawing of your character. If you are a writer, a description of physical features works as well.

We will be judging based on creativity and how well a character fits into the world of Spirit Parade, so please include things like personality, background, likes, dislikes, what they think about Shuye, Haiyue, Diaochan, etc. There’s no template because we want you to have freedom and fun with it!

Please make sure that your entry follows the rules outlined below.

Rules:

There is no limit on how many entries you submit, but please keep the bios to no more than 1,500 words.

Please make sure your character fits the theme of our game! Spirit Parade is based on and inspired by Asian mythology and cultures. Your character needs to fall under one of the two types we explained above.

If you are including a drawing of your Spirit Parade character, please make sure it is completely original art. We do not allow faceclaims, stolen/edited/traced art, or any form of media that is not created by you.

Entries must have been created for this contest, so please do not submit existing OCs.

Entries may not be edited after submission.

Entries must be submitted within the contest entry period. Any late submissions will not be accepted.

Terms of Service:

Please keep in mind that Spirit Parade is a commercial game and that your submission, if chosen, will be used in it.

However, we will not use the character(s) for any other purpose outside of a supporting character for Spirit Parade.

If your character is chosen, your name will be featured in the credits.

Prizes:

Winners will get their character drawn into a sprite and implemented into the game for the Underworld Routes.

Winners may also choose one of the Spirit Parade wooden charms as shown below*:

*This will require a mailing address