The Cursed Heart Project

Hello everyone, welcome to the blog of The Cursed Heart Project! We are creating a fan-made book 3 of The Cursed Heart series.

Who are we?

Currently, we are a team of two people:

@leafkingofbirds - writer and originator of the project

@zhoumeyourlove - art assets and coding

If you’re interested in joining the team, please fill out this form so we can get to know you a bit! We would really appreciate having more people to help!

It would be great to have someone with experience in Ren’Py, but that’s not a necessity at all - we're figuring it out as we go as well!

What is the project about?

The ending of Book 2 doesn’t lend itself well to a sequel, so the project starts at the point where MC is cursed and continues from there. Kieran and MC will have to search for a cure to the Immortality Curse...before it's too late, and MC is heartless forever.

Will there be a wedding?

There will be the option to have Kieran and MC get married, as well as the option to have a child (biological or adopted)!

However, this is not a wedding book (like quite a few Book 3s have been), because not all players will want these things…and of course, MC has to get their heart back for the wedding to happen at all.

When can we expect the game?

We don’t have an estimate as to when the project will be completed. This is a massive undertaking and neither of us have worked on a visual novel before, so we can’t promise anything in terms of timeline.

Did you see the subtle tease PB did in their latest newsletter about the Cursed Heart? Does this change anything about this fan project (I really hope not because I NEED my favourite characters back!!)?

Oh, I just saw that! Thanks for asking.

Hey, Autumn here! (@leafkingofbirds)

Thanks for asking! Right now, I am currently in a grad school writing program, so I've had to put my writing for this project on temporary pause <3 It is not abandoned, and I'm still brainstorming in my spare moments with a pretty solid idea of the direction we're going to take.

Hello everyone! I (@zhoumeyourlove) haven't updated the blog in a bit since I've been very busy the past month, but also because the basic 'framework' of the game is in a good place (which we're very happy about of course!). As a result, my work is currently focused on sprite assets rather than Ren'Py, and I don't want to spoil anything (at least, not too far in advance ;D)!

Buttttt I figured some people might be interested the stylized menu screens and autoplay button, even if they're not as 'major' as the other updates!

Demo of the character customization screen! Or really character customization screens.

Hello, everyone! We now have a short Google Form for you to fill out if you're interested in volunteering for the project! This helps us know a bit more about you and also keep track of people who'd like to help.

Hello everyone, @zhoumeyourlove here with a project update!

The Cursed Heart Project now has Choice UI like...well, Choices. There are now choice menus for the dialogue, the narration, items, and scenes/outfits. We now have most of the major stylistic elements of Choices in the game! Up next I'm going to work on some of the more minor elements that you can't see in screenshots, like the text scrolling in and sprites fading between emotions.

Hello everyone, @zhoumeyourlove here with another project update!

I am incredibly happy to show you all that I've set up the sprites + emotions in the Choices style! Using layered images, several variables, and some emotional turmoil on my part (though thankfully significantly less than the textboxes), MC and Kierans' appearances can now be easily changed, as can their emotions!

Hello, everyone, @zhoumeyourlove here with another little update!

So in my last update post, I talked about hoping it would be easy to implement the 3 different dialogue boxes now that I had the Choices style implemented.

It was not.

As you can probably tell by the nearly 3-month time gap. Woopsie.

But finally, I did it! Look at these glorious, deceptively simple text boxes! And this very in-character dialogue!

Apologies for the long wait between updates, but don't worry, we're still very much actively working on this!

Hello, everyone! I decided it would be nice to have a little progress update, so here's a screengrab of one of the opening lines to show how things are going, particularly the UI.

So far I (@zhoumeyourlove) have only worked on making the text bubble for the left side of the screen, but now that I have the style mostly down (still need to fiddle with a few things!), I'm hoping it won't be too difficult to make the right text box and the narration one (which is really what this line should be in). After text boxes, next order of business is implementing the pronoun variables. And then, of course, the many, many other elements that go into creating a fan project ;D