Hi, folks!

WHA’EVER STUDIOS here, and we come with devlogs! In the upcoming weeks, we will share our process and progress on WINTERSANDS (WS). Sit back and enjoy :^)

WHAT’S IN A GAME?

WINTERSANDS follows the adventures of our girl Agatha, the Keeper of Fire, who faces choices that will define who she is in a magical world. An ancient story, right? All stories are ancient to an extent, so it’s all about the approach. Here’s how we approach our visual novel!

1.  A modern world. Although it’s a fantasy story complete with elves, dragons, castles and magic, we’re dealing with decisively non-Medieval feelings and problems and want our players to relate to them. That’s why it’s another world, but a contemporary one!

   Fun fact: The first artist we approached refused to draw backgrounds for us, fearing that they would have to draw ‘robots and tech’! Guess we should’ve explained it better.

2.  A character-driven story. Plot is important, but WS is not about plot-twists or dynamic adventure. Our characters are the heart of the story, and we strive to make them relatable, alive and true to their motivations. That’s why the game will have no abrupt game overs, say, when you die after choosing an unlucky path. That’d be unrealistic, right? And that’s why we chose a style that’s more like comics than anime. All our peeps are different in how they act, speak, and look, and they don’t always look like supermodels! They’re not there as functions, carrying the plot, but as real people.

   Fun fact: The gorgeous and sharp-tongued journalist Edne Vedd comes from a summer vacation sketch. Back then, she still had standards and scruples – but these didn’t make it into the game :^)

3.  A full experience. “O for a Muse of fire!” Shakespeare wrote about our own WS protagonist Agatha back in late 16th century. A brief dramatic mention, but we’ll take it from there, Will! After all, what’s a visual novel if not a poor man’s version of theatre or film? We see WS as a complex, living and breathing thing, where each element contributes to the overall experience. We’ve got our stage or filming set, our soundtrack for the right vibes, our dialogues and monologues, and our actors. That’s why we don’t have long place descriptions – backgrounds do this job; and why we don’t reveal much of Agatha’s inner workings – her icon’s emotions speak a thousand words. The rule holds for her dialogue partners: they can say one thing, while their body language might tell quite another story!

   Fun fact: Noticed bold text in the dialogues? Our game isn’t voiced, so we’re using it to show intonation, like comics do! It isn’t easy, and we’re still learning, but we’ll get there.

At the Library: prepare for some extra challenging choices!

These are the three pillars of the game. Time to introduce ourselves!

WHA’EVER STUDIOS

WINTERSANDS began way before we had a cool studio name and logo. And even before we decided to make it a visual novel! Some characters existed in our writer’s notepad since she was 11. Then they spilled over into doodles in our programmer’s textbooks. Then, there was a long break. But here we are again!

It was 2015, and we – j.s. (writer) and trickster.kaja (programmer) – decided to make a game. We both have our day jobs (all our collaborators must get paid, so we gotta bring home the bacon), and there’s often precious little time left to develop WS. We needed backup: an artist and a composer. Both had to be responsible people who’d share our passion for WS.

It wasn’t easy, but we found them! Meet the team:

BEFORE vs. AFTER

As soon as Ami and Irony Love  joined us, WS started taking shape.

This is what it looked like before:

And here’s the quantum leap made possible by our new team members:

The demo (the first scene of WS Chapter One) came out in September 2019, a thing of beauty visually and audibly. Today, we’re working on Chapter One, aiming to finish in 2021. We’re also sharing news and lore in our several social media in English and Russian:

• twitter
• instagram
• vk (russian)

We’re grateful to all of you for playing the demo and writing comments and reviews – your feedback is invaluable! There’s more than four people behind WINTERSANDS ;^)

And that was our brief overview. Next, we will boldly and very thoroughly go where no man has been before, and expose every nook and cranny of the process of making WINTERSANDS.

Stay tuned!