Happy Thursday everyone! Here I am back again for some weekly updates. It was a very busy week for Fervent, and I’m happy to report that we’ve got a lot done. Click more to see what we’ve accomplished this week!

• UI Draft for Preference Menu, Save, Load submitted; design concepts approved
• Finished character design for Dumah, Locksmith, Glasseye and Hidari
• First Draft of Main story (excluding endings) submitted for alpha test; working on revisions
• Programming story into Ren’py: including text styles, narrative pacing and choice branching.

I’ve finally started programming the story into Ren’py! Woohoo! It’s a blast. One of the things I love about the visual novel medium is the amount of control you have on pacing, font size and other text effects; and this is just on the prose alone. When you start putting sound, art and music, it becomes much closer to moving poetry. I really do love this flair for telling stories that only the VN medium can offer! Everyday I learn something new.

So yeah, the final art is not available yet, so I’m stuck staring at white text on black background most of the time. But maybe it’s a good thing because I can check if the story is interesting enough to stand on its own. The UI design concepts are finally approved, though (after a lot of brainstorming, hooboy). We are going for the concept “Antique Lock”, and hopefully soon, I’ll be able to show you guys some of the layouts I’ve made for it. I will talk about UI design on one of these updates, just because the process fascinates me!

Art Update: I have here the character designs of Locksmith and Hidari, respectively. As per usual, nothing about their past could be revealed, but I can offer some tiny morsels of truth to nibble on.

Locksmith

Locksmith, as is his namesake, is pretty good at keeping secrets locked. Getting to him will reveal more than you’d ever like to know. He won’t make it easy for you, but maybe with the right “motivation”, he’ll have no choice but to show his cards.

Hidari

Hidari’s name came from the Japanese term for “left”, and the adage “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” to hint at the duality of Hidari’s nature. Careful now. He’s quite likable. But like Mother from Cupid used to say, sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth.

These two guys are always at odds with each other because they are at the separate ends of a spectrum. One’s cold and one’s warm, one’s as blunt as a hose pipe, while the other’s as charming as pie. One of them will always lie, one will always tell the truth.

But when it really comes down to it, who is more trustworthy? It’s up to you whose words you’re going to believe.

Next week, we’ll get to know our two other lady characters, Glasseye and Abel.

See you then!