itch.io

Thankfully so far that we know of no one on the team has covid.  Our team lead was diagnosed with a genetic mutation last year that caused her to have her colon to be removed back in May.  She's still healing from her surgery.

We don't remember if we posted this anywhere on itch.io, but our character artist left us in December 2019, so we had to find new artists to redo the artwork that we had at the time and complete the rest. Things have been a little slow because of those two situations plus with covid affecting people's main jobs.

Most recent update is here:

https://www.facebook.com/naivesprites/posts/1739898286168026

I'm so sorry!  I thought I responded to your comment.  Our most recent update can be read here:  

https://www.facebook.com/naivesprites/posts/1739898286168026

I don't think I posted this on itch.io, but our character artist left us in December, so we had to find new artists and start over on the character art.  Our team lead (myself) was diagnosed with a genetic mutation which caused her to have her colon removed in May.

So progress has been pretty slow this year.

Oh wow!  I didn't even get a notification in my email for this comment.  I'm sorry for the extremely late response.

We are still working on A Very Important Date, but the progress has been slow due to serious health issues for some of the members on the team.  There are plans to release a new demo in a few months as long as nothing else gets in the way.

Hi!  Because of serious health issues that a few members have been dealing with for the past year or two progress has been slow.  We plan to release a new demo in a few months as long as health issues don't get even more in the way.

I'm sorry for the late response.

Thank you so much for letting me know!  I'll look into it tonight and try to load up a new Linux file as soon as I can.  If that file doesn't work, I'll talk to our programmers to see if they can figure out the issue.

But in my search (I'm not overly familiar with Linux) about the error, some other people had similar issues with other programs and were told to run this command:  apt-get install lib32stdc++6

Once again, thank you!

- Noelle

My otome/visual novel team is doing a Kickstarter Live on tomorrow at 8PM EDT. We'll be answering questions and showing off some of the physical add-on rewards.

Noelle and Justin will be answering questions. We plan to have some of our team members on-call to help answer questions.

Thank you so much for the compliments ^_^.  I'm happy to hear that you enjoy it.
At the latest, we plan to have the visual novel out in a year from now.  Hoping for sooner.  A Very Important Date is going to be episodically released by character, but we plan to have both Emil's and Gwyn's main and epilogue stories out on release day.

Hello everyone,

If you wonderful people have not yet heard, we’ve hit 104% on our second Kickstarter attempt!

But this isn’t the end of our Kickstarter adventure!  We have 11 days left on our new campaign and we have seven stretch goals to aim for.  The first of these stretch goals is to have a Boys Love side story attached to A Very Important Date’s main game.  This will be a three to four chapters short story that will feature our main game’s cast.  If this goal is reached, any backer at a $30+ tier will get this side story for free! (If you do not want this side story, it could be traded for a future side story instead.)

We would also like to let our previous backers know that we are going to do a Facebook live stream for our second Kickstarter backers on Thursday.  Access to the live stream group starts at only $15!  We hope to see you all there!

Along with this, in our newest Backer Only post on the second Kickstarter and Facebook, we have posted our recent completed song by Geoff Moore, two new backgrounds, and WIPs of two characters for our Spin-Off visual novel.

All of our previous backers who have returned to back us once again, we thank you so much for your continued support!  For previous backers that have yet to follow us over there, time is running out!  Please consider pledging to our second kickstarter so we can meet our stretch goals!  Remember our rewards start at just $1.

We're at 73% on Kickstarter!!!!!

Hello everyone!

We're happy to announce that A Very Important Date's demo has been updated!  The Rory update includes the first 3 chapters of Rory's story which boosts the word count of the demo to over 45,000, and increases playtime by around two hours!  The demo can be downloaded from our Itch.io page.

Along with Rory's chapters, this demo also adds in the CG Eye Toggle feature and the ability to delete save files. The CG Eye Toggle feature will change our event illustrations to either show Alison's eyes or have them obscured.  The CG Eye Toggle's effect can be seen in Gwyn's third chapter.

Please keep in mind that this is still a demo, so there may still be bugs that haven't been worked out yet.  In our next demo update, we hope to implement the fast forward, log, and name change capabilities.

Along with the demo news, we are also happy to announce that we've reached 51% on Kickstarter!  Thank you to everyone who has backed us so far and those who have shared our links!  Our campaign runs until July 21st at 11:59PM EDT, so if you try our newer demo and enjoy the characters and story, please consider backing us on Kickstarter.  If you're unable to back us, simply sharing our posts to help spread the word about A Very Important Date would help us immensely.

Thank you all and we hope you enjoy Rory's update.

We just started our second attempt on Kickstarter.

Hello, everyone!

We have some exciting news for you today!  Our team plans to launch our next Kickstarter attempt on June 6th at 12PM eastern time.  This time our initial goal will be set at $3,500 USD, which covers the remaining songs and backgrounds that we still need for the game.  If we reach stretch goals, that money will help us pay for the character art and CGs along with additional objectives like additional poses and additional CGs.

This Kickstarter will also include our Spin-Off game (title still in the works), which will be in the reward tiers.  This spin-off game will have a male lead with four possible suitors: two males, one male-to-female transgender, and one female.  This game will be released some time after Connor’s and Lowell’s first season stories.

We’ll also be increasing the number of main stories and epilogues that backers can get as rewards from five possible suitors to all eight!  So instead of only being rewarded with stories for Gwyn, Emil, Rory, Harlan, and Sven, backers could also get stories for Connor, Lowell, and Julianna as well!

We’ll be adding more digital rewards this time and removing some physical rewards like the T-shirt.  The remaining physical reward items will be changed into add-on items, except for the metal 2 inch key chain.

Please, share this news to help build awareness for our Kickstarter and expect more information on the topic soon.

I hope so ^_^ and thank you so much!

Thank you so much! We're happy to hear that you like the story and characters. We do plan to allow players to input their own name for Alison. We haven't programmed this feature into the demo yet, but we hope to see it in a future release. This is something that I like in other visual novels, too, as I feel it makes it even easier to connect with the characters and the storyline.

- Noelle

Thank you and hello! Well, it's hard to say when the full game will come out as individual stories will be released episodically. As our first attempt at Kickstarter didn't make it, we have to push back our release date for the first two stories (Gwyn's and Emil's). If our second attempt is a success, we're hoping for the first two releases to be somewhere between November 2017 and February 2018 with Gwyn's and Emil's main stories and epilogues. After that, we plan to release another character's story every month to two months (we haven't fully gone over the scheduling system yet).

We're currently planning two seasons for the game, with each season having a main story, epilogue, and sequel for each character. Then in the second season, we plan to add even more characters for players to choose from.

- Noelle

It's been a week and a half since Kickstarter ended and the team is still working hard. But as funds are depleting, progress is starting to slow down. We recently added our new charm design as a preorder on Storenvy. The money we make from these charms will help pay for backgrounds, sprites, event illustrations, and music, and will also be used to lower our future Kickstarter goal. Along with buying a charm, you'll get your name in our game's credits for helping fund us.

Now onto our progress!

We believe we have our event illustration implementation working properly. We have a few more tests on it, then we'll move onto putting in some additions to make our Save/Load menus more user-friendly.

Classes have begun for Noelle so she's once again balancing that along with game work. At the moment, she is running through Rory's 4th Chapter so she can upload it into our review group. After that, the writers will go back to working on Sven's first few chapters.

Along with writing and dealing with a few pressing family situations, Justin is sketching and finding references for Lordless' next background.

In other news, we've created a new survey to help provide some feedback about our first Kickstarter attempt and hopefully give us some insight of how to improve on our next campaign. We're thinking of replacing some rewards with new reward items, but want our fans' opinions first before we finalize anything.

One of our reward ideas is a fan disc/spin off game of A Very Important Date. This side game will be a common route style visual novel with a male lead and four potential suitors (2 males, 1 MtF, and Alison). The writing team has been playing around with this idea for a while now and have been working on it between AVID's workload. This game will help to build the world of A Very Important Date beyond The Looking Glass and Mimsboro. The male lead also has deep connections to the twins, so fans can delve into their past even more.

So that'll do it for today's update. See you soon with another. In the meantime, please spend a few minutes to take our survey!

Hello everyone! We're happy to announce today that we were Greenlit on Steam!

Hello everyone! We have a special announcement today!

Because of the holiday spirit, the team has decided to unlock TWO of our add-ons on Kickstarter. Today we'll be unlocking our Digital OST, all songs created by Geoff Moore, and a newly designed poster by Darkenmarr.

Our digital OST is $9 USD, so all you would need to do to add it in is adjust your pledge to include the $9 USD to you current pledge amount.

The poster will be of a new design (TBD) by Darkenmarr and is set to $11 USD. If you don't have a physical item tier, you will need to include shipping costs on to that. Please add $5 USD for US and Canada and $10 USD for the rest of the world on top of the $11 addition to your current pledge amount.

We also would like to announce that we were Greenlit on Steam!

Hello everyone! With the spirit of the Holidays in full swing, we are happy to announce that because of popular requests we have added a new tier to our Kickstarter!

Our new $75 Honeysuckle Tier gives our backers access to the Backer-Only updates, their names in our credits, 5 wallpapers, 2″ metal keychain, and 1 body pillowcase of their choice.

All of our body pillowcases will be fully colored and double-sided!

Gwyn's "sexy" side of his pillow case

There have been a few computer issues this past week that have caused a bit of a delay, but we're hoping to get the majority of the body pillowcases' art done as soon as possible. To see the first sketches of our body pillow cases, check out this update on our Kickstarter!

We would also like to remind every one of you wonderful people about Steam Greenlight! If you have not done so yet and you have a Steam Account, please vote for A Very Important Date. Every vote counts and the team would appreciate it greatly!

Hello everyone! With the spirit of the Holidays in full swing, we are happy to announce that because of popular requests we have added a new tier to our Kickstarter!

Our new $75 Honeysuckle Tier gives our backers access to the Backer-Only updates, their names in our credits, 5 wallpapers, 2″ metal keychain, and 1 body pillowcase of their choice.

All of our body pillowcases will be fully colored and double-sided!

There have been a few computer issues this past week that have caused a bit of a delay, but we're hoping to get the majority of the body pillowcases' art done as soon as possible. To see the first sketches of our body pillow cases, check out this update on our Kickstarter!

Here at Naive Sprites we're happy to announce that we have just joined Steam Greenlight! Greenlight is a system used by Steam that allows users to vote for games, mods, and software that they want to be sold or downloadable on their site. If we get enough votes, we can sell our game on Steam!

Being on Steam would allow us to have the DLC setup that we are aiming for PC, Mac, and Linux. This allows players to be able to buy stories individually instead of buying all the contents at once for a heftier price. Being on Steam and being able to release our content in this manner makes it so we can release our first batch of game content at a sooner date.

So click the banner and then vote for us on Steam Greenlight!

We're 45 backers away from unlocking our first add-ons! I'm so excited! I've seen the art for these add-ons, too, and they are super cute. Darkenmarr only has a little bit more to do with them before they're finished, but they don't unlock unless we hit 100 backers.

We added a snapshot of Gwyn's Live2D sprite to our Kickstarter's description. Once he's fully finished (with animations/face and limb changes) it's onward to Emil's sprite!

In our third backer only update of Kickstarter we showed off two night time backgrounds and some WIP images of Gwyn's body pillowcase including a much more risque early sketch.

Tomorrow around 11 AM we're going to have a very important announcement! We would very much appreciate it if everyone shared it for us and possibly take part in it once it's announced.

Also we would like to remind everyone about our Thunderclap! Taking part in it or sharing it would be greatly appreciated.

And that's it for today! Remember to check back in tomorrow for our special announcement!

Hello all you wonderful folks! We just poster another update on Kickstarter. This one gives everyone a glimpse at the first early sketches of our body pillowcase designs! Check it out here.

Along with that update, we also posted a backer exclusive update! This update featured a number of WIP images of Gwyn's Live2D sprite, in various states of undress I might add. He's almost finished! We're so excited! Remember our backer only updates are available to all of our backers for as little as just a $1 pledge.

Don't forget about our special winter image for our backers! If we hit 50% of our goal (we're currently 27% of the way there now!) by Dec 15th, we will give all of our backers a special digital winter scene of our cast!

If you haven't already, please join our Thunderclap campaign! It's absolutely free and helps bring awareness to A Very Important Date's Kickstarter campaign!

Also if any of you fans out there want to try out our Android and iOS versions of our current demos, just fill out our Beta Testing form here!

Gwyn's body pillow sketch... the rest are more NSFW, so please go to our Kickstarter to view the rest, lol.

For America it's Thanksgiving, a day where we give thanks for what we have in life and share the things that make us thankful.

Today Naïve Sprites as a whole would like to thank our backers, fans, friends, family, and team for following us on this long, long journey. We're thankful to have all of your support and enthusiasm. It means the world to us. There have been ups and downs through the whole development process, but it's been fun and a great learning experience.

Without our fans, we wouldn't be at the point we are today. If it wasn't for our talented team, my little story would be nothing more than a dream. We cannot thank you guys enough for all you have done!

From the bottom of my heart, I'm thankful for all of you.

- Noelle from Naïve Sprites.

Rory says Happy Thanksgiving! Art by our Concept Artist, kooriesque

Hello all you wonderful folks! We just poster another update on Kickstarter. This one gives everyone a glimpse at the first early sketches of our body pillowcase designs! Check it out here.

Along with that update, we also posted a backer exclusive update yesterday! This update featured a number of WIP images of Gwyn's Live2D sprite, in various states of undress I might add. He's almost finished! We're so excited! Remember our backer only updates are available to all of our backers for as little as just a $1 pledge.

Don't forget about our special winter image for our backers! If we hit 50% of our goal (we're currently 27% of the way there now!) we will give all of our backers a special digital winter scene of our cast!

If you haven't already, please join our Thunderclap campaign! It's absolutely free and helps bring awareness to A Very Important Date's Kickstarter campaign!

Also if any of you fans out there want to try out our Android and iOS versions of our current demos, just fill out our Beta Testing form here!

We've been super busy with Kickstarter and game related ordeals over the last day, but we're happy to say we've hit 10% on our Kickstarter! We posted an update about it on there. Check it out here.

This update also comes with the news that our first milestone will be 100 backers. Once we hit that, we unlock one of our higher tiered items for everyone! Remember our backer tiers start at just $1!

We're also planning a special winter image of our cast! This will be released as a special gift to all of our backers if we can hit 50% by December 15th.

Don't forget our Thunderclap! Find it here.

We've just posted our second Kickstarter update! Check it out here!

Along with that update, we also made our first backers-only post, which are available to all of our backers starting at just $1. This post shows off some our early work-in-progress images for our 5 character wallpapers, which is one of our Kickstarter rewards that starts at our $5 Forget-Me-Not Tier. This update also includes some progress images on Gwyn's updated Live2D sprite and concludes with two beautiful backgrounds from Lordless and Furude that have never been seen before outside of Naïve Sprites.

We received news this morning that ourThunderclap was approved! Thunderclap is a way for us to reach a large audience all at once with a single widespread tweet, Facebook status, and/or Tumblr post. This mass sharing helps boost our reach even further and draws more attention to both our campaign and our upcoming push to be Greenlit on Steam. We have our Thunderclap set to go off when we have 15 days remaining in our Kickstarter campaign. All we need is just 100 supporters to click the support buttons on our Thunderclap page before December 19th and agree to post our message, which would help us out immensely. I know that with all of our wonderful fans help, we can reach that goal!

Hello everyone!

We've just posted an update on our Kickstarter page and have opened up donations through PayPal. This is a very important update, and that's not just us being clever with wordplay. This update highlights what our backer-only posts will look like on Kickstarter and also reveals the direction our sprites will be moving towards for A Very Important Date's final release. Here's a hint: the word "moving" was actually wordplay that time. So click here to go over to our update on Kickstarter to read more about it!

Thank you.

We've also added Linux demo to game's page and you can now fill out a beta testing form to be invited to our mobile demos.

It is our pleasure to finally announce that the time has come, A Very Important Date's Kickstarter is now live! Check it out here!

We have some wonderful rewards for our backers and they start at just $1 USD! Throughout the campaign we'll be updating on the game art, adding more features to the demo, discussing the future of our sprites, revealing some CG art, and finalizing the designs for some of our rewards (like the body pillow cases)! We will also be updating here with In-character asks and developer questions, like usual.

If you are unable to back us, we understand, but you can still help us out by sharing our links and spreading the word!

We've also added Linux demo to our itch.io page for the game and you can now fill out a form to be invited to our mobile demos.

Thank you all for being a part of this journey with us. We are so looking forward to seeing where this rabbit hole goes.

Our game's itch.io page with Windows, Linux, and Mac demos: https://naivesprites.itch.io/a-very-important-date

Fill out this form to be invited to our Google Play and iOS demos

You're invited to The Looking Glass, Mimsboro's finest restaurant.

Join my four employees and myself as we take you on a wonderful journey through the café world.

New in town? The Looking Glass is a grand place to start fresh.

Troubling day? Cleanse the nonsense of the world with one of our special herbal teas.

Looking to meet new people? When the sun sets, The Looking Glass becomes the most vibrant hotspot in town.

But the heart of The Looking Glass isn't the world class cuisine or nightlife, it's our employees. Take time to get to know each of us and you'll make friends for life. Our magical personalities are sure to relieve the doldrums of everyday life.

So mark your calendars, my new friend, you wouldn't want to be late for this will be [A Very Important Date]!

- Gwyn Arkwright, Owner of The Looking Glass Cafe

A Very Important Date is a café romance set in a strange, yet familiar world, with loose ties to Lewis Carroll's Alice stories. But this isn't the typical Alice in Wonderland styled story! While A Very Important Date takes a few notes from the Carroll classics, you don't have to be a big fan of them to enjoy this game for its rich dialogue, witty humor, and unique art style!

Our story follows Alison Sunderlund, an average small town Ohio girl. By day she can be found working as a server in a local café and by night she takes care of her house and family: her dad and younger brother. Though she doesn't have a lot on her plate, the life she has gives her very little free time. But Alison's life changes one morning when she wakes up sitting under a tree in a brand new world.

Confused, Alison sets out to discover more about her new surroundings, accidentally stumbling upon the Arkwright estate, home of Gwyn Arkwright and The Looking Glass Café. With no place to go and a way back home seeming impossible, Gwyn, being the kind soul that he is, gives Alison a job and a place to stay for the time being. Everything's peachy except... now Alison must choose which of The Looking Glass' five employees will train her!

Will Alison stick with what she knows and remain a server? Will she a cut a new path as a cook's assistant? Will she wipe away her past burdens as a low-level dishwasher? Will Alison ever figure out what strange world she's in? Will she ever return to her old life?

Will she want to?

All stories* are written by Noëlle Hyzy, the winner of Voltage Inc.'s 4th Annual International Script Writing Contest for Romance Apps. The full finished release of A Very Important Date will feature:

• 5 suitors (with 4 more planned)
• Expressive animated characters
• 12 chapters for each Suitor's Main Story
• 3 possible endings per Main Story
• 3 chapter Epilogues for each Suitor
• 40+ hours of content across all stories
• ≈50,000 words per Main Story
• 300,000+ words across the whole game
• At least 6 CGs per Main Story
• Main character CG options
• 14 amazing tracks from Composer Geoff Moore
• 60+ beautiful backgrounds
• Episodic content
• Will be available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android

Naïve Sprites is an up-and-coming visual novel developer that makes games for iOS devices. The company is housed in Franklin, Ohio, but it has six talented artisans from all across the world on its team. Our mission is to provide visual novel readers with strong, female-led stories that are entertaining, engaging, and do away with "damsel in distress" cliché.

Noelle Hyzy: Project Director, Executive Producer, Writer, Conceptualizer
Justin V: Co-Writer, Editor, Art Editor, Background Concept Artist
Joe "Bonesy": Marketing & Advertising
kooriesque: Character Concept Artist
darkenmarr: Sprite and CG Arist
furude and lordless: BG Artist
IchBinJager and WolfBorg: Programmers
Geoff Moore: Composer

Season 1: Main Stories
Current word count: ≈266,000

Gwyn FINALIZED
Outline: 100%
Writing: 100%
Editing: 100%

Emil FINALIZED
Outline: 100%
Writing: 95%
Editing: 95%

Rory
Outline: 70%
Writing: 60%
Editing: 10%

Harlan
Outline: 80%
Writing: 75%
Editing: 25%

Sven
Outline: 100%
Writing: 80%
Editing: 0%

Season 1: Epilogue

Gwyn
Outline: 50%
Writing: 10%
Editing: 0%

Season 1: Sequels

Gwyn
Outline: 20%
Writing: 0%
Editing: 0%

CGs: 5%
Sprites: ≈ 50% (For Demo: 95%) - Undergoing Redesign in Live2D
Backgrounds: 46/?? (For Demo: 100%)
Music: 5/14
In-Gameplay UI: 95%
Rest of GUI: 45%
Coding: ??%

You can follow our progress and learn more about A Very Important Date by visiting the links below:

Facebook
Tumblr
Twitter
DeviantArt

Hello everyone!

We're happy to announce our updated demo is out and released on our itch.io page! Here's what we have added:

• Save/Load feature
• Choice options
• Quit Menu that allows you to go back to the Main Menu
• 3 Chapters for Gwyn and Emil for a total of 6 chapters
• 26,088 Words in total for about 3 hours worth of story
• 3 New static sprites
• 7 New backgrounds
• 1 New song by Geoff Moore

For those that plan to play Gwyn's and Emil's chapters, you'll want to save in the Prologue when Alison says "Um... I guess I'll work with…"

To pull up the menu bar, press ESC or P keys.

Our mobile demos will be released in a few days. We're currently working on fixing a bug in our Android demo.

Story

A Very Important Date is a café romance set in a strange, yet familiar world, with loose ties to Lewis Carroll's Alice stories. But this isn't the typical Alice in Wonderland styled story! While A Very Important Date takes a few notes from the Carroll classics, you don't have to be a big fan of them to enjoy this game for its rich dialogue, witty humor, and unique art style!

Our story follows Alison Sunderlund, an average small town Ohio girl. By day she can be found working as a server in a local café and by night she takes care of her house and family: her dad and younger brother. Though she doesn't have a lot on her plate, the life she has gives her very little free time. But Alison's life changes one morning when she wakes up sitting under a tree in a brand new world.

Confused, Alison sets out to discover more about her new surroundings, accidentally stumbling upon the Arkwright estate, home of Gwyn Arkwright and The Looking Glass Café. With no place to go and a way back home seeming impossible, Gwyn, being the kind soul that he is, gives Alison a job and a place to stay for the time being. Everything's peachy except... now Alison must choose which of The Looking Glass' five employees will train her!

Will Alison stick with what she knows and remain a server? Will she a cut a new path as a cook's assistant? Will she wipe away her past burdens as a low-level dishwasher? Will Alison ever figure out what strange world she's in? Will she ever return to her old life?

Will she want to?