Tag: fantasy

My first game, “Memoirs of an Angel”, is finally coming to Steam on July 30, 2024. How exciting!

Back in my day, you couldn’t just publish your game to Steam. It had to be “greenlit” by people voting to express interest, and your game would only be published on Steam if it got enough votes. That held me back from posting to Steam for a long time because I didn’t think my stupid little game would get enough interest. But now, you can just fork over some $$ and go through a brief review process, which is much more accessible. So, hey, I’m official now!

To celebrate, I’m going to be live-streaming playthroughs of each of the four main routes of the game on my Twitch channel throughout the month of July, so keep an eye out for more information about that.

Can’t wait for the end of July? The new game version, v1.3, has already been posted to itch.io.

Originally posted July 6, 2024 on Tumblr.

Version 1.3 of Memoirs of an Angel (2010) is now available! This version was built with the latest version of Ren’Py and adds Steam support and achievements, as well as some bug fixes and quality of life improvements.

Added:

• Steam support
• 18 new achievements
• “Actions Remaining” label during action periods

Updated:

• Replaced old logo animation in splashscreen with new Anigrams logo
• Complete rewrite of Settings, Save/Load, and Say screens to work with newer version of Ren’Py
• Replaced dancing arrows (that were blatantly ripped from a DDR screenshot) with new custom arrow images
• Updated references to “Osirian Empire” and “Neffronian Empire” to just be “Tyracan Empire” regardless of who is emperor for clarity

Fixed:

• Fixed some places during the dancing mini-game where choosing the wrong option would result in the wrong character showing up
• Fixed some places where Zuleika suddenly showed up in the wrong outfit
• Fixed a few typos and awkward phrases

The walkthrough has also been updated to add the new achievements and fix various typos.

Originally posted July 2, 2024 on itch.io.

It’s been (almost) 11 long years

and my first game, Memoirs of an Angel, continues to be the highlight of my game development journey. It was my first foray into game development and computer programming: just a quick, fun, otome visual novel made at a time when the genre was practically non-existent outside of Japan.

I loved making this game so much, it literally changed my life! I’m now a professional software engineer living in Seattle, WA, seeking out my first big break into the AAA game industry.

Almost immediately after the initial release of Memoirs back in 2010, I began developing a reboot. I could see the potential in the story and characters beyond the quick and silly script I wrote in a couple days for the original game, and I wanted to realize it as a full RPG.

Of course, RPGs are incredibly complex and difficult to develop, so… uh… I’m still working on that one.

Anyway, I hope this release on itch.io will expose Memoirs to a whole new audience. I also want to thank everyone who has stuck around this long – it’s hard to believe it’s already been over a decade! The otome landscape has changed so much since 2010, but I’m so proud to see so many indie game devs out there fighting the good fight and providing quality content for otome-lovers.

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the game!

Originally posted July 25, 2021 on itch.io.

I know, I know, everyone who was going to play this game probably has by now (I can’t believe it’s been over 5 years since its first release!). But I’m working on building my professional portfolio and thought I’d dust off some of my old projects, make sure they’re presentable.

I didn’t add any extra scenes or content, so if you’ve already played it, feel free to skip this update. But if not, now is as good a time as any to jump on board!

What’s new in this version:

• Updated to the latest version of Ren’py (I think I caught all the bugs this caused, but if you see something funky, let me know).
• A complete overhaul of the GUI, including game menus, the gallery, and the status screen that shows up at the end of each chapter. No more default Ren’py menus or graphics made in Microsoft Word. (And the world rejoices!)
• For you completionists out there, I added a new “Endings” panel to the gallery so you can tell exactly which endings you’ve unlocked and how many more you still need to find.
• The battle mini-game has been revamped. It still looks the same on the outside, but the programming behind it is completely different. Rather than critical hits and misses being tied to specific turns, it’s randomized (based on different percentages for each character). In other words, it’s much more difficult now! (Remember you can always forfeit and get your energy back if you’re about to lose or just rollback like a cheater…).

This will probably be the last update I do on this game. Playing through it and noticing its flaws really made me want to go through and add some scenes to flesh out the story more…but that’s the whole purpose behind the remake: to regain some of that lost potential.

In the meantime, I’m working on a short, old-school text-based game that takes place in the same world (specifically Pyralis). It does tie into the Memoirs series, but I won’t say how quite yet. 😉 So be on the lookout for that.

Originally posted January 31, 2016 on Tumblr.

The other day (October 31), I finally posted the old 2010 version of “Memoirs of an Angel,” which has been sitting around collecting dust on my computer for the last two years. Though it was technically finished, I never posted it as a “completed game” because, first of all, I never got all the CGs I wanted, and second, because I started working on the remake almost immediately.

My full rant notes and details about the game can be found here, but the short version is that I was digging around for something and found the original “Memoirs” game on my backup drive, so I decided to dust it off, fix it up, and finally release it to the public. Major fixes include: reworking the code so that it’s more “skip-friendly” (and the same text isn’t repeated 10 times), replacing Duren’s and Nefferon’s sprites with the improved versions from the remake (no more ugly yellow raincoat for Neffy), adding a system to change Zuleika’s outfit color and equip accessories unlocked in past playthroughs, making the dancing mini-game slightly more difficult based on feedback, making the character profiles more legible and adding credits to all outside artists’ work, and restoring the audio to its original quality after I had significantly lowered the quality for previous versions.

I hadn’t expected much of a response since, again, this is just the old game, and honestly, the remake is/will be so much better that playing through the old game makes me laugh at how bad it is (at least compared to what I can do now). But to my surprise, I’ve had a pretty overwhelmingly positive response, and it was brought to my attention that a blurb for my game has even been posted on the English Otome Games Tumblr. Upon doing a search, I found a few other reviews for my game as well! It makes me happy to see that people like my game, but it definitely puts pressure on me to finish the remake, haha. I guess I better get on that, lest I incur the wrath of the fans…

If you haven’t already done so, please check out the “Memoirs of an Angel (2010)” thread. If you like it, please be sure to let me know. 🙂

Originally posted November 2, 2012 on Anigrams’ Dev Blog.