more sinister than intimidating
just replayed deadnames cause i found the rom from when i first downloaded it and wanted to tell you that it's like extremely good
thank you!! i was recently thinking about how proud i am of it. i'm hoping to get some more visual novels out eventually, but unfortunately things take time to make.
here's some behind the scenes for you: maria is visually based on makima from chainsaw man, and ash is based on bugs from matrix resurrections (and ashley lol)
fun fact: dead names was influenced by star wars. the colour scheme moving from a dark blue to a deep red was directly inspired by attack of the clones.
a little bonus content!
since Dead Names is a VN rather than a traditional game, i found it useful to treat the project as if we were making a movie. starting with @moonflowers script and any vital shots she had in mind while writing, i would make a very rough storyboard to keep things organized and make sure the story flowed well before i jumped into the pixel art.
i can't recommend this step enough lol. surprisingly, the initial draft survived almost unchanged to the final art too! (not counting a closeup of Maria turning the doorknob, which i found unnecessary and replaced with a black screen and creaking door sound effect in the actual game)
my script as well was basically written in 2 halves and almost didn’t change at all from the original draft(s). i wrote the first half with maria and ash all at once, and then i wrote the second half with maria and her son once ashley had finished art for the first half. i think it turned out really well considering it’s basically a first draft. i should try just writing without overthinking it more often.
i’m pretty sure ashley takes full credit for the maria waiting outside her house segment. great visuals.
19 y/o me watching noriko’s dinner table: damn this is fucked up
30 y/o me releasing dead names: haha this is fucked up
