The Secrets of Gallagher Mansion (09/20/2023) (Patreon)

The Groom of Gallagher Mansion went gold on September 15, 2023, meaning that Version 1.0 of the game is ready to play and will publicly release on September 30, 2023. Patrons pledging $5 or more a month can access the full game now (including the NSFW Honeymoon Epilogue) through this link for Patreon Access. If you have been a Patron of ours and had issues connecting your account to itch.io, you can try this other custom access link to claim your copy of the game. If you are still encountering issues with accessing your copy, please message us through Patreon so we can generate a key for you. Additionally, we ask that you claim your key so we can keep track of who has or hasn't received the game.

As we ramp up to release we'll be focusing on promotion of the game, meaning that today's weekly devlog is a bit different! Instead of updates to the game, here's a little sneak peak into some of the ideas and more hidden things that happen in the Gallagher estate.

Please note that the following may contain slight spoilers for the game for those who have not yet played any previous builds.

Influences & Inspiration

When Aura, our narrative designer, originally fleshed out the plot for the game, two of their main influences for the story were The Corpse Bride and Ghostbusters. For those who aren't familiar with either movie, they're quite radically different in terms of tone and presentation!

The Corpse Bride is an animated film set in a fictional village in England during the Victorian era about an arranged marriage between a merchant's son and aristocrat's daughter. While the couple falls in love quickly, things suddenly go awry and a new bride appears in the mix, leading to the meat of the plot. The story is punctuated with a number of musical pieces and has an overall dreamy, romantic atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Ghostbusters is a live-action comedy film following a ragtag crew of parapsychologists hunting down ghosts. Blending the three genres of action, comedy, and horror, the original film follows a trio's misadventures as they get tangled up into something much bigger than they could imagine.

When put side by side like this, it's not hard to see which of the bachelors were influenced by which film. Our writing team did their best to follow these notes in each of the scenes each man led, though admittedly, BáiYù had just finished watching Knives Out and was in quite the detective kick while writing the middle of the game. He was the one who wrote in the debriefing dialogue when Y/N first wakes up again, as well as the investigation scenes after the first key choice.

Do you think that these influences came out well in the execution of the story?

What's In A Name?

There are four key figures in Elias' past who are named in the story after Elias asks you for your own name, and while three of the four names are probably quite uncommon in this day and age, Elias' reaction to the fourth one is perhaps the most noteworthy one. What names are they? That's something you can easily find out when talking to Taylor after this particular scene. They don't affect much else in the game, but it is programmed in!

Meanwhile, the placeholder name that BáiYù used while doing internal testing was usually Gaylord, and you might have seen that name used in some of screenshots and videos posted on social media. There's no special reaction when using Gaylord in this game, but perhaps for our next title...?

Achieving Greater Heights!

There's a total of ten achievements in the game (and thus, ten Steam Achievements):

• Two are dependent on your progress in the story
• Three are dependent on how thoroughly you've gone over the optional dialogue menus in the story
• Four are tied to the different endings you can reach in the story
• One will unlock once all of the endings are read

The Groom of Gallagher Mansion isn't a very difficult visual novel to 100%, but we'll post a more in-depth guide after the game has been publicly released for a bit.

Research & Notes

The Research screen is a holdover from when The Groom of Gallagher Mansion was programmed in Unity and Naninovel, though our sensitivity reader MysteryCorgi suggested we implement it in the Ren'Py version in order to leave notes for a certain topic. This screen automatically populates as you learn more during the game, so check back on it often! You might learn some hidden lore that's not mentioned anywhere else.

What's Taylor's Damage?

This is actually a topic we're surprised we haven't seen much commentary on. Taylor is consistently cagey about Elias' actions and words throughout the game, and Taylor reveals a key detail about himself right before the very end. This was actually an organic detail that BáiYù added after reading over the entire script; why else would Taylor act this way towards Elias? Even if it wasn't originally planned as part of Taylor's backstory, we hope that it deepened his character.

Listen to the Character Q&As!

Don't forget to listen to our Character Q&As if you're at $5/mo or more!

• Elias 
• Taylor

We hope this gives you all a better idea of their personalities as you dive back into the game.

That's all we can share for now. We'll see you next time!