Preview: Once Ever After (Patreon)

Time for another preview, this one covering the last of my projects started in 2016: Once Ever After. The release of this project is quite a bit further off than the others, but more on that later. First, my blurb:

Game Intro 

Everyone knows how the story goes: innocent, 18-year-old Red Riding Hood goes into the woods and is corrupted the naughty, naughty Big Bad Wolf. Ingrid is the newest Little Red Riding Hood: she doesn't know what awaits her in the dark woods, but she knows that it seems exciting.

But Ingrid's world is only one of an infinite number of Tales, and those stories are starting to bleed over into one another. War is coming, and Ingrid doesn't even know what war is. Nothing will ever be the same, and the only weapon Ingrid has to face the changes is sexy fun.

NOTE: Gotta be honest, I sort of hate that blurb. I have a bad tendency to write stories where the core concept is difficult to explain simply, much less in a way that will appeal to a mass audience. -_- Well, I tried.

The Cast 

Ingrid grew up in the porn version of Little Red Riding Hood, destined to be corrupted by the naughty Mr. Wolf. But when her Tale is disrupted by events, she begins to change. A bit slow and impossibly naive, she doesn't understand much of what is going on at first. But she proves to be remarkably adaptive and she carries the sexualized aura of her home Tale around her strongly. This is her story.

By contrast, the woman who goes only by "Hood" is competent with a past shrouded in mystery. She understands how to move between Tales and seems to be a target for every entity that tries to enforce the natural order. She saves Ingrid's life out of kindness, but that act proves to change far more than she expected.

In Wilhelm's world, the wolf is a curse that spreads like a virus. The Wolf Blight claimed the grandmother, the girl, and the entire village... and it's still spreading. Wilhelm fights to protect more innocent Tales from the wolves, weighed down by his past but determined not to let the same things happen again.

One isolated little Tale tells the story of an innocent wolf who only wants to be friends with everyone, but is oppressed by the cruel villagers. Ulfina has lived through this story over and over, but she doesn't understand why. When she manages to escape, she finally has a chance to stretch her innocent, fun-loving nature in a less didactic story.

Those are your party members, but I'll give a preview of the other major characters that they'll meet:

The art for this project is being done by Crescentia. Though she and Wolfenstahl are fully committed to their own projects, they've been very pleasant and professional to work with and I have no concerns about them finishing this project at a good level of quality.

Project Trajectory 

This game was designed to hit another one of my goals: an RPG Maker game with the visual quality turned up as high as possible. I honestly do not have the budget for this game - custom tiles, sprites, and animations are incredibly expensive. Even commissioning Crescentia is considerably more expensive than my usual.

My initial plan was to do a crowdfunding campaign to try to raise the lump sum I'd need for those large expenses. Right now, I'm not sure if that will ever be possible, though it still feels necessary. This project is already more expensive than Ouroboros and Crimson Gray combined, and we have a ton of scenes yet to do.

This project is in the awkward position of the art outpacing my work, since my work on this project has been prioritized below ongoing projects and my previous side projects. Annoyingly, I put the precious little free time I had after everything else into working on DoW, which had the artist flake out.

For now, this project will continue quietly in the background. I'll keep working on the game with visual placeholders and commissioning more scenes from Crescentia. The more months that process stretches, the lower the final cost will be, I suppose. In the end it may not be possible to have the sprites and maps be at the level of quality I'd like, though.

We'll have to see. I don't know if I'd even count on a 2018 release for this one, as it depends on unknown unknowns.

Series Potential 

Believe it or not, this game was an effort to go small. The concept has grown into a full length RPG that will have a complete story and quite a few scenes. But this is a tiny fraction of the work I'd love to do with the concept of alternate fairy tale realities, which I think has enormous potential.

If this project is well-received and doesn't leave me in too deep a financial hole, I'd love to be able to do more with this concept. Both building on the background lore in this game and more fairy tales getting involved. For now, though, that is something that will have to remain a twinkle in my eye.

So there you have it, that's Once Ever After. Please do let me know what you think! 

Once again, thanks to all of you who support me here on Patreon. It's because of all of you that I can even dream of attempting projects like this. I hope that I've validated your trust with the Crimson Gray release earlier this year, and that I'll keep it with the releases of Desecration of Wings, both in text-only form and ideally a later version with full art. There's nothing I want to do more than keep creating games for everyone, and with your support I hope to do it for a long time to come!