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Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays, everyone!
Firstly I want to thank you all for sticking with us for another year. With the state the world is in right now, I hope you have the opportunity to spend time with family and friends this holiday. A quick status update for those wondering about the Lucid9 Kickstarter. When will it go live? The short answer: likely the beginning of next year. While creating a Kickstarter has been a much slower process than I anticipated, ensuring everyone is reasonably compensated and informing backers how funds will be distributed will always be my top concern. Jacob, our casting director, recently provided me an estimate for the voice acting, and so we’ve been reducing our asset usage in an attempt to lower the final amount while still maintaining the quality of the game. All that’s left is reevaluating which BGs we’ll be using and how much of the funding will go towards programming. However, aside from funding, we still need to send out contract agreements, create promotional material for the Kickstarter page, and update our video trailer to include information about the routes. This, I imagine, would take us a number of weeks to do. While I know this might have not been the update some of you were hoping for, I do hope it at least properly explains some of the difficulties we’ve had. There’s much much more I could go into detail about, but I feel that may be better told in a different format, such as a developer livestream, where I can answer any questions in real time. On a similar note, I plan to use our social media (mostly Twitter) more often to interact with the community. Initially we usually avoided posting unless there was an important update, but given the 3+ month gaps in between… well, it’d be best to show everyone we haven’t disappeared. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to drum up interest during the few months leading up to the Kickstarter going live. There are a lot of exciting things we have planned for 2022, so we hope you’ll continue supporting us! Much love. ~ David Acosta Creative Director Hello, everyone! Today I wanted to share some of the things we’ve been working on for the planned Kickstarter for Lucid9. Due to the nature of the project, it’s been a little tricky creating a campaign, but I expect it to go live some time before the end of this year.
While the funding we'll receive from the Kickstarter will go towards developing the remainder of the game, one of the things we had to consider was determining which assets would need to be reused from Inciting Incident—such as music tracks, backgrounds, etc. I had to contact some of the former FSS members to confirm how they felt about payment if we were to use their work again. The other matter we had to resolve involved the voice acting for Inciting Incident. The two options we had were: 1) include voice acting for Inciting Incident as a part of the funding goal. 2) list it as a stretch goal. If we were to do the latter, there’s a possibility we won’t reach the stretch goal, meaning voice acting would have to be dropped entirely even if the game were to be fully funded. Considering that a lot of work has already been done, we decided to forgo that option and go with the first. As for the voice acting for the “routes”, since they’re still in development, it’s safe to list it as a stretch goal. Jacob, our casting director, is currently sorting out an estimate for the voice acting for Inciting Incident. As for the Fallen Snow Studios team, I already have an amount in mind that we’ll likely aim for, but it might change depending on how much the voice acting will be. Below is a tentative list of the rewards and stretch goals we have in mind. If you have a suggestion for a reward you’d like to receive from the campaign, feel free to let us know and we’ll consider adding it! POTENTIAL BACKER REWARDS Tier 1
Tier 2 - Sticker & Keychain Collection
Tier 3 - Digital Wallpaper
Tier 4 - Digital Artbook
Tier 5 - Art Prints
Tier 6 - Exclusive
STRETCH GOALS
We'll be sure to keep you updated about the campaign. Once it's live we should have an estimate for the release date of the game along with a cost breakdown of how funding will be used. If you have any questions or concerns don't hesitate to contact us either here, Discord, or our contact form. Thanks! - David Acosta (Creative Director) After much discussion, we are currently planning a Kickstarter campaign for Lucid9. Due to several reasons—the main one being the amount of time the game has been in development—we’ve determined that this is the best approach to ensure that the remainder of Lucid9 is released in a reasonable timeframe and is something everyone can be satisfied with. Today I'll explain how this will affect the project, and answer any questions some of you may have. What is a Kickstarter? For those who may be unfamiliar with Kickstarter, it is a platform used to fund creative projects. Every project creator sets their project's funding goal and deadline. If people like the project, they can pledge money to make it happen. If the project succeeds in reaching its funding goal, all backers' credit cards are charged when time expires. Funding on Kickstarter is all-or-nothing. If the project falls short of its funding goal, no one is charged. However, unlike most traditional Kickstarters, development for Lucid9 would continue even if we fall short of our funding goal, albeit at a much slower rate. Our campaign will mostly be a way for us to formally accept support from our readers in order to increase production values and create a higher quality game. Why are we now considering a Kickstarter? Since the creation of the studio in 2014, Lucid9 has been in development for about 7 long years. While we have made notable releases—with Inciting Incident in 2016, the heroine prologues in 2019, and the partial voice acting patch earlier this year—the pace of development has been extremely inconsistent due to the nature of it being a free project. COVID-19 has made this even more apparent, and many of us found ourselves with even less time and resources than usual. A Kickstarter would allow us to not only complete the game in a more reasonable timeframe, but would open many opportunities to further polish and add additional features to the game depending on how much support we receive. With an unfunded release, we are fairly limited in the type of content we would be able to create. A fully funded project would not only cover the cost of character sprites, backgrounds, CGs, music, programming, voice acting, and writing, but would include additional art, animated cutscenes, and even an opening theme. Will the entire game still be free to play? Yes! It is still our goal to introduce people to the visual novel medium, and we feel the best way to accomplish this is to make Lucid9 accessible to everyone. Any funding we receive will only come from the Kickstarter campaign. Those who choose to back Lucid9 will not only be assisting us in creation, but will receive exclusive rewards such as signed art prints, a digital artbook, early access to the game, and much more. A full list of rewards will be given once the Kickstarter is live. When will the Kickstarter campaign go live? We’re currently aiming for a funding goal that is both practical to achieve and one that fairly compensates everyone for their work. There are still many members that need to be contacted and forms that need to be signed, meaning it will take us some time to sort everything out before officially beginning the campaign. We will keep everyone updated about our progress and make an announcement a few weeks prior to when it is live. In what ways can I support you? We’re extremely thankful that everyone who has followed Lucid9 over the years has been so patient and understanding. We hope that you will continue supporting us, either by backing the project on Kickstarter once it’s live or even sharing it with people that you know. Every little bit really does go a long way. If you have any questions, you can leave a comment under this post, message us directly on Discord, or send us an email via our contact form. As always, thank you. ~ David Acosta (Creative Director)  Summary: Lucid9 is a noncommercial, mystery visual novel created by Fallen Snow Studios, an international team of creative developers formed in 2014. Inciting Incident, the first part of the story, is available free of charge under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License, and is published by Sekai Project on Steam and itch.io. Lucid9 focuses on a web of intricate mysteries set in the fictional metropolis of Isamu. You play as Yama Ishimoto, a cynical high school student who would like nothing more than to keep his life free of drama and hard choices. However, he’s forced to face his demons when an eccentric detective blazes into his life, alerting him of a string of disappearances at his school. As Yama is thrown into the forefront of the investigation, he must dig through the secrets of the city, bringing him and his friends closer and closer to danger in the process. Every step leads Yama to the most unexpected - and terrifying - culprit… We are looking for an additional scenario writer to assist us in completing one of the four heroine routes currently in development. Initial Guidelines: - Must be 18 years of age or older. - Must have knowledge of the visual novel medium. - Must have a background in script writing. - Experience in game development is preferred, but not required. - Discord for communication Role Description: Scenario writers are the foundation of the project and can be one of the more demanding positions. Art, music, and programming rely on the direction of the scripts, so we are looking for adept individuals with good time management and leadership skills to take on the role. Those interested are expected to write a 2,000+ word scene (which include programming cues, so content would be less) every two weeks at the minimum, but deadlines can be negotiated. The entirety of the heroine route is estimated to be around 120,000 words in length (again, including programming cues). Several scenes have already been drafted along with a general outline of the route, so work will continue from where the previous writer left off. While scenario writers have some creative liberty developing their respective routes’ theme and characterization, they must still adhere to the overall structure and plot of the story. Those interested in the position will be working closely with our director/plot supervisor and are expected to maintain a reasonable amount of contact with them during development. If you are interested in applying, please fill out the application form by clicking on the button below. We will not accept submissions if they are sent to us any other way. If you have further questions about the position, feel free to contact us. Thank you for your time and we look forward to your application! Deadline May 31, 2021 11:59PM [CST] |
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April 2022
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