It’s been a while since you got our last update, which you were right to point out. Throughout all this time we have been writing the story, drawing pictures and optimising the code. Now you can turn off background animations. Why is that important? Considering the great variety of devices available in the market, we cannot target merely the upper segment and neglect the complaints from the owners of more accessible devices (as we were forced to do in the case of Everlasting Summer). LMR is not a free game and an excuse such as “buy a phone instead of a calculator you have” doesn’t work for people who paid money for the game.
Also, we have visited the Devgamm exhibition! The most memorable thing for me was the conversation with a representative of a formidable Russian company, who said that making visual novels is exceptionally complicated, as it is unclear what to expect from them and how to measure the success achieved. By the end of the second decade of the 21st century, art has fallen victim to metrics, analytics and KPIs. You don’t need to search for long to find the examples - there are plenty of them on TV and in videogames. Developers fear to experiment and instead walk a simple path by using dozens of familiar, old tricks rather than trying to come up with something innovative. They make the same characters witness new and new challenges instead of designing fundamentally new stories.
It doesn’t mean that “Love, Money, Rock’n’Roll” is aimed to bring a revolution in genre, but as that representative noticed, we are an indie studio, and indie studios have the right of mistake (at least once). Therefore, we are not trying to make a product that the financial department would deem potentially profitable, but rather craft something that would make people think, sympathise the characters and keep their hearts warm and human. Our purpose implies that we need to put a lot of time, efforts and a bit of our own heart in that. Not only we need time for developing the game but also for proofreading, correcting, recomposing the routes and removing the entire paragraphs of the written text. All this is required to have not only a “high-quality” but also a human piece of art! Throughout these two months, we have been focused on quality more than on quantity, so we haven’t got any updates in terms of numbers. Please be patient and know that we are doing our best to make this game truly memorable for you.
You can still support us by making a preorder here: https://sovietgames.su/shop/
Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Soviet Games Team.
Old memes die fast
Dear friends, In the following publication you will not find any news regarding:
the Ukranian crisis
the new exchange rate of Russian ruble
the latest prices for oil
the new copyright law in the EU
and the political situation in Venezuela.
However, we are happy to inform you that we are working on the game as hard as we can and, as a result, got Catherine’s route completed! We hope to bring you some news regarding Ellie in our next publication. We want to thank you all for your patience and support. Both matter to us more than anything else.
Our Sino-English translation team is catching up with the team scriptwriter to ensure that our foreign friends will be able to play the game on the very same day it is released for the Russian market. They read all of your comments and are genuinely grateful for your kind words.
You can support the game by making a preorder and get some exclusive bonuses here!
The reason for today’s post is not as bright as we would like it to be, but we still need to announce it. As some of you have already guessed, we are going to move the release date once again, and «Love, Money, Rock’n’Roll» will not be available on March, 1. We would like to (actually, not) say that there are circumstances of force majeure to blame for this (as it happened before). However, this time it is about having too few people for a terrific amount of work. Of course, such issues are to be resolved with careful planning, but, apparently, at a certain stage, we lacked some knowledge and experience. Currently, we are trying to get more artists in the team, but as for scenario, it is already at the stage when adding an extra person would rather sabotage the process than help it.
Nevertheless, we also have some excellent news for you! The 250.000 words of scenario have already been written, more than 140 CGs (some of them with multiple variations) have been drawn, and two additional Z FEEL-Z tracks are currently in production. Back in the time, we had a lot of difficulties with Everlasting Summer, too, but we hope that the result was worth it. As for LMR, we are confident about the quality of our work and the game in general! Time passes by, and all the bad things fade away with it – genuine, positive emotions are the ones that count, and we are sure that our game will give you a good vibe.
We would also like to show a new animated background and a brand new track.
Concerning the new release date – we can only say that it will come as early as possible in 2019! Stay tuned, and we shall deliver the good news soon!
We wish you a Merry (belated) Christmas and a Happy New Year! May you all be happy and healthy, and let peace and serenity be in your home.
Another year has nearly gone. We remember it because of the release of the updated demo of «Love, Money, Rock-n-Roll» on Steam and mobile platforms, the Football World Cup in Russia, contests and quizzes in our VK community as well as your ongoing support that has been encouraging us to move on.
Unfortunately, much like other people, we live in the real world and occasionally face the same challenges and issues as any of you. Of course, we could have done everything in a sloppy and sluggish way: for example, not to get ourselves preoccupied with game optimisation for Android – currently, to be frank, the game runs steadily only on upper-class smartphones. However, our audience that uses mobile devices is no smaller than the one utilising Steam, so the idea of finishing the PC version first is not valid. We could have rushed (and that is the key word here) and quickly complete the script and the entire visual part thus lowering the quality of the whole game dramatically. Well, that would have been a fantastic strategy for us, as everything looks good in the beginning, and one cannot get a refund after the game is already completed. :) In fact, each of us fancies the constant change of the release date no more than our fans, but what we would like even less is giving you something that would ruin your expectations – a pretentious, low-quality piece of junk.
Unlike «Everlasting Summer», for which all the initial elements were intended to be present in the release version the way they were, «Love, Money, Rock-n-Roll» is something we are enhancing continuously. We keep returning to the chapters we have already made, re-creating the visual art, rewriting the script and re-recording the soundtracks. We do our best to make the game suit our standards of what a decent visual novel is and strive to meet your expectations.
As we are approaching the end of the development process, the scenario is getting bigger and so is the amount of story-related art. We are not restricted anyhow in terms of timing, and, to be fair, everyone likes a director’s cut version. However, it does not mean that we are delaying the development on purpose – we are now talking about continuous refining and finishing touches rather than significant updates. There is a tradition to give a promise to oneself and the close ones – therefore, we promise that our game will be released in 2019!
Black Friday at https://sovietgames.su/shop/! Don't miss a 50% discount on any preorder. Use promo code BLACKFRIDAY. The promotion ends 0:00 Saturday 24.11.18 Moscow time.
Ni Hao!
This autumn has been unusually warm for us, and we hope that you all have retained a little bit of the summer mood, too!
Last month we published the demo in Google Play and Apple Store. We used the PC version, and the optimisation is not our priority for the time being, so the game only runs well on rather powerful devices. However, at this stage, we care about your feedback the most so that we would be able to understand what we have to pay attention to when optimizing the game for different devices. Have no worries though, by the moment of release LMR should work well even on the oldest smartphone from a second-hand shop in Podunk.
Also, as promised, we officially announce that "Love, Money, Rock-n-Roll" will be fully translated into Chinese. It will be a professional localisation available by the release date! Moreover, we have got a channel on Weibo, so, please, subscribe to us!
We have received a few positive feedbacks concerning Himitsu's root from the ones who had read it, which means that we are following the right path and the writing style, characters and scenario are indeed appealing to our gamers!
A scenario is, perhaps, the most delicate and unpredictable aspect of any novel. One can not really tell whether it is good or bad before the release. It's because, much the same as in anime, the ending can either take a story to a whole new level or ruin it. However, the build-up – getting familiar with characters and setting – is equally crucial and constitutes both the beginning and the middle part of a novel. However, our scriptwriter has never been a fan of Key, so do not expect dozen of hours of slice of life.
What you all can expect though is diversity – it requires considerable effort to switch from one character to another, comprehend, occasionally, completely opposite values and ways of thinking, describe the attitudes of two different people to the same situation considering that both of them desire to get what they wish and would not be satisfied with any compromise whatsoever. Of course, it is a challenge, but, on the other hand, going through that allows one to acquire a priceless experience.
We are very grateful for all the support you have given us and, just to remind, you can still preorder your version of the game along with some valuable bonuses!
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September is burning
Dear friends,
It has been a long time since our last update – and now we are eager to fix this situation! We have visited Dat Fest 2018 just recently, where we have introduced our new game “Love, Money, Rock-n-Roll” and responded to numerous questions. Besides, we hired an additional artist to speed up the process of drawing sprites!
However, we have got some issues with the mobile versions of the game. It’s 2018 already, and the aspect ratios for smartphones are not restricted to 4:3 and 16:9 anymore…Due to the specific nature of our GUI, we will need to remake it entirely to ensure that it supports all the resolutions. Therefore, the release of a full-fledged demo version (with animations, five game days, etc.) for the mobile devices is postponed to later period.
We have got another piece of news for our Chinese speaking friends: the game will get full Chinese localisation by the moment of release! We shall reveal more details in the next post.
Our scriptwriter is working on the roots and doing his best to finish it before the end of this year, but writing this line is far simpler than the rest of the script, which volume is already going beyond the planned one.
If you are interested in our project, your support will be highly appreciated. You can show it by making a pre-order with some nice bonuses here https://sovietgames.su/shop/
Finally, take a look at our new animated background! Do not forget that our game comprises not only love and rock-n-roll, but also money…https://youtu.be/DcXc1RHZKvM
