Hey there! It's Kuroe here once again! Today, we've got not just one, but two cute girls to show you: say hello to our resident Russians, Natalya and Sofiya!
Last year, shortly before I joined the Somnova team, the Twins route was in a rather precarious state. They didn't really have fully fleshed-out personalities yet nor a definite character arc--no one was even quite sure what their disorders were going to be, in fact. The gimmick of having the "Twins route" split into individual "Natalya" and "Natasha" routes later down the story also proved problematic for the team, and it was apparently a colossal bitch to have it make sense story-wise and programming-wise, not to mention the fact that it would take until the heat death of the universe for the route writer to cook up two whole routes by themselves. After much debate on the dev channels, the fate of the girls eventually became a choice between scrapping them or retooling their entire story and identities from the ground up.
Perhaps hesitant to make such a waste of best girls (wisely so!), thus, the devs put their heads together to create a new story outline for the twins which they then gave to me, your friendly neighborhood shitposter, to make a brand-new route out of. There were naturally a ton of changes made to them--they're practically new characters, wholly removed from the ones that Citrus and Blackjack conceptualized all those eons ago, with different motivations and different character conflicts.
As evidenced in our prequel story "Overture," Natalya is now an energetic and cheerful (if a little naive) girl who's just recently transferred to St. Dymphna, a sheltered rich kid who, now out in the world, is insatiably curious about new people and things that pique her flighty fancy. On the other hand, however, the unenviable task of keeping her grounded to reality falls to the level-headed and more worldly-wise Sofiya, who had promised to their parents to temporarily watch over Natalya while the latter adjusts to her life in St. Dymphna. If you're one of our perennial followers on our Discord, then you also know she doesn't have a route anymore. We decided that, interesting though it would be to have a romanceable girl who's not a St. Dymphna student, we really don't have the resources or the time to make a separate route for her, with all the additional asset production it would entail. I guess we can't really have it all!
With the Volkova twins now released, that also means we've completed all sprite designs for all of our leading ladies. Yay! That's an incredible milestone for us given our notorious history, huh? Maybe one of these days, when you least expect it, we could even release *gasp* an actual demo!
... Maybe. There's a chance. Who knows? Stay tuned!
P.S. We're doing really well on all fronts! Aside from having recently completed all the main girls' sprites, we're also hard at work producing music with the help of our new musicians, Flare and Susi! We can't wait to show you their stuff soon.
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| Sugar! |
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| Spice! |
Last year, shortly before I joined the Somnova team, the Twins route was in a rather precarious state. They didn't really have fully fleshed-out personalities yet nor a definite character arc--no one was even quite sure what their disorders were going to be, in fact. The gimmick of having the "Twins route" split into individual "Natalya" and "Natasha" routes later down the story also proved problematic for the team, and it was apparently a colossal bitch to have it make sense story-wise and programming-wise, not to mention the fact that it would take until the heat death of the universe for the route writer to cook up two whole routes by themselves. After much debate on the dev channels, the fate of the girls eventually became a choice between scrapping them or retooling their entire story and identities from the ground up.
Perhaps hesitant to make such a waste of best girls (wisely so!), thus, the devs put their heads together to create a new story outline for the twins which they then gave to me, your friendly neighborhood shitposter, to make a brand-new route out of. There were naturally a ton of changes made to them--they're practically new characters, wholly removed from the ones that Citrus and Blackjack conceptualized all those eons ago, with different motivations and different character conflicts.
As evidenced in our prequel story "Overture," Natalya is now an energetic and cheerful (if a little naive) girl who's just recently transferred to St. Dymphna, a sheltered rich kid who, now out in the world, is insatiably curious about new people and things that pique her flighty fancy. On the other hand, however, the unenviable task of keeping her grounded to reality falls to the level-headed and more worldly-wise Sofiya, who had promised to their parents to temporarily watch over Natalya while the latter adjusts to her life in St. Dymphna. If you're one of our perennial followers on our Discord, then you also know she doesn't have a route anymore. We decided that, interesting though it would be to have a romanceable girl who's not a St. Dymphna student, we really don't have the resources or the time to make a separate route for her, with all the additional asset production it would entail. I guess we can't really have it all!
With the Volkova twins now released, that also means we've completed all sprite designs for all of our leading ladies. Yay! That's an incredible milestone for us given our notorious history, huh? Maybe one of these days, when you least expect it, we could even release *gasp* an actual demo!
... Maybe. There's a chance. Who knows? Stay tuned!
P.S. We're doing really well on all fronts! Aside from having recently completed all the main girls' sprites, we're also hard at work producing music with the help of our new musicians, Flare and Susi! We can't wait to show you their stuff soon.