Lovers of Otome gather round! For this week’s developer interview, I am honoured to present FallenCranberry Studio, the developers of the Singapore-made Lover’s Enigma! The demo was just updated to include another day in the story and showcases gorgeous artwork, interesting characters, and mysteries to uncover. Although I did not manage to schedule the demo in during the Hungry Ghost Games Festival, there were a number of content creators who I’ve watched try it! Lover’s Enigma is also part of the Fall in Love Visual Novel Festival presented by Studio élen, whose game A Tithe in Blood was one we played a while back.
The Lover’s Enigma Kickstarter campaign just went live, and you can support their development using my affiliate link here! Don’t forget to wishlist the game to support it’s visibility before you read on. Big thanks to Mausberry for taking the time to craft such thoughtful answers to this interview!
1. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer this interview! Could we get an introduction to you and what you do at FallenCranberry Studio?
Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity! I’m Mausberry, I’m the team lead for FallenCranberry Studio. FallenCranberry Studio specializes in making anime-style visual novels. We lean towards more psychological and romantic plots that we hope will excite players!
2. What is FallenCranberry Studio’s founding story?
We originally started out as a game jam in another company, seeing as we were specialized in certain fields for making VNs (T/N Visual Novels), we eventually branched out with their assistance and birthed FallenCranberry Studio!
3. What kind of games in the Otome/Visual Novel/Immersive Sim genre do you enjoy?
I grew up playing Otome games, i.e the classic Mystic Messenger, Heart No Kuni No Alice, Amnesia etc. Though now, being a working adult with adult responsibilities , it’s hard to find time to play the ever increasing backlog of games. (The copy of Bewitching Sinners has been sitting in my steam library for months.) Either that or I spend money on Love and Deepspace.
4. Who do you think the individual love interests will appeal to? Do any of them fall into familiar Otome game tropes?
It’s hard to say WHO, we’ve had a surprising amount of players telling us they like the character that’s already dead! So right now we’re as confused as anyone. However, if players like guys that are usually funny, but have a serious side to them, we think players would like Haruki, the exorcist MC’s mother hired. If players like a short tsundere gamer with attitude problems, they may like Ren! If players love a cool kuudere man who does his job second and you first, they’ll love Ryota! And if they want a corpse, why not choose Kazuki…?
5. What game engine is Lover’s Enigma designed on and why?
Lover’s Enigma was developed on Ren’Py! We decided to choose Ren’Py because it was easy to build a game that has all the base functions required for a visual novel prebuilt!
6. In polishing a game like Lover’s Enigma, what part(s) is/are the most time-consuming or challenging?
Probably the UX and art. It’s hard to get proper feedback for UX until players give us reviews, even with internal QA being done, that said, please join our discord or leave reviews on our steam demo! It helps us a lot! Art is always subjective, and different people have different opinions on how the UI or CGs should look, even internally, sometimes we can’t agree. Sometimes it more or less comes down to a coin toss.
7. Were there games or art styles that influenced Lover’s Enigma?
We were heavily inspired by DanganRonpa and World of horror in terms of art styles. While we were playing the games, we thought “Woah wouldn’t it be cool if there was a dating sim that looked spooky” so here we are.
8. Are there unique challenges that come with being a Singapore-based indie game studio?
Starting out as an indie studio is particularly hard, in terms of securing finances and building ourselves from the ground up. It’s pretty stressful since it’s our first time doing all of this, but I’m eternally grateful to everyone who has stuck by and helped us out since!
9. What kind of gaming experience do you hope players of Lover’s Enigma will have?
We hope we’ll give players a thrilling experience while also falling hard for the boys we made! Generally, we just hope players enjoy the game we put literal blood sweat and tears into. We hope we’ll get them talking about Lover’s Enigma for years to come as well, and maybe a fandom wiki is when we know we made it! 😀
10. Where can we subscribe to the progress and news about Lover’s Enigma?
You can follow us on all our socials! On twitter it’s @koibitononazo, on our discord you can find fellow Enigmas (and sometimes, even us!) to talk to, and tiktok where we post lil funnies every now and then.
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Thank you so much Mausberry for accepting the interview despite your busyness! Please support their kickstarter using my affiliate link here, and if you are a developer looking to get an interview or someone to try your game, please feel free to reach out to himetokki@gmail.com!
Thank you for enjoying this series thus far! ♡