Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ is now on Kickstarter!

Salutations, website-goers!

As we have long promised, we can finally share more news with everyone in a public forum. Our first internally developed title, Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ has finally been announced, and we have started a Kickstarter campaign to push the game to completion. This announcement probably brings up a lot of questions, and we're going to do our best to answer them all in the most transparent, non-corporate way possible. Read on, young ones, and be enlightened!

*Update! Fixed the broken Kickstarter link. Whoops! >_< Thank you for the catch!

Why do you have to do a Kickstarter, you guys?

A fantastic opening question, hypothetical inquisitor. We have been bootstrapping the development of Undead Darlings since March of 2013. At the time, we were still employed at NIS America, so we were unable to do anything during work hours for them, but we were able to begin the process of creating the characters, generating a skeleton outline for the game's script, and writing up the game mechanics. Along with a handful of trusted allies, we would set aside time on weekends to discuss the game, its tone, and its artistic direction.

As time advanced, as it is wont to do, we began to seek local artists to turn our character descriptions into actual character designs. Enter Anime Expo, 2013. We located an incredibly talented artist whose style matched what we envisioned for our game. She goes by Hitsukuya, and you can check out her personal work here, here, or here. After some back and forth, she agreed to help us with the characters, and the results are as you see them today. That is to say, adorable!! Yes, even Buck.

Anyway, shortly after this, we came to realize that we needed to devote more time to both this game and to officially form Mr. Tired Media as a company. In mid-2014, we bid farewell to our Prinny friends at NIS America and moved our operation up to Seattle, Washington in order to be closer to its burgeoning indie game developer scene. This move has not gone unrewarded, as we have been able to meet a crew of trustworthy, talented, and like-minded individuals who are willing to help us program the game and bring it to life.

To pay these fellows, as well as Hitsukuya, we had been using the company as a third-party contractor for other game developers and publishers–localization and PR/Marketing, specifically. Through these efforts, we were able to bring in enough revenue to keep our own contract workers fed and happy. But as with all good things, that method of operation came to an end when the companies we were contracting with all exploded internally, and they moved all their previously outsourced work to their own internal staff. Know that we all remain on amicable terms, as this is simply the way of things in the publishing world. However, this also meant our revenue streams suddenly dried up, and our personal accounts would quickly dwindle…

Star-wipe to today! Our game is approximately 50 percent complete. It is playable, albeit in separate segments (event scenes, battle scenes, 3D dungeon scenes). The main art is complete, and the unlockable CGs are in the pipeline. The script size is comparable to titles we worked on for Japanese publishers, and we have all our programmers, musicians, artists, and sound design hanging out, waiting for the go-ahead to continue development. We cannot ask anyone to do work without paying them; it goes against our modus operandi!

…And that is why we are launching the Kickstarter campaign. We are a true indie company and we have made it this far on our own, but now the fate of this game rests in the laurels of the fans we have come to know and love–fans of JRPGs, fans of anime, fans of moe, fans of outlandish humor, fans of indie games. Please support us, and we will do our best to make the most fun and ridiculous games that you never thought you wanted!

I see.

That's a relief. We know it was a lot to take in.

So will the game have dual audio?

N-No? We're developing it here in Seattle, so there is only going to be English available, and that's assuming we're able to hit the stretch goal in the Kickstarter for voicing at all!

Oh… So it's a Japanese-STYLE game, and not actually from Japan?

Yeah. We're aiming to become a development studio, so this is all in-house stuff!

If I back the game, is it going to get done?

Absolutely. We're not messing around. We've been in the game industry for over ten years combined, so we know exactly what needs to be done and what personal expectations to temper. Our goal is to become a development studio and create a veritable cornucopia of gaming goodness. This is our first step into that realm, but know that we have many, many more game ideas in the pipelines.

Got a release date for this one?

It's tentative and depends on if any stretch goals are met, but we're aiming for an early Q2 2016 launch.

That's pretty soon, actually. What platforms are you releasing it on? It better be on my favorite system or I'm going to rage-post on several forums about it.

Please control yourself, hypothetical fan. Our primary goal is to get the game DONE, which will land us on PC. Hopefully on Steam. If we hit certain stretch goals, we will be able to release the title on PlayStation4 and PSVita, since our publishing background has educated us on their submission process and how to handle all the back-end bits of development for Sony systems. We understand that it costs more to develop on those consoles, and we will have to revisit several facets of the game to optimize the programming code for memory management, graphical fidelity, and a general bug-free experience. And when things take time to flesh out, it costs money. That's why we have those platforms as stretch goals!

Cool. Where can I learn more about the game?

Well, you can visit our game page for the title here, read about it on our Kickstarter page (we'll be updating the campaign almost daily, responding to comments, taking feedback, and accepting criticism with outstretched arms), or visit your favorite niche-game-related website, where we hope they will be giving Undead Darlings a mention here or there.

Thanks. Good luck, Mr. Tired. You're all right.

As are you. You're doing a great job, Mr. Tired!