Dear Villains and Villainesses,
Tanya and Emily - the villainous pair behind Save the Villainess - wish a Happy All Hallow’s Eve to our wicked ones! We’re celebrating with more commissioned Halloween fanart from the amazing Rui (of course Servant would suck out your vital fluids while Jane is ready to send you a hex!) and fun updates about our game’s progress. Plus, we have a new segment of Emily's History Corner that reviews the historical haunted houses that have influenced our game’s House. Are you ready for tales of creeping horror from centuries past…?
This month, we wanted to showcase a beautiful map created by Saleha Chowdhury, who also worked on the backgrounds and creatures of our game. The wildly talented Saleha created a map that highlights the most important (if unimaginatively titled) locations of the kingdom of Carcosa.
She also gave dozens of layers to play around in programming, which allowed us to bring this map to life when we programmed scene 27 this month. In this scene, Jane experiences some of the strange phenomena in the fantasy land of Carcosa first hand… including the terrifying sight of dancing trees.
You might ask… why are the trees dancing in this story? You can find the answer in the game itself or learn it earlier by reading our free prequel novel, The Villainess Wants Her Prince to Live! Just keep in mind that every oddity in our game is planned and tied to our world-building and sometimes to the unusual powers that our cast wields…
Besides programming scene 27, we also finished programming scene 26, a lore-heavy scene that required new item animations. Specifically, we finished creating all of the writing in the books, superimposing text on top of Saleha Chowdhury’s book pages. We also programmed the books to “flip” from one page to another in a seamless fashion. A sneak peek of a history book that Jane reads a few pages of is below!
Of course, this history book presents a rather… biased viewpoint of Carcosa’s terrible history of colonizing and then eliminating the native people of the land they colonized. How does this dark history play a role in the endings that your villainess experiences? Only your choices can answer that question!
We began the programming for the very lengthy upcoming scene 28 by placing characters in important positions. We will complete our programming of the actual text and choices of this multi-part scene next month.
We also finalized our writing for scene 29, where Jane has an encounter with the potentially dangerous but decidedly adorable Prince Edmund Alpin! This complex scene offers deeper glimpses of Edmund and may offer clues to his role in the larger mystery of the story. You’ll get to make several romantic choices in this scene that can raise or lower affection with Edmund while giving you critical information on him. You’ll also need to use what you learn in this scene to make a life-saving deduction later in the game.
Finally, we completed our writing for scene 30, which will include your first glimpse of one of our new character models, purchased using our Kickstarter funding. We’ll share more on this model and scene soon!
This month in Emily’s History Corner, we’re excited to tell you about some of the historical influences that have shaped our design of House, the possibly sentient murder manor that will gleefully spend its time sending you horrors as you play Save the Villainess.
A 1849 sketch of the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's wax museum
Our first historical influence comes from Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, which first appeared in advertising in 1843. This Chamber of Horrors included wax reproductions of the severed head of the tragic villainess Marie Antoinette along with other guillotine victims of the French Revolution. Though there were obviously haunted houses that existed long before the Chamber of Horrors, this represented one of the first popular attempts at making money from a deliberately haunted space.
This idea of something deliberately created to be terrifying affected how we develop the ‘story’ of House in Save the Villainess. However, this now raises another question. If the House in our game is meant to be terrifying, what is its true nature and purpose…?
1892 sketch of the Yellow Wallpaper from The New England Magazine
Keeping true to our Victorian and Edwardian roots, another major influence on the atmosphere and design of House comes from the classic 1892 horror story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This story details the potential mental breakdown of a vulnerable woman whose husband keeps her locked away from society in a secluded attic after she gives birth. Suffice to say that our own construction of House was influenced by Gilman’s conception of a kind of horror that requires no monsters but ourselves and the ‘loving’ people around us.
The Flammarion Engraving, 1888
Finally, one of the greatest influences on House’s design comes from the alien geometries depicted by Ambrose Bierce (who also lent us the ancient city of Carcosa) and H. P. Lovecraft. The idea of spaces and creatures that don’t conform to human understanding but make a horrifying kind of sense as you fall deeper into their world was very appealing to us. Everything in the House operates on Rules… but we can’t guarantee those Rules are going to be helpful.
On a more practical note, having spaces that alter and shift between one another allows us to create connections and stories in the way the House itself works. Can you decipher what this strange place is trying to tell you?
We wish you a happy and haunted All Hallow’s Eve, friends. May you carry these ideas of a haunted house within you as you play your tricks and find your treats. Who knows… perhaps a little haunting within a house may find its way to you?
Finally, remember you can always find us at the various sites below:
✦ Our discord server - come chat with us and hear what other players have discovered about our game!
✦ Our mailing list - we send out cute kitten pictures and free cards featuring new banter from our main characters every month. This month, the characters celebrate Halloween and tell you what supernatural creatures they love the most!
✦ Youtube, Bluesky, and Tumblr - our main social media accounts
Thanks again for joining us for another month, friends. We’ll see you in November with a autumnal update. Stay safe and warm until then!
With Much Hauntings and Horrors,
Tanya & Emily
Best Laid Plans Productions Inc.