Hi everyone, it's Runa, the lead writer for CWES:AM! It's so exciting to see that we're fully funded already and to celebrate, I thought I'd tell you all a bit about the process of writing for this game as well as my experience writing each of the main characters. It's been such a great opportunity to work with such a talented team and the perfect chance for me to drawn on all the hundreds of pages of Gothic fiction I read every year.
Lucie is a Normal Human, unless...
I won't waste any time burying the lede - the protagonist, Lucie, is easily my favorite character to write and one of my favorite otome game protagonists ever. I'm biased, of course, but I've found Lucie compelling and endearing ever since I read the original Crimson Waves on the Emerald Sea. Lucie is a proper, well mannered and beautifully dressed young lady who also gets into fist fights, leaps down from 2nd story balconies to save time, runs around alleyways to confront scoundrels, and carries herself like a devious gremlin. She's a high class businesswoman, she's a smug gremlin, she's a girlboss, she's a detective, and sometimes she's even a human.
Apart from Lucie's inherent charm, Lucie's internal struggle to decide whether she should be a human or a vampire has been one of the most intriguing pieces of character work that I've written in recent memory. As a central mechanic of the story, right alongside selecting which boy Lucie will pursue romance with, players also get to choose whether or not Lucie takes the small emerald pills that can suppress her vampiric traits. This effectively makes her indistinguishable from a regular human, but only for as long as she keeps taking her pills.
In writing the story, I've had to consider not only how Lucie would move through events differently as a Human and as a Vampire but also what Lucie feels and thinks about her identity in either case. At each point in the game where the player can have Lucie choose to either take an emerald pill or skip a dose, I tried to think about what Lucie might think in that moment and what might push her toward one decision or the other. She's a protagonist trying to sort out her own desires from the expectations of others, so she puts a lot of thought into how being a human or being a vampire feels to her, what it means for her future, or how it might change the way she relates to others. Also, the super strength and cool blood magic powers is a big bonus.
Vampires in the CWES universe also live at least twice as long as Humans and as you might imagine, this has some significant implications for Lucie's romantic endeavors. What if one of her love interests wants to be a vampire but Lucie doesn't? What if Lucie is adamant about being a vampire but the boy she chooses wants to remain a human? What about their family and friends? One of the main themes of CWES:AM is the way in which people navigate grief and the anticipation of grief. How do you navigate the start of a romance when you know the person you love might die decades before you? What if you aged twice as fast as your partner and they had to confront your death long before their own? How does the anticipation of future grief influence us and the way we relate to others?
Lucie's Love Interests: Cecil, Elm, and Rowan
I've already posted a few of my thoughts on writing each of Lucie's potential romantic partners over on Bluesky, but I have a lot of fun writing each of them.
Cecil, being Lucie's childhood best friend and also a main character from the original CWES game, was a particular treat since his route gave me the opportunity to look back at that previous game and consider how Cecil has changed in five years' time. Childhood friends are often closer to one another than to anyone else, but being close to someone means you might have some blindspots when it comes to them, doesn't it? Considering both the ways in which Cecil and Lucie know one another better than anyone else, as well as all the things they might not realize at all, really made it heartwrenching and emotional just to write their romance scenes together.
Elm, one of Lucie's friends and classmates, initially comes off as a quiet, somber type so it's very fun to explore all the different facets of his character. He's always the person who can help you study for a difficult test or offer advice that cuts right to the core of a problem. Lucie has some trouble reading his expressions, though, and often can't tell what Elm is thinking. In fact, one of the best parts about Elm's route is being able to write Elm expressing something in a subtle, understated way that Lucie misses completely. Elm is also connected to so many other characters, including Cecil with whom he and Lucie share several classes and Rowan, Elm's twin brother. Elm's relationship to his family even becomes a significant subject in his route as he struggles to reconcile with his twin, Rowan.
Speaking of Rowan, he deserves a special shout out for enabling me to add puns and awful jokes into the script. Rowan is a bit of a flirt and very suave, but Lucie doesn't trust his charismatic charm when they first meet. In fact, Lucie initially feels that Rowan would rather flatter her and take a leisurely brunch than iron out the details of their prospective business partnership. Rowan's definitely suspicious in a few different ways and I love it when a heroine is suspicious of one of her love interests.
Mystery, Romance, and Vampires
CWES:AM is an otome game set in a fantasy world where Vampires are a well known and accepted part of society. It's also a murder mystery, and one that draws on the traditions of both Gothic horror and classic mystery novels. Arimia and I are both longtime fans of Agatha Christie's novels and Umineko No Naku Koro Ni, so we both have high standards when it comes to constructing murder mysteries. It's not just enough to have the clues laid out — the culprit's motives also need to be woven into the themes of the story and resonate with the audience and the other characters. Understanding the culprit might be even more important, in my opinion, than figuring out who they are or how they accomplished their crime.
But then, how do you write a classic murder mystery in a world where vampires have Blood Arts which sometimes border on outright magic? It's certainly a difficult needle to thread, but I think we've done a pretty good job of it. Most of all, I try to bound the realm of possibility for players who want to try to work out the culprit on their own. That way, players don't have to wonder things like 'what if he was killed by a random vampire using a special power we've never heard of?' and instead you can feel confident that they understand the way the world works and the way a crime might have been committed. I can't say anything more because we want to preserve the mystery, but please look forward to it and let us know your thoughts and theories as you read!
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