More sorcery ... more magic ... Dev be blowing some steam in the fantasy realms ...
More snow elves. I have a guideline of sorts, until it is rendered in the game it is subject to change. You might regonize the "Banshee Queen" that I posted... a long time ago. Ideas are one thing, but things evolve once you start writing. Something that seemed to be a good idea then might not work when writing. Now the ideas of the snow elves and the banshee queen has merged together because it made sense.
Being fair here, it can change 50 times between now and then. But, I'm surprisingly happy so far with them. Except that I need to find more piercings...
Anyway, a bit more general rambling about the subject. Truthfully, one of the biggest reasons to merge (outside of it being logical because various traits they share) is aesthetics. The more I toyed with the snow elf idea, certain visuals kept popping up, snow, cold, death... we associate cold to death, what represents death? Skulls and bones. So add certain aesthetics to the elves and they fit. Then, for the sake of having the "big picture" you try the clothes/armour you associate with traditionally to high elves. They don't fit. I mean, they fit, they look good in them, but they don't fit. It isn't the race that formed in my head. And now I have this "undead faction" that uses the same aesthetics, white skin, armour adorned with skulls. Not that there are that many alternatives in the fantasy section, but for humans it's easy to use "realistic" armours anyway, but back to the topic. Then it gets to their traits and their position in the story itself. And you see there is some overlap. It wouldn't be more work as is, but you would ask yourself, what is the difference? Would the story benefit from having two similar factions that fill the same role? Frankly, no. From story point of view it doesn't make sense, better to merge two of the factions and create something more or less unique than work on two things that potentially end the same in the long run. In the end, merging them made sense, and now I can create something different instead, something that hopefully will be as unique.
Is there another game in the works?
Yes, there will be another VN. And yes, it will be a fantasy one once TRS2 is over,
need to rotate settings so I won't get burned out.
It isn't being rendered as is, just the additional renders are me testing
(and planning) things during downtime
(generally during loading times and during breaks I need to take).