VA-11 Hall-A is 4 years old today

Time flies.

4 years ago the game that changed our lives was released. We thought it was gonna sell a couple thousand copies and ended up becoming a smash hit with well over half a million units sold.

Over the years we’ve been pretty active, always finding a way to keep the game relevant; be with ports for different platforms, or the Daily Va11halla event every december and while I don’t think we’ll stop with this practice, I feel it’s time to “move on” – with this I mean we better start talking more about the future rather than just Valhalla.

The state of N1RV Ann-A

A lot has happened since the announcement of the new game in the franchise, but very few news. This was caused due to different circumstances, namely a continuation of a bad practice that began with Valhalla in which the programming relied solely on the shoulders of one person instead of a constant collaboration effort to build the game. The second is how life radically changed from one moment to the other. Something happened in Venezuela and we had to escape, making the team spread all over the world trying to start over on foreign soil – causing a dent in our mental health in the process. Development paused for a while due to these circumstances and only very recently picked up again with full steam. We are still trying to make the 2020 release window, but don’t be surprised if it gets pushed further into the future. The good news is that if it indeed gets delayed it won’t be by much, since our current workflow has never been so fast. We just ask for patience, this is the first time in years where we have a certain amount of stability in our lives to fully work on the stuff.

N1RV Ann-A is not the only thing coming soon

With a newfound way of working, knowledge, experience and an expanded team, we find ourselves in the perfect spot to handle more than one project and I’m happy to say more games will come from us – some might even release before N1rvanna, and I’m talking about full commercial projects too, from all kinds of genres.

I can’t offer solid information about what we are working on, but you can get a glimpse of the development of each of these projects in our daily devlog. It’s mostly me who writes these, but it’s a good way to gauge where we are at the moment.

Last but not least…

We are announcing that a sequel to VA-11 Hall-A: KIDS! is coming… In exactly a week, during Jill’s birthday! The name: VA-11 Hall-A SAISEI

A lot of people have clamored for a continuation of this joke spin-off we made for April Fool’s and we’ll be delivering soon on the 27th of this month, for free. We just hope there’s no weird files inside it this time. Well, this didn’t end up happening. Some extra time is needed to polish this, so please have some patience. Feel free to join discord and pester those involved with it about the release.

While the game was pretty much done content-wise, the programmer at the time was going through mental health hardships. Read more here. No idea if it’s gonna be finished…

Before we go, please go check the folks doing a VA-11 Hall-A FanZine! it’s full of cool stuff and we can’t wait to get our grubby mitts on those goods.

That’d be for now, please stay tuned and sign up for our mail list!

A future with Sam

Writing about Sam is a bit tricky, as it is with every character we want to talk about during pre-release days (we really get a kick out of surprising you). I will however go into some brief, possibly interesting bits that went into her creation and what you can expect from her once your grubby mitts are all over the game.

So with Valhalla, Jill (main character) was this girl with the resting bitch face trying to get by in a harsh environment, what with the rampant crime and civil unrest going on outside of the bar limits. Her storyline was a bit divisive, with some people wanting to listen to the bar patrons rather than hear to Jill’s plight, while many others felt she was the most relatable video game character ever witnessed – and we are very happy with these reactions as making divisive aspects is a sign that we are doing something right.

When the idea for Nirvana first surfaced, the idea of a bartender who was a mother was kind of an instant thought, something along the lines of writing someone who was the polar opposite to the previous main character, and that’s how Sam was born.

Jill uses mostly dark colours, Sam has bright pink hair. Jill is a single 27 year old woman living alone in a tiny apartment, Sam is a 32 year-old mother in a (rocky) relationship, not to mention that Saint Alicia, the place where Nirvana takes place, is pretty much heaven compared to Glitch City, and so on.

The biggest difference however… is that Sam smiles a lot!

First ever sketch I did of Sam. Not a whole lot changed except for the way I draw the hair (had to modify it in order to do the anime bits you saw in the trailer).

 

Many people have also pointed out that she has a cute accent going on. That one’s a work in progress but her way of talking is also very important in this quest to differentiate her from Jill. And it’s not like her whole deal is being the opposite to Jill, but rather that all the good ideas that occurred to us happened to be very different from her, so took the ball and ran with it as they say. We also refuse to make Valhalla again, as it was made in a very specific moment in time and its magic is impossible to replicate, and the sooner we stop chasing that lighting the better as we wouldn’t want to taint the memories you have of it.

One fun fact is that some folks already hate Sam because I was too horny last year and gave her a big bosom, which is understandable but you should know enough about us to trust our judgement in this kinda thing. We’ll just let the game speak for itself when the time comes, as we always do.

So what can you expect from Sam? We really don’t wanna spoil anything, but you should look forward to a more cheerful person crafting the cocktails this time around, someone who is still coming to terms with motherhood, a troubled past and a relationship she’s not really feeling anymore. Probably less relatable to the average Sukeban Games fan, but I think her story goes beyond these superficial aspects and we have no doubt you’ll end up loving her, and being reminded of yourself or somebody else while playing. Relationships are a universal thing after all.

Here are some non-spoilerific facts about her:

She’s Sam!
She’s cute!
She has pink hair!
CUTE!!!
She loves a good beer and tries too hard to be a good mom, to her own detriment.

By the way, we have some cool news to share later, but let me say right now that we are currently working on a public demo – that’s right, just like the one we made featuring Anna way back in 2015. Using all the feedback we got from the trade show demos we managed to improve the game a lot, so we are pretty excited about it.

We don’t have a solid timeline for this, but we are doing our best to make it a thing.

For now, please wish list Nirvana if you haven’t already, it really helps with visibility on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/914210/N1RV_AnnA_Cyberpunk_Bartender_Action/

And sign up to our mail list right here, so you get all the juicy and important Sukeban news.

https://tinyletter.com/sukebanfriends

Ahí nos olemos.