🦋Cooking Up Clues & Kitchen Critters over at Save the Villainess!

Dear Villains and Villainesses,

This is Tanya and Emily, your friendly developers of Save the Villainess. This month, we’re ready to reveal a new background, a new character, and new lore about what our characters eat! We programmed a wonderfully sinister kitchen, animated a friendly little rat who is important to the story, and programmed/wrote more scenes filled with romantic choices, mayhem, and mystery. We also want to share Emily’s History Corner with glimpses of the history of Victorian food and kitchens that inspired aspects of our game. Come into our kitchen to see what we’re cooking!

First, we programmed a new kitchen background (created by Karel Kok) that will appear throughout the game, particularly in scenes involving a certain fan-favorite character. This beautiful background was created from hundreds of combinable layers. The kitchen has both day and night variations so we can use this background at all times of day.

Steam post image Solarium... kitchen... one contains poison and the other contains food. You'd think that would make the two locations more distinct and yet, in Murder House, those differences may collapse entirely.

This month, we programmed the kitchen’s daytime variation, testing and combining layers until we got the kind of kitchen any sensible villainess would flee from immediately. It’s a good thing that Jane isn’t particularly sensible, is she?

Of course, any good (or in this case, haunted) kitchen needs special guests to inhabit it… which is why we’re introducing our next character. Meet Mr. Jaheesh Aberdeen the rat, as sponsored by our Kickstarter patron AngryDemonNoises!

Steam post image You heard the man. Learn to treat Jaheesh Aberdeen the Rat with respect!

Jaheesh Aberdeen will make his grand debut during the first scene to take place in the kitchen. He’s adorable, could fit in the palm of your hand, and carries many secrets beneath his sleek fur. He’ll also be a very important figure in a certain character’s route so please keep him in mind for the future.

Thanks again to AngryDemonNoises for sponsoring Jaheesh and helping us bring him to life! Thanks also to Saleha Chowdhury for drawing Jaheesh in the first place!

Beyond programming the kitchen and Jaheesh the rat, we also completed programming for Scene 44, which we wrote and revised during last month’s development period. Because this scene contains a large amount of conditional dialogue, its programming meant that we had to account for the many different ways players might approach the situation. We also added several fun animations that will appear when you make the right (or perhaps wrong) choices. We hope you’ll experiment with all the available options when you reach this part of the game. Adventurous players may even uncover a few hidden easter eggs!

We also completed a significant amount of writing this month! Specifically, we tackled the multipart Scene 45, which contains information that players will need during an upcoming mystery deduction choice. This scene introduces new lore about Carcosa, its history, and the nobles who inhabit it. Remember to catalog what you’ve learned if you want to survive future trials…

Finally, we wrote and edited new romantic choices. These choices will provide you with lengthy different mini-scenes that depend on whether you’ve raised or lowered affection with a certain character. Sometimes you’ll discover that lowering affection can give you unexpected secrets… if you’re brave enough to go that route!

Since we’re introducing our game’s kitchen in this update, we’d also love to talk more about historical food and kitchens in this month’s segment of Emily’s History Corner!

Save the Villainess is modeled after the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods of the late 1800s and early 1900s, which was a time of great upheaval, including in how people cooked and ate. The upper classes of this period were able to eat increasingly lavish and unusual meals because they could export food around the world from various places they had colonized. For instance, a British heiress similar to Jane Neville might eat an Indian-inspired food called kedgeree, a breakfast dish made with rice and smoked fish that was flavoured with curry powder. Afternoon tea was also a tradition that only took hold in the 1800’s, as trade routes became more accessible to provide materials.

Tea Leaves by William Paxton, 1909, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Still, despite this wealth of new dishes, the poor often ate food that had some of the highest contamination levels in recorded history. Their bread might contain plaster, their tea might contain iron filings, and the powdered and condensed milk meant for their infants might contain boric acid and formaldehyde. Similarly, the food that Jane consumes in Save the Villainess might not be exactly what it appears to be… which is something that you might want to consider when playing Save the Villainess. Are you sure you should drink that tea or eat that dessert?

Steam post image Condensed milk in the olden days will either kill you or consume your soul. Pick your poison!

As creators who love how building design is shaped by people and culture, we also want to note that the kitchen in our game is historically accurate to the Victorian period. In working Victorian kitchens in large houses, the walls would nearly always be plaster, with either bricks or tiles on the area closer to the floor. Being able to clean all surfaces was vital in a Victorian kitchen, specifically with the materials available for cleaning. Plaster, brick, and slab on the floor were easily washable compared to other surfaces, especially in a busy kitchen. That makes our House’s kitchen a remarkably realistic one for the time period!

A grand kitchen from the Victorian era!

Even so, there are some unusual features in our kitchen. Can you tell what is strange about the kitchen we are sharing and how it might help you… Save the Villainess?

Thank you for coming into the kitchen with us and Jaheesh this month. We’ll return next month with more villainous development news… as well as more evidence that no room in Carcosa is ever just a room. There’s always space for something sinister and sweet to be lurking!

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 share what summer treats they enjoy... including some strange but sweet surprises!

✦ Youtube, Bluesky, and Tumblr - our main social media accounts.

✦ The Villainess Wants Her Prince to Live! - Our Free Prequel Novel - Available Online, as a PDF, and an Ebook file

With Crumbs, Clues & Cheer,

Tanya & Emily

Best Laid Plan Productions Inc.