Regency Love: Quotations, if you please

Posted by Samantha on Wednesday, 8th January 2014

This morning/yesterday evening (timezones are tricky!), we held our first Skype meeting of 2014. After discussions of turkey and pie (and snowmen!!), we moved on to planning our next app update (in about 3-4 weeks), which will include a kazillion bug fixes and lots more trivia and hangman questions. And then we thought, “Hey, we shouldn’t be hogging all the fun—maybe we should share it with our players!”

And so, we’re now asking you to contribute to the game by letting us know your favourite quotations from the Regency era (1811-1820). Simply comment on this blog post, and we’ll try to include it in the next version! For those who wish to go beyond the Regency, we’re open to anything from the long eighteenth century (roughly 1688-1815), as long as the quote is something that might feasibly be experienced by a Regency audience. For example, version A of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”, published in 1817, would be great; version B, discovered in 1976, would be a little amiss.

Hint: It’s from Austen’s Persuasion.

Although we adore Jane Austen quotations, please don’t feel limited by her works—there’s a whole range of popular writing Jane Austen and her contemporaries might have read. Some of these writers include: Maria Edgeworth, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Moore, Walter Scott, William Blake, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Ann Radcliffe, Sydney Owenson/Lady Morgan, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Fanny Burney, Mary Shelley, and I think I’ll stop now before I fully reveal my nerdiness…

Before sharing your quotes, please do check the comments to make sure they haven’t already been posted. We know some quotes are a lot more popular than others, but we don’t want to make the less popular ones feel sad and overlooked! If you know anyone (iOS gamer or no) who’s a long eighteenth century walking dictionary, please share this with them, too!

When you’re ready, please submit your quotations in the following format:

Quotation
Author/writer — title (year of publication)

Here’s an example:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen — Pride and Prejudice (1813)

This format will super helpful for when we fiddle with the coding, and will also help us wean out duplicates (of which we hope there will be none)!

Post your quotes by Sunday, 26 January (Australia Day!) in order for them to be included in the next update. Thanks for helping us, and we look forward to your submissions!

(And for those who might be wondering if it’s possible to contribute to the trivia questions as well: yes indeedy! We’re fine-tuning the submission process and will have something up soon!)

Gooey words of gratitude

Posted by Samantha on Sunday, 29th December 2013

Since releasing Regency Love almost two weeks ago, we’ve been getting an overwhelming amount of support and kind words from all you amazing folks across the globe. (And we were featured on Polygon, too!) To be perfectly honest, we are quite flabbergasted about all this—we’d hoped that our game might be appreciated by a small audience of story-lovers, but didn’t expect such enthusiasm and support from so many people! We’ll do our best to reply to your queries and comments, but please forgive us if we’re not entirely prompt (especially since our communications person is currently holidaying and playing around in all the snow and ice and shininess of her first real winter).

Gooeyness aside (mmm, gooeyness…), we wanted to let you know a couple of things, in the vein of a mini-FAQ-esque list:

Non-iOS release?

We would absolutely love to release for Android in the near future, but, unfortunately, we don’t currently have the funds or resources to do so. The three of us plan to have a nice, long (Skype) chat in the second week of January, during which we’ll discuss possible plans for the future. In any case, as soon as we have any news, we’ll definitely let you know!

Bugs?

We’re very sorry to say there have been a few bugs in the game we didn’t manage to catch pre-release, including one related to Mr Ashcroft’s ending. Additionally, we’ve been made aware of a battery-drain problem. Mel, our programmer extraordinaire, is busily working on those issues (amidst her happy post-Christmas food coma), and we’ll release an update with the fixes as soon as the bugs have been zapped.

Mr Graham?

When we initially planned for our 16 December release, we were going to include Mr Graham with the other bachelors; however, a few weeks before release, we decided to concentrate on other aspects of the game, and to save him for one of our updates. For those who are interested in this dashing redcoat, rest assured, we have every intention to integrate Mr Graham fully in the game. This may depend on funds and resources, but again, we’ll let you know after our little chat. (Jenny is quite a fan of Mr Graham, though, and I’m sure she’ll continue to champion him!)

Mr X, Y, and Z?

Ooooh yes, we have plans for quite a few more gentlemen whom we’d like to introduce to you! We have their names, families, stories, concept art, and dialogues all sketched out (with huge chunks of conversations already written!)—all that’s left are the major questions of resources and funding. But we will look at our options and try to come up with something!

I know, so many things are up in the air at the moment, and we’re really sorry about that. But please do be patient and bear with us—this is our first game, our first little company, our first foray into the possibilities of a Regency romance RPG, and we’re doing the very best we can! In the meantime, we’re infinitely grateful for all your feedback, your interest, your helping us spread the word, and your amazing support—lots of warm and fuzzies, indeed!

Thank you, happy holidays, and we hope to see you in 2014!

(And now I’m going to go build my first snowman!)

Happy Birthday, Jane Austen! Let’s celebrate with some Regency Love!

Posted by Samantha on Monday, 16th December 2013

238 years ago, Miss Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire. Over two centuries later, the world is still very much in love with her portrayals of Regency society, gender roles, family, love, marriage, and a whole bunch of other themes I’ll leave for Google and Wikipedia to fill in. Austen has made such an impact not only in literature, but also in shaping our understanding of Regency culture—in fact, for many people, the term “Regency” automatically conjures images of Mr Darcy rather than the Prince Regent (later King George IV) after which the era was named.

2.5 years ago, three girls gathered in an apartment in Sydney (which was coincidentally named “Regency”) and, inspired by Jane Austen, decided to make a Regency role-playing game that also functions as an interactive novel. At the time, we were (re-)playing Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2, and thought, “Hey, why not replace the darkspawns with chickens and Alistair/Zevran/Fenris/Anders with versions of Mr Darcy/Mr Knightley/Colonel Brandon/Captain Wentworth?”

The “minutes” of our first few meetings, way back in April 2011.

And so we did. (Minus the chickens—but we’ve replaced them with a certain Lord Fat Cat, instead.) Granted, it took our team more than 2.5 years, with one lady going to design school and focusing on getting super awesome marks, another lady making the transition from tutoring computing science at university to full-time programming and then to enrolling for art school, and the last lady leaving Australia (as early as September 2011) to do an MA and then a PhD. Thank goodness for Skype, Dropbox, and WhatsApp.

And now, you can finally experience Regency Love yourself on the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad:

If you’re not entirely sure if this is your cup of tea, here are three independent reviews that may help you decide: The Bennet Sisters, Confessions of a gamer girl, and Outside Windows (Contains minor spoilers.)

We hope you’ll enjoy our Regency creation, and would absolutely love to know what you think. We have so many ideas on how to expand the game and its stories, and, with your support, we hope to carry them out someday.

But today, let’s celebrate Jane Austen’s birthday, and spread the Regency Love!

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr—use the hashtag #RegencyLove to join the conversation!

P.S. Congratulations to the winners of our giveaway: Tristan, Kelcy, and Costy. Thank you all for participating, and stay tuned for more giveaways in the future!

Tuesday Teasers: A Trailer!

Posted by Samantha on Monday, 9th December 2013

I’m slipping this one in earlier than usual, because a) I’m so uber excited about the super amazing shininess to follow, and b) it’s Tuesday in Australia, and we’re technically a Sydney-based team (even if one of us is decidedly not on her way to enjoying a summery Christmas). Yes, let’s go with the latter…

With one week till the release date (and Jane Austen’s birthday–hey, they’re both on the same day!), we’re practically bouncing off the walls with sleep-deprived excitement and teaser trailers. So here’s a bit of both!*

This amazingness was created by Jenny, with the game-play section captured (and coded) by Melody. Mr Jeremy Sawruk has been kind enough to allow us to use his original compositions as the soundtrack–many thanks! And, as always, Samantha contributes by spamming (hence her nickname McSpammy–but don’t use that to address her, else she’d respond with unnatural excitement).

If you liked the trailer, please let us know by commenting/tweeting/”liking”/fangirling/fanboying/faneverythinging! And please help us spread the word by sharing the trailer with anyone who might be interested: your friends, your fannish communities, your Jane Austen teachers at school, your Austen-reading family members, your Austen-reading cats, your Austen-impersonators (you can tell them this game is inspired by them), your Colin Firth cut-outs, and so on!

And if you haven’t yet entered our Regency Love giveaway of three free game copies, don’t miss out and do so now!

* Okay, so you only get the trailer. But really, there is no cure for sleep-deprived excitement–it’s a self-perpetuating disease. Be grateful you’ve been spared!