Throwback Thursday: Rachel Solbrig

Our 3rd week of Throwback Thursday! In case you missed one of the previous ones, you can always take a look at them with the links below! Have a look and enjoy learning a little extra about your favorite character's growth during development! ^^

[Miki]
https://www.patreon.com/posts/throwback-miki-57980399

[Nova]
https://www.patreon.com/posts/throwback-nova-58304733

When the project started, it began with placeholder 3d assets. Something that we can see in the first preview image above! Clearly there's some differences in how Rachel has changed along the way since our first time seeing her to today.

Fun fact #1: Did you know? Originally Rachel would've been less shy at first. This was a early concept that she was going to feel much more normal, but have subtle shy under tones instead of how extreme things are now. There is progress to be seen in how she comes across as the game progresses, but things were going to be a bit different at first.

Looking at the 2nd image preview, these are the first concept designs for Rachel when we first brought her to life in 2D. There was a good chuck of early builds of the game that featured her with this design, but when the chance came around to fine adjust some stuff with sprites. I decided that things weren't quite going in the right direction for her visually and overall, I wanted to have something a bit closer to her 3d placeholder asset, but still a bit different.

Fun fact #2:  Did you know? Rachel's original cat headphones had a more important role? Ideally the idea that was going to make it into the game with that design was that in order to help with her shyness. She wore headphones to listen to music to help ease her and would've had a exception to do this during class. It's a little piece of her design that got tossed to the side early on when her first scenes came around originally and so it felt like something to not carry over to her current design.

The last image preview features the progress leading to the current day Rachel we know!

[Design concept]

The concept for Rachel as briefly mentioned, she'd fit the shy girl stereotype. It was actually pretty difficult at one point to figure out just how to put her character together when jumping into the visual novel.

I wasn't sure at first what kind of interests or hobbies she'd have, but more importantly trying to handle a shy character that'd have to interact and how to go about writing them. When trying to put together her character, I first came to the idea that she'd seem like the type of girl who's more leaning into cutesy things, like animals and her knowledge of animals. Which funny enough in early builds of the game there were little mentions and a idea that she'd flip flop from super timid shy mode, but when it came to stating facts or talking about animals, she'd come across as if she wasn't shy.

This sort of got scrapped a bit, because it isn't quite a flip flop mode like it would've been. But there's moments that we'll see when she mentions animal facts or talks about them without as much issue.

So with her interest in animals being set and possibly playing into some more secretive stuff that we're piecing together with her in the game currently. I tried to think about her past and some information about her past. I can't go too deep into this yet, but we'll learn how she attained her skills in cooking later and why she feels a bit indifferent when it comes to being praised for her cooking.

With those things set out of the way and some more secretive details about her past that we'll find out, stuff like learning about what caused her to become so shy and withdrawn from social interactions. I more or less had her character figured out besides being shy.

Something I really wanted to see with Rachel and much like all characters that I write for, is character growth. I enjoy seeing characters grow and evolve for the most part, some bigger than others in their growth. Without spoiling too much, we shouldn't expect Rachel to act extremely timid like she comes across so far forever and it'll feel like you're helping her move along with improving her social issues along the way.

Not to focus too much on Juliet for this post, but I knew pretty early on that I wanted these two characters to form a friendship. They both have some issues when it comes to interacting with other students, but of course in different ways. Juliet being a princess carries the weight that many students would rather avoid her, fear her and let rumors keep them away from her. In a way, these two have a similar issue and so having them both form a friendship and seeing it build, helping them both in different ways felt much needed.

Knowing all of this... I think Rachel is a fun character, there's interactions that I'd like to see return into her route in fitting ways to help bring out good qualities about her. I recall a moment that had Miki bringing a bit too much overwhelming energy for her to handle, quite the vast difference to see a character who is on the complete opposite end of Rachel.

When writing for the episodes, I knew that I'd want to give a bit more attention to Rachel in a more natural way and help build her up with other students even a little bit and add a little mystery into it. Of course if you've played through even episodes 1-4 by now, we can see this with the very end of episode 1 teasing her and helping setup episode 2 for when we officially meet her, along with a tiny bit of subtle details from Miki and Erika. I think when looking at things so far with Rachel, it still offers a bit of mystery behind her character for us to find out about as we head into her route and it'll be exciting to see it unfold.

The last thing to mention probably since it needs explained a bit, is Rachel's uncontrollable farting problem. Something that I intended for to be taken as a embarrassingly cute thing that she can't help, not so much meant to focus on it in a grossed out way, but for those that'd like that sort of thing. Maybe they'd still get some enjoyment from these moments, just that it wasn't meant to be focused on in a sexual way.

Pretty much it'd be seen as a nervous tic, something that she couldn't control and only seems to happen when she gets really worked up, feeling a lot of pressure and her nerves not being able to handle it, etc. I guess in a way it could be also seen as a running gag for her character too. (Hopefully one that isn't seen as annoying.)

That about does it for this throwback! It won't be too much longer before we figure out the mystery behind Rachel liking to dress up like a pink dog at night. :P