A New National Park Girl in the Main Cast? A Brief Introduction to Death Valley (Potential Spoilers Ahead)

Hey everyone, Syon here! I wanted to do a special NPG update today. One that's not quite relevant yet, but will be upon Episode 5's release. If you're the kind of person who likes going into their fiction completely blind, this may not be the post for you. NATIONAL PARK GIRLS SPOILERS AHEAD.

Now, let's get down to the nitty gritty.

Every few months, we vomit a new National Park Girl into existence and stick her up on here and Twitter for you (and us tbh) to gaze and admire. But out of all the ones we've introduced so far, none of them have made it into the mainline National Park Girls visual novel. This is mostly due to the fact that the story for National Park Girls was outlined going on four years ago. Now, we've made some changes and tweaks to the story over the years (with the upcoming Episode 4 serving as one of the biggest deviations from the game plan), but generally, they've stuck to the planned structure of the plot. And I'm sorry to say it, but the original outline for National Park Girls did not, in fact, include plans to add additional Park Girls to the main cast. Mostly for budgetary reasons.

Well, that's changing in Episode 5.

If you've already guessed it (or the name of this post spoiled it), then you know what's coming. Episode 5 will be including a brand new character, complete with sprites, CGs, and voice acting! Her name? Death Valley.

The idea of Death Valley being turned into a Park Girl is nothing new for us internally. Umujacha (who designed her) and I have been kicking it around for quite some time, long ago settling on the idea of "gothic lolita cowboy" as the direction of her design, if we ever got around to it. But about six months ago, as I was nearing the end of writing Episode 4, I could feel that the story was about to take a drastic turn. I'll spare you the details for the time being, but it became increasingly obvious to me that adding a new Park Girl was a no-brainer. So much so that I would call her inclusion necessary for the growing scope of the plot and Eve's character arc.

Usually, we would pull out all the stops for the introduction of a new Park Girl (as you've seen with Joshua Tree, Redwoods, and so on). And we'll still do that -- when Episode 5 is closer. Also, when we have more in-game art of her. Episode 5 is still in pre-production, so there's not a whole lot we can show off yet. I will say this though -- Death Valley is loud, she has a revolver that goes pew pew, and she's a little bit chuuni.

Also, she's in a constant battle with Sailing Stones.

The world of National Park Girls is growing! It's still a ways off, but I hope you're as excited to meet Val as I am.