“After I Met That Catgirl, My Questlist Got Too Long!”, or “Catgirl’s Questlist” has an ongoing Kickstarter, and this visual novel and role-playing game hybrid is a treat for the eyes that the world needs to know about. Rascal Devworks is the team behind this wonderful concoction and I reached out for an interview. This is the end result, enjoy the read.
Let’s get the formalities out of the way. For the unaware readers at home, who are you?
Hey there. I’m Rascal, the founder of Rascal Devworks. I’m the director, writer and character designer of the team. Before Snowed IN, I lurked in the shadows as a consumer, writing the occasional short story and prototyping silly concepts.
Some developers have intricate stories behind their name. How did you come up with the name Rascal Devworks?
The Devworks part of our name is straightforward–that’s what we do, we’re devs. Erodevs. Rascals!
In an interview with Far2Close, you mention playing many Japanese and English visual novels before deciding to make your own. Could you tell us which, if any, stories perhaps influenced the direction of your team’s works?
My first visual novel was Katawa Shoujo. Bold, beautiful, and fun; it left me wanting more, so I started looking into the medium.
As a broke student, I discovered the world of retro visual novels, and fell deep into the rabbit hole. I still have fond memories of the pixels of Paradise Heights. If you haven’t played the free, browser-based selection on JAST USA, you’re missing out on a lot of charm!
My current favorite reads are the two localized entries in the Flowers series. Quite a difference from my lewd beginnings…
Snowed IN is your commercial debut. A small yet impressive Yuri narrative on two fascinating characters in Sigma and Linde. However, self-funding dictates how far you can go. What was working on that budget like? Was there enough cut content to potentially consider a future remastering?
We wanted to make a polished game, but we could not afford to commission everything we wanted. I did not want to compromise on the CGs, and they all ended up having multiple variations, something I am quite proud of. We had to choose between multiple poses for the sprites and multiple outfits, and we went for the latter.
I edited the story to make it match the art, but had to cut a lot of content. I really wanted to have Sigma fight a bunch of goons and wipe the floor with them; she is deadly, after all. I had a super cool CG idea inspired by Rei Hiroe’s Phantom Bullet, gloriously gory.
I’m almost relieved that those scenes didn’t make it. Snowed IN would have been a darker game, and the endings would have probably been all bad; the final game is all about redemption and second chances, and the side story I released in March is very sweet.
I don’t think we’ll remaster Snowed IN, but once I’m done with the side stories, I’m open to the idea of spin-offs.
After I Met That Catgirl, My Questlist Got Too Long!”, or Catgirl’s Questlist for short, is on Kickstarter! A Yuri VN/RPG hybrid that’s quite a leap from your first game. How did you and the team come to an agreement on the concept for this title? What was it like designing the setting and cast?
After Snowed IN, we wanted to try something more ambitious. The team is made of avid RPG players (Final Fantasy, Tales, Dragon Quest, Persona). I showed Bandit (the other member of the team) a screenshot of the erotic RPG I was playing, and he asked me if I could write something like that, but funny. Something like KonoSuba? I decided it had to be an isekai. I have a lot to say about the characters, since I’m pretty proud of them. The following paragraphs might come out as rambling—sorry!
I wanted Vera, the main character, to be a pretty girl. I had red hair and freckles in mind for her from the start, and I wanted her to be a witch. The core elements of her design are her bun and her cape; Téa, the titular catgirl, makes an offhand comment about Vera’s outfit being inspired by superhero costumes, and she is right.
Her character and combat mechanics are quite straightforward, so I went all out on her motions in battle. Low captured her flirty demeanor perfectly.
Téa’s design is meant to inspire protective feelings: she is cute, she is fluffy, she is lost in this strange world… and then she opens her mouth.
I wrote her as a tsundere because, unlike other isekai protagonists, she lost a lot. She was supposed to take the state exam to become a real estate agent. She was supposed to visit her father in the hospital. She was supposed to help him—yet she ended up in a different world. Téa wants to go back.
I got Reniel’s design right on the first sketch. White looks amazing on her, and the sheer frills make her simple outfit interesting. It also shows off her amazing abs! She looked cheeky enough to have a sword, sturdy enough to wield a shield, and because I’m biased, she ended up getting both.
She is a huge animal lover, and her character made me rethink the battles: would she kill boars and wolves? Of course not! Most of the enemies in Catgirl’s Questlist flee when they reach 0 HP (unless they are wasps) because I refuse to break her heart.
Sunny’s character started with her name: I wanted to design a gloomy girl and have her rare smile be like a ray of sunshine. She ended up being a bit shy and mysterious in the final game. It will take a while for her to warm up to the others, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Her thighs are the stuff dreams are made of.
Mechanically, she feels the most fun. She can do some really crazy stuff with her Mixy-mixy, as long as you have the ingredients.
Lyra appears only briefly in the demo, and has a puzzling bonding event. She’s my mystery woman, a woman on a mission. Her backstory changed quite a bit during development. I hope players will like her—she is super intense in her interactions. I really like how algid she is.
Regarding the setting, I wanted Morpheya to be a peaceful land: the animals are rowdy, but the monsters are locked away in the old capital—until they start appearing once again. I don’t know if many players read the books in the library and in the guild, but I spent quite some time working out the rules of the world. I hope that comes across in the story!
