Indie otome developer, Best Laid Plans just launched a Kickstarter campaign for their upcoming isekai romance visual novel, Save the Villainess. Some people have pets. You now have a romance novel villainess. Guide your villainess through an animated visual novel with menacing manors, mysteries, (wo)men, and murder to see if you can… Save the Villainess.
The campaign has a goal of CA$28,000 ($20,394.78 USD) and is set to run until August 22, 2024, so be sure to show your support before the deadline! The team plans to release the game Q2 2027 on PC.
About Save the Villainess
Save the Villainess is inspired by villainess stories such as My Next Life as a Villainess, investigative mystery games like the Ace Attorney series, psychological horror stories like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and satirical fantasies like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.
Congratulations! You are now in possession of one (1) romance novel villainess!
Unfortunately, neither you nor she remember the bad romance novel you are trapped in… or which character wants her dead.
Guide your amnesiac villainess through mysteries, menacing manors, and (wo)men who may be trying to murder her.
Meet with five suspiciously gorgeous characters and pursue romance, revenge, or revolution.
Can you find clues, fight off foes, calm angry furniture, and escape from eldritch horrors while solving the mystery of this world?
Characters
In Save the Villainess take on the role of amnesiac villainess, Jane Neville and romance one of four love interests, a Crown Prince, a Duke of the North, a Childhood Friend, a Servant, a mysterious woman… and maybe more!
Save the Villainess Features
✦ 60+ Hours of Gameplay over 4 routes: The game contains three main routes (Edmund, Izel, Ben), six sub-routes, 10 good endings (including secret lovers to pursue!), and 32 bad endings. Even after it seems as if all is resolved, there is still one final mystery left to pursue…
✦ 5+ Suspects and Love Interests: Choose to befriend, seduce, or even destroy a Crown Prince, a Duke of the North, a Childhood Friend, a Servant, or a mysterious woman… There might even be options that are not immediately apparent, depending on the choices you make.
✦ User Choice: Your decisions determine whether the villainess lives, dies, chooses a lover, forges a life alone, or pursues secret goals. Every choice has some consequence in the larger story. Some choices might even be remembered if you pursue a different path in the future…
✦ Variable Difficulty: Play in Story Mode to get in-game clues or play in Detective Mode to survive by your wits alone. You can change the game difficulty at any time to play the way you want to play.
✦ Skip the Common Route After Playing Once: Once you complete the common route, you can use the chapter system to immediately go to the start of the major branching routes. However, your previous choices will not necessarily be forgotten…
Art Assets and Screenshots
About Best Laid Plans
Best Laid Plans Productions, Inc. is led by two women who love villainesses and interactive roleplaying games. With the help of a number of wonderful collaborators, they are excited to bring Save the Villainess and the land of Carcosa to life.
I’m so excited for this title! But at the same time it seems like so long until it comes out that it hurts, I hope the project works out. Normally, when it takes a long time to complete a project, the chance of problems occurring along the way is very high. It’s like the title of the game “Your Boyfriend”, to this day the game has not finished production and there was a problem with the main character’s voice actor.
I’ve read a lot of stuff about controversy surrounding this dev, especially on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/otomegames/comments/1exuo90/developers_of_save_the_villainess_want_to/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/otomegames/comments/1enka7i/what_happened_save_the_villainess/) and I don’t think I want to support this dev. Blerdy, have you seen and read about this?
Hey there! I have seen the controversy and I completely understand people not wanting to support the game or the devs because of it.
That said, I did reach out to the devs to discuss what was going on and while I admit they made some missteps, it more feels like its coming from a space of someone new to running their own projects and dealing with feedback.
They seem open to learning from the experience and growing as developers and they did mention wanting to take time to fully take in the feedback from fans.
I am always down for a good redemption arc, so I’m more inclined to wait and see what happens overtime before completely writing them off.
I understand where you’re coming from! I’m just worried about the accessibility concerns here, myself, as I tried the demo and got some pretty bad motion sickness. It’s important to me! Fingers crossed you’re right and they learn from this! 🙂