Merry Crisis (Demo)
After a break-up turns your world inside out, you return home for Christmas hoping the change in scenery will give you space to mend a broken heart.
The Demon’s Apple: Hostage to a Handsome Man
In this Dartk Fantasy otome game, we find ourselves in a peculiar situation. We are half and half forced and willing to be hostage to a horned man who replenishes his energy by doing increasingly more intimate things to us.
We had the amazing pleasure of sitting down with the solo developer behind Demon’s Apple, Kakera. She was nice enough to share her thoughts about the characters, romance and art, as well as some exclusive images and the stories behind them.
Listen to the FULL Episode :
Table of Contents
The one behind it all
Otome.com
Could you give us a little spoiler free overview of the story?
Kakera:
“Yeah, of course. The Demon’s Apple follows the story of Pomme. She is the village herbalist, and during one of her outings to pick up some medicinal herbs, she finds a badly wounded man that she tries to save. Unfortunately, she discovers he is a demon, and the demons drink human blood. So he tries to bite her and drink her blood and then escape. They meet again after a few weeks. But this time they’ll have to cooperate in a world that is still too both.”
Meet the Love Interests
Otome.com
Could you tell us more about the main character (Pomme) and her personality?
Kakera:
“Yeah, of course. I think some will see her as an naive girl. But she isn’t. She’s more a good-hearted person and gentle. So, I mean, she knows when she jumps into danger, but she jumps anyway. She likes taking care of people, she likes saving people, and she wouldn’t bear the guilt of, for example, not saving Styx when she could have.”
Otome.com
We entioned Styx, but you know, we have to explain to everyone who Styx actually is.
Kakera:
“Styx is a demon, so he drinks blood from a man, he has to drink blood to survive. He first appears as really aggressive and quite violent, but you can see while starting to know him that he is much more than he appears to be first and he might have some some good side to him.”
Otome.com
What made you pick the concept of needing to recover mana through blood and other alternative ways?
Kakera:
“I won’t hide because it’s fun for the spicy content of it. But that’s also a fun way to create a dependency of the characters. They have to rely on each other to survive, especially Styx who couldn’t live without their presence, or at least not without their difficulty. So it was fun to use that idea to get them closer to each other. Because they are quite opposite in personality and he wouldn’t even have been able to know her if it wasn’t for the opportunity to eat her mana.”
Otome.com
Later in the story we get introduced to a nameless knight. I assume he’s a future love interest?
Kakera:
“He is not… But he is an important character to the story. I can’t tell you much more, without spoiling you, but I can tell you that if the game sells, my plan is to have him have his own stories. So I would like to tell his story in another game, or at least a DLC. I don’t even know how we would do it. But yeah, his story is quite important to the lore so I guess I want him to have his own game.”
The World & Art
Otome.com
Is there any books, games, folklore, mythology that kind of inspired you to make Demon’s Apple?
Kakera:
“Yeah, it’s mostly based on Greek mythology, as you can hear from his name. The Styx, as you might know, is a river that connects the world to the underworld. And I think that might hint something in the future story in the full game.”
Otome.com
It would be interesting if there’s some sort of mix with this world and the larger Greek mythology.
Kakera:
“Yes, there are a of hints that are not like… it’s more implied than anything. But if you know well the mythology, you can probably understand the lore behind Demon’s Apple by referring yourself to Greek mythology.”
Otome.com
Is there a way that you approach designing spaces or how much mind do pay the backgrounds?
Kakera:
“I’m mostly inspired by what surrounds me because I live in a little village and also that’s really close to what we can find in the game and I wanted at least to give it a slight fantasy feeling I had ideas for to give it even more fantasy feeling but… I didn’t make it in the end. But there are like 20 backgrounds about that. … And I tried to keep it real, but by giving slight fantasy elements, particularly in a natural environment.”
Exclusive!
Otome.com
We did get some exclusive content from you. Things that probably most people haven’t seen yet. And one of them is a CG from later on in the game, I believe you said chapter 3. What can you tell us about that?
Kakera:
“Yes. Yeah, so that’s the following chapter of the demo, so quite at the beginning. That’s when the both characters get to know more of each other and see Styx shirtless. But that’s more to be sure that his wounds are healing well. I’m sure it’s nothing else.”
Otome.com
Yeah, yeah, for sure, just the wounds. 😀
Otome.com
We have one more piece of art which was something very special looking to me. A piece of art from way earlier, a concept art for both Pomme and for Styx.
Kakera:
“Yeah, that’s another art I did. … I did it right when I started to write the story about them. So it has, it is eight years old and it’s, yeah, it’s how they began, both… They didn’t change that much. I think they evolved, but I think you can see the color states are the same. And yeah, they are the first sketch I did of them.”
Kakera:
“I kept the base of the characters because I loved them as they were at the time. So I just adapted it to my current taste and also to the story.”
In Closing
The Demon’s Apple was an amazing experience and getting to talk to its creator was an even greater pleasure. She was nice enough to share so much about her work and the thoughts behind different creative choices, for which we are grateful. If you’d like to hear more from our talk with Kakera, check out our podcast episode with here. And of course support her on any of her platforms. If Demon’s Apple sounds like your cup of tea, you can pre-order it on itch.io and wishlist it on Steam.
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