Rose Seed Replica
What's this?
A feel-good lesbian love story about two women unexpectedly cast to the other end of the galaxy.
- 100% yuri
- 100% gay agenda
- 100+ player choices
- 170,000 words worth of dialogue
- 6 different story routes
- 4 different romance types
- Awkward humor and light drama
- LGBT+ positive and inclusive
- Made by a lesbian
What's the story?
What if you got zapped to smithereens by some kind of alien contraption, only to somehow wake up in a remote space station far, far away from Earth? That'd be awful, right?
But what if the lady who kind of did that to you actually turned out to be the loveliest person ever? And she liked girls too? What would that make it?
Gay. There's no way around that. It's queer women kissing and messing with each other, feel-good slice-of-life, aloof banter, silly dates, an occasional serious topic, rainbows, awkward humor, bad puns, nonsensical mysteries and stuff.
Who are the characters?
Sophie, the heroine of our story, is an ordinary gay scientist doing research for a somewhat shady private laboratory. Or, well, she was at least, until her disappearance from the planet put a definitive halt to her research and whole career.
Even though Sophie can be kind of spontaneous and aloof at times, she's still a rather calm and sensible person in general. She loves cats and of girls, even though she rarely got to spend that much time with either.
Bryn is the mysterious lady who kind of took Sophie with her to the far end of the galaxy. She appears cool and a bit quiet at first, but do first impressions ever prove right? Could her personality actually be quite different once she's comfortable with Sophie's company?
Actually, who is she anyway, and what did she try to achieve? Even though she looks like a human, is she actually from Earth at all? Like, the technology she had in her possession definitely wasn't from Earth, and she might just have been a wee bit reluctant to accurately answer certain questions about herself.
Some strange individuals inhabit the isolated place where Sophie and Bryn arrive. These individuals might turn out to be helpful as Sophie tries to make sense of the confusion. Depending on what Sophie does, they might even become friends with her over time.
Also, even though meeting new people might be very unlikely somewhere in deep space, who knows if someone else could actually be transported there the same way Sophie and Bryn were. Like, whoever is behind the mess might have no reason to stop with the nonsense...
How does this play?
Well, you mainly just point and click to move around and talk to characters. You're also prompted for decisions at certain point of the game, and those will affect in various ways what happens later.
Depending on how you interact with the characters and the environment, you can end up with different kinds of romances with Bryn, go to different kinds of dates, incite various levels of drama and do some weird and funny things.
Oh, and you might also be able to make sense of some of the nonsense going around if you keep at it.
Who made this?
I'm a geeky dyke, a lesbian lizard and an independent game developer. I make LGBT+ themed games, primarily about and for queer women.
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Content warning: sexual content, crude humor, implied self-harm, strong language like twice
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- BugfixJan 10, 2021
- BugfixesNov 26, 2020
- Rose Seed Replica postmortem - mistakes were madeSep 19, 2020
- Another bugfixSep 15, 2020
- Fixed bugsSep 14, 2020
- Rose Seed Replica is released!Sep 09, 2020
- Updated screenshotsJul 16, 2020
Comments
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Super cute, I recommend playing Rose Seed Replica <3
Minor spoilers follow! Note that I've only completed one of the endings so far, so I don't have a full picture of the game.
Things I liked:
I loved how the characters end up in a place where they don't have to work and struggle to survive, and that's portrayed in a positive light.
I enjoyed interacting with all the characters, especially Lilac!
While the game progresses in "real time", it didn't feel like I had to rush to get things done.
The particle minigame was fun.
Suggestion:
I got one of the endings (the obvious one) but because this is not a VN, it seems more daunting/time consuming to figure out how to get the other ones. It would have been lovely to have a (very brief) guide to the various endings included. So far I started a new game and tried going in different directions, but it's very hard for me to tell if I've deviated at all so far (plus I find it hard to choose options I find less appealing just to see if it changes the story).
Overall I've enjoyed Rose Seed Replica a lot. Thank you for making it!
Thank you for giving the game a try and for the comment. I appreciate it! Yeah, I guess the way the game does branching is a bit weird. Back when I made it, I thought that people would basically play it on and off and try out different choices each time, but it's a bit of an iffy assumption in retrospect.
The game tries to be kind of obvious about where the branching goes wild in chapter 2, but it's also affected by your chat with Bryn in chapter 1, so it's not super easy to figure out for casual replays. The game branches to like half a dozen different directions there, and the routes tend to be quite long and distinct until they converge. But it's mostly lost potential because people don't have too much motivation to replay the game.
But, well, I struggled with game design back then even more than I do now, and the game is rather unconventional in many ways too, so it was hard to tell. It's easy to think that just throwing in a ton of branching and content is a ton of value, but in hindsight it was too much work considering the benefits for a typical player. 😅Thank you, that makes sense! I will say that I am satisfied with the ending I've gotten and if I don't end up seeing the others, that's fine. I appreciate you trying something a little different both in terms of gameplay and story beats.
This looks so cool! Will there ever be a mac version?
I wish I could make a Mac version somehow, but sadly I don't have a Mac and, well, the current financial situation is what it is, so I'm afraid that it won't happen in the foreseeable future. Sorry!
I love this game so far!!! Here's my review of it!!!
Uuhm... Actually, I have another strange question. I really should ask something different I guess, but this keeps interesting me... not sure if it's gonna be cleared up later in the game, but I guess maybe not, so I'll just ask.
That star in the background (or sub-stellar object, if I'm right)... Is that a brown dwarf? If you are just a little bit into astronomy I guess you might have chosen it on purpose. Just wondering.
Or did you choose the color of the star purely for artistic purposes, like, to set the mood?
Maybe I'm overthinking this part, but I'd like to know nonetheless. ;)
PS.: The cuteness is still constantly killing me! ;)
Edit: Are you familiar with the "Ship of Theseus" problem? I wonder if you are. Some of the questions that I have been asked by Lilac so far imply that you do, and/or that you might be quite the philosopher yourself. ;)
Hi!
It's a red dwarf star. They talk about it a little bit in some of the routes,
but not really in the one that people most commonly get on the first playthrough.
And, yep, I do know about the Ship of Theseus.
Interesting, thanks for letting me know! :)
There is one thing bugging me currently though. Not sure if intentional, but it seems I somehow got stuck. My romance with Bryn doesn't progress anymore after the present I gave her and Lilac has completely disappeared (?!). My research is stuck too. Apparently I "need more time" before I can contine, because all the interesting parts have been analyzed, but something's "still bugging me".
All I can do is sleep, eat, collect holographic stars and read the "message of the day", of which I've seen all now, I believe.
I even started ignoring Bryn just to provoke a reaction out of her, but to no avail. ;)
There are no more dialog options with any of the remaining characters left, and I've inspected everything, even all the plants. The elevator door is still closed.
Maybe I broke the game with the dialog options I chose when we had that strange conversation with Lilac?
Also, the house next to ours appears to be inhabited now, but I can't get in, and nobody's coming out either.
Just sleeping, eating and reading old MotD's does get old after an hour or two of playing.
Did I encounter a bug, or is this an intentional gameplay mechanic to strain the player's patience?
Thanks!
Hi,
This sounds like a bug. Could you e-mail your save file to me, support@lezliz.com, so that I could take a closer look and fix the issue? Save files can be found under the Users folder at "Saved Games/Rose Seed Replica/" in Windows or "~/.local/share/Rose Seed Replica/" in Linux. I'm really sorry for this!
Ah, bugs happen. ;) I've loaded an earlier save game and I made a different dialog choice, which made the game work again. I'll try to find which exact save it was (I'm at ~100 saves by now), and attempt to re-create the exact situation.
As soon as that's done I'll send you a link to the saves and tell you which ones you may want to look at.
There were a few other (minor, non-blocking) issues, which I will then report too. :)
Unraveling the mysteries in this game is quite fun actually. By now, I managed to complete my research (fully, as far as I can tell, including detailed information provided by a certain someone). But I'm still too curious about what's behind that iris door.. ;)
Also, it's interesting that I could reach the same ending twice, but how I got there was wildly different, especially early on. That was a nice surprise!
I'll send you a message about the saves soon!
Thank you!
Edit: Sorry, you said to email them, but I didn't read carefully.. uh. I can remove this post if you like, just say so If I should do that.
Alright, here it is, I've put the files on my home server. It's slow, but they're not big, so it should be ok.
*** SPOILER WARNING ***
The images are from later parts of the game, so people who haven't played yet might not want to look at them, despite there being no real text. They might also not wanna continue to read this post, as my bug descriptions most definitely contain spoilers!
Naturally, the savegames would enable people to take shortcuts, but people probably don't wanna do that. ;)
Files: [Savegames], [dialog bug 1], [dialog bug 2].
Bug report #1, "No more progress" / "Lilac disappearence":
To trigger the "no more progress" bug, please load saved game #20, and pick "Alien" as a response to Lilac's question. From there on out, you can still complete the present thing, but then, dialogs with Bryn, research and TV set will all be eventually exhausted of options. Lilac will be gone entirely.
Upon further examination, Lilac may have just retreated to her house (the one with the rose bush), never to leave it again. Because there's always "somebody inside" when trying to peek through the window.
You can also fast-forward to save game #29 or the newly created #104 to see the state where I couldn't make any progress anymore and where all dialog options are exhausted (should be the case for 104 at least).
Re-load #20 and pick "human" instead of "alien", and the game will continue on its merry way!
Bug report #2 (see image "dialog bug 2"):
I don't have a save game close to this, but this happened after Bryn asked me to explain some scientific theory to her. So while I was rambling about the big bang and how gravity might be negative energy, suddenly... this. ;) Made me giggle a little, because it was so totally out of place. ;)
This issue happened when I was still sitting in the "no more progress" situation as described in bug report #1.
Bug report #3 (see image "dialog bug 1"):
I still have a save game somewhat close to this one. Load #97. This happens during the "big reveal talk" after I had realized my big discovery and with Paradigm having offered me to explain all the rest.
Starting from save game #97, pick the following dialog options, in that order:
Now follow the conversation for a short while and you should encounter it.
Maybe the exact order of answers doesn't matter, but that's how I did it.
There are also a few typos and grammar errors in the late game, mostly when talking to Paradigm, but I haven't made notes about those. They're not that big an issue, I'm thinking.
I hope my issues are reproducible for you. I have not tested the save games on a different installation / computer after all.
Thank you very much! :)
Thank you for the thorough reports! I got the save files downloaded, so this works too. I might delete the post in a couple of days so that other players won't get spoiled, but I'm really thankful about you reporting all of these nevertheless! I'll hopefully have a fix ready in a day or two.
Hi,
I just bought this, and that might not be the kind of question you'd expect (I only played for a few minutes so far), but... This is the first Yuri game I've seen that's written in Java! Are there some frameworks in existence for that (like Ren'Py for VNs or like GameMaker), or did you build this from scratch?
I'm not a developer myself, I'm just curious since I've never seen any Games like this one written in Java. Might even try to run it on FreeBSD UNIX using the platform JRE, should work somehow...
Oh, and I already love your pixel art! I knew I would after looking at this page a while ago, but it just had to be said. :)
Alright, back to playing it! :)
Thank you for your comment! The game is indeed more or less coded from scratch. More or less because it does use some libraries to take care of low level graphics and audio stuff.
It's a bit of a weird game in terms of genre and gameplay, so no framework really felt like a really good match for it. That's more or less why it ended up like this. If I had made a pure VN, no doubt I'd have gone for Ren'Py.
I'm afraid that the game probably won't run on FreeBSD because one of the libraries it uses (LibGDX) apparently doesn't support it. That's a bummer since the game code itself should work if it weren't for that.
Thank you for your interest and the kind words! I hope you enjoy the game.
Ah, thanks for the explanation regarding libgdx. I looked into it and it may be portable (somebody managed a few years ago), but that's likely too much for me.
Not that big a deal, I already had a lot of fun with your game yesterday! Can't wait to get back home from work so I can play some more. :)
It's also refreshing in that it is not a visual novel. I mean, I love Yuri VNs, but this is a nice change. :)
Thank you!
Edit: And the cuteness is just killing me!!