This is Agnès, aka Clemenc, the founder and only developer at games studio 2054.
Development of The Sundew has continued as smoothly as it is possible, building more of the game content and playtesting to make sure the final product is as thrilling as I can make it to be. It’s set for launch this Summer for PC, Linux, and Switch, and I wanted to share a bit on some additional characters featured in the game. For this entry, I’ll focus on backstories that aren’t explored too much in the game, to complement the experience you’ll get to play later this year.
Arabella Fujiwara
Arabella is Anna's (our protagonist) superior. She is incisive, determined and knows how to make the right decisions at the right time to achieve the desired result.
Arabella sees Anna as a rebellious late teenager and would like to give her a stricter framework so that she can make better use of her abilities. She is homosexual and invited Anna on a date which Anna refused, causing Arabella great upset.
When Anna is sent to prison, she is secretly happy and wants the prison to discipline Anna. She has ties to Sagi Electrics, a conglomerate of several companies, in the form of bribes, but does not know the plans of this company. Sagi Electrics, with its subsidiaries, supplies energy, created robots for industrial and police use, owns a retail chain, virtual reality gaming, a research center, and more.
Nao
Nao was enlisted by Ciel (read more on him here) in the Pillbox, a group of anti-globalization activists based in the Republic of the Philippines, to connect to one of the biovegetal antennas of The Sundew project. She is one of the few cyborgs from the Victoria project*, who, like Anna, has kept her mind pretty much intact. She is no more stable than Anna psychologically, her physical performance is better, but her intellectual and computer skills did not allow her to make the connection to the antenna as Ciel wished.
She got involved in the activities of the Pillbox only because she fell in love with Rick and lives like an outcast, without ID, in the slum of Abashiri, waiting for the Pillbox to tackle the system currently in place, which would allow her to return to a more normal life.
She is more or less jealous of Anna because she feels like she has been replaced, without being very sure that she really wanted to connect to the antenna, which causes ambivalent feelings in her. She fights this feeling to please Rick and Ciel because she is not aware of Anna and Rick's affair.
*The Victoria Project was a project to create cyborgs capable of drastically reducing crime, and dedicated to the police. This project was abandoned in favour of the creation of police robots.
Jimmy and Donna
Jimmy and Donna are two computer scientists in the police computer research department. They work on the police logistics computer system and at the same time they have fun hacking into the police tracking system because they don't always agree with police policy.
Jimmy is handicapped and can no longer walk, but he didn't want to wear artificial legs. He prefers his wheelchair which he can clip to his workstation very easily. Donna is a mixed race with an African-American father and Japanese mother and is very happy with the position she got at the police force because of her brilliant abilities in IT.
Thanks for reading and I hope you find it interesting! Please feel free to ask any questions about the story and the game.
Also, if you missed it, you can watch a short interview I did for ActuGaming here. The interview is subtitled in English.
All the best,
Agnès
