Talents

**Talents** is a romance-comedy, slice-of-life visual novel developed by Izumi Games, a studio based in Philippines. Talents tells a story about an aspiring game writer and designer who dives into a business partnership with a rowdy crew of talented co-founders, aiming to conquer the game development industry through their shared stories, love, and relentless determination. The game is set to released on 2025.

Talents was featured in Otome Jam 2023 Participant and Philippine Game Development Expo 2023.

## Story

Play as an aspiring game writer and designer who dives into a business partnership with a rowdy crew of talented co-founders, aiming to conquer the game development industry through their shared stories, love, and relentless determination. Will you write your way to the top?

## Gameplay

The gameplay of Talents involves in storytelling and decision-making. The game use popular game engine Ren'Py that specifically designed for creating visual novels, which are narrative-driven games that often feature text-based storytelling accompany with visuals.

## Characters

The game mainly follows The main protagonist interacting with her friends throughout the story.

* **Alice Rodriguez** is the main character of Talents, aiding kris to develop a game during the game jam.
* **Kris Silvan is** The game producer and close friend to Alice Rodriguez, he invited Alice to participate the game jam.
* **Souma Shin is** game composer helping the team throughout the jam.
* **Sousuke Shin is** QA tester testing team's game to check its quality
* **Harry Dominic Claude is** Art director for the game jam.

## Development

Talents starts its development in 2023. Izumi Games made a teaser announcing their latest Otome Visual Novel game on 3rd January 2023 . On 20th January 2023, Izumi Games announced Talents . According to their official website, Talents tells a story about the indie game development industry and the challenges faced in running a game studio. Lead game developer Izumi Games Izumi stated "the game has undergone careful and accurate/realistic research and study on the different industries and topics: music, art, games, writing, business, social issues. And was originally created with a goal of promoting the game development industry in Philippines" .

Fast forward to May 1st 2023, the game released its demo during Otome Jam 2023. Talents will plan to release on 2025.

## Trivia

* Talents demo was released during Otome Jam 2023.
* According to lead game developer Izumi Games Izumi, the game has undergone careful and accurate/realistic research and study on the different industries and topics: music, art, games, writing, business, social issues. And was originally created with a goal of promoting the game development industry in Philippines .
* Talents is inspired by Korean drama **Start Up** and real life experiences of the lead game developer in creative industry .

## Official Links

* Talents (Prologue Demo) Itch.io
* Talents Steam Page
* Izumi Games Facebook Page
* Izumi Games Twitter Page

## References

1. ↑ [1] IzumiGames Wordpress article "New Otome Visual Novel by Izumi Games" written by Izumi
2. ↑ [2] IzumiGame Wordpress.com article "New Project Announcement: TALENTS" written by Izumi
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 [3] Izumi Games Wordpress.com article "The WHY of Talents – Visual Novel" written by Izumi