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• Announcements·16 Sept 2026Official

  Behind the Scenes: Creating the Game’s Illustrations

  Hello, friends! We can see that many of you are interested in how our development process was organized, particularly our work on the game's illustrations. How did we develop the characters' appearances and visual solutions for individual scenes? What guided us during the process, and when did we know it was time to stop? What challenges did we face, and what mistakes did we make in our workflow? You can read all about it in our new article. The core principles behind our work on the game's visuals:The interface design and illustrations form a single visual and gameplay space. Its purpose is to help the player immerse themselves in the game world.The illustrations should create a unified sensory space with the text and sound, helping the player experience the intended emotion of the scene. They are a means of enhancing the immersion and expressiveness of a particular artistic episode.We aimed to create as many illustrations as possible so that key episodes and important scenes would feature original artwork. To achieve this, we had to limit the number of revision rounds for each illustration: once it fulfilled its primary artistic purpose, we moved on to the next one. In practice, this meant that we rarely allowed ourselves to create images illustrating only one specific scene. The game contains around 350 illustrations, and almost every one appears in several scenes. Our task was therefore to turn each piece into a kind of symbol that would remain appropriate in different contexts. This also meant that we focused primarily on the focal object, deliberately leaving the background less detailed. Below, we will tell the stories behind several of our pieces to show through specific examples how this approach worked in practice. Characters and Faces One of the most important aspects of our deeply personal story is the humans and Arknians close to the prince, as well as Jerian himself. We spent a long time developing each character's appearance and searching for the righ...
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• Announcements·11 Sept 2026Official

  FAQ: An Interview with Schisma Games

  Hello, friends!Since the game was released, you have asked us a tremendous number of questions—in comments, discussions, private messages, and during streams. Some of them were so intriguing that we wanted to give detailed answers.So we gathered the most interesting questions and tried to answer them in as much detail as possible in this article. Here, we will discuss the game, its development, and the work of Schisma Games—in short, everything interesting enough to warrant more than a brief answer.A word of warning: this turned into a long read. But which of us narrative game enthusiasts could ever be frightened by lengthy texts? 🙂 Enjoy!Questions About the Game’s Development How many years did you work on The Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian?We worked on the game for about four years. The core team first came together in August 2022—and even now, after release, we are still working on the game, making adjustments and fixing issues that could prevent players from fully immersing themselves in Jerian’s story. How much has the team changed since the development of Sir Brante?A significant portion of the team behind The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante continued working on Prince Jerian.Schisma Games retained series and narrative creator Fedor Slyusarchuk (Theodor), lead game designer Sergey Aksyonov (Chip), programmer Ilya Spitsin, composer and sound designer Fedor Trubin, as well as our writers and editors Evgeniya Patarakina, Anna Volodina, and Valentina Yarkova.But of course, the team changed considerably: it expanded and grew stronger in every area, from production management and art direction to narrative and game design. How many people worked on the project?Around 22 people worked on the project in total, although the team never had more than 17 members at once.The project began with four people, and the team then gradually expanded in every area. At one point, the narrative department had eight people, while the art department had six. Once the main story ...
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• Announcements·8 Sept 2026Official

  FAQ: Technical Issues

  Hi everyone!Since the game’s release, we’ve received an enormous amount of feedback and reviews. We’ve read through it all carefully, watched countless streams, and talked to dozens of players. Receiving this kind of feedback from you is incredibly valuable. It’s the only way we can keep improving. Along with your feedback, we also noticed that many of you had questions. We’ve collected the most frequently asked ones and would like to answer them in two separate posts. In this article, we’ll address questions related to the technical aspects of the game. You’ll find the answers below. In the next article, we’ll answer questions about the game’s development, its content and gameplay, as well as general questions about Schisma Games studio. Stay tuned!1️⃣ Why didn’t the game support Linux and Steam Deck at launch? What is the situation now?We didn’t plan to add support for additional operating systems by the time of release: the game was developed and tested exclusively on Windows. Therefore, at launch, we could only guarantee that the game would work on Windows—this was reflected in the minimum and recommended system requirements listed on the game’s Steam page.Based on their experience with the test and demo versions, some players installed the game on Linux and Steam Deck. However, after release, the game could behave incorrectly on these platforms. The engine and other technical components of the project continued to change right up until launch, so something that worked in earlier versions did not necessarily work in the release build.We understand that everyone wants to play on the device that is most convenient for them, so we made this issue a priority and included support for additional platforms in our ongoing work to improve the game.The game now runs stably on Linux and Steam Deck, and with the latest update, we’ve also added macOS support.2️⃣ Why isn’t Steam Deck fully supported (the yellow “Playable” badge instead of the green “Verified” one)?We’ve addre...
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• Patch Notes·7 Sept 2026Official

  DLC Update: Now Available in 4 Languages!

  We’ve updated our DLC, the Artbook and Digital Map! Along with fixing several errors and typos you’ve reported to us (a huge thank you to everyone who helped!), we’ve added support for two more languages: Simplified Chinese and Japanese.Both DLCs are now fully translated and available in four languages:EnglishSimplified ChineseJapaneseRussianIf you speak one of these languages and would like to learn more about the story behind the creation and development of The Life and Suffering games, we recommend checking out these DLC!If you haven't checked out the additional content yet, now is the perfect time to do so: the game and all its DLC are now available at an even bigger discount—20% off!If you’re interested in all three DLC, you can get them together in a bundle at an additional discount. It’s the best way to get the complete set!We'd especially like to highlight the Artbook. Despite its familiar name, it’s far more than a collection of illustrations—it’s a full-fledged developer’s codex titled The Blue Book of Arknians, a codename the game used during its early stages of development. From the very beginning, we wanted to create something more than a standard artbook, and the result is essentially a standalone 120-page book.Inside, you'll find the story behind the game's development, extensive developer commentary, materials about its world and characters, insights into its artistic direction, and a wealth of illustrations—both those that made it into the game and those that remained outside it.If you'd like to delve deeper into the game’s world, learn about the history behind its creation and the decisions that guided us during development, and get a glimpse into the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that accompanied us along the way, we truly believe this Artbook will be an essential addition for everyone who has come to love our stories. The Digital Map is a smaller but equally interesting DLC featuring developer commentary on various regions of the Empire. It expan...
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• Patch Notes·7 Sept 2026Official

  Update #4 and macOS Support!

  Today’s update brings several long-requested features and improvements to The Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian. Here’s what’s new:macOS SupportWe’ve finally added support for macOS, something many of you have been waiting for! You can now play The Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian on Mac desktops and laptops. Separate SavesFollowing numerous requests from players, we’ve added the ability to create separate saves at any point during the game.Previously, your progress was saved automatically, and the only way to return to an earlier point was to restart the corresponding chapter. Now you can create a separate save during any scene and return to it whenever you like.How does it work? During a scene, click the gear icon to open the settings menu, then select the option to create a copy of your current save. You can give the save any name you like.You will continue playing from the current autosave, while the separate save you created will not be overwritten. Once you return to the main menu, you’ll find it in your save list under the name you chose and can load it whenever you want.When you load a separate save, the scene in which it was created will start from the beginning.Increased Font SizeWe spent a lot of time looking into different ways of allowing players to increase the font size in the game. Unfortunately, adding a fully customizable font-size setting would require a major overhaul of almost every interface in the game, along with a substantial amount of technically complex work.After considering the available options, we ultimately decided on what we believe is the most optimal solution: we’ve slightly increased the font size in some of the game’s interfaces.If you’re already comfortable with the original font size, you probably won’t notice much of a difference, and the changes shouldn’t affect your usual experience. But if you found the standard font too small, we hope the text will now be a little easier to read.Fixed several illustrations.Fixed a num...
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