Claire: Chronicles of the Carmine Blood

Claire: Chronicles of the Carmine Blood (often shortened to CCoCB or Carmine Blood) is an indie Undertale-influenced video game series created by CaraPrincess.

Origins
Being a fan of video games since she was a child, CaraPrincess always dreamed of being a successful game designer. She've tried many kinds of games, including role-playing games. She began to mess up with the Scratch programming language since she was in primary school, and created some very simple doujin Pokémon games, with simple sprites and movement, and (often) with no actual objectives, despite their names. But she then lose interest real quick and abandoned making games using this programming language, despite there's a "revival" attempt on making an Undertale-like game with the language in mid-2020, but this was scrapped.

She looked for several "good" game engines, and she planned to make her video game debut as a teenager, in order to surprass her "idols", Toby Fox and ZUN, who debuted at 24 and 19, respectively. She said that the ideal age for her to debut is 16-18, which is the typical age of anime and manga protagonists, since she has an interest in anime since fifth grade, starting with Pokémon and Pretty Cure, respectively. She started the idea of using the visual novel engine Ren'Py, which is notable for several successful games such as Doki Doki Literature Club! and Katawa Shoujo. But she scrapped the idea of using that after realizing that making an RPG-styled game using Ren'Py is too buggy. She tried GameMaker: Studio 2, which is the very same engine that created Undertale and Deltarune, but she abandoned that idea very quick after realizing that the price to get the permanent license for the engine is too much for her to afford. She also tried GDevelop, a free game engine that have created some successful games, but quit that after some time due to "personal reasons".

She then noticed RPG Maker MZ, a game engine which belongs to the well-known RPG Maker series, which is well-known for some games that are released on Steam. She begin developing the first title in the series, Dæmonic Affright, using the engine, at November 2020. However, while having a good headstart at the engine, game production is suspended for a month due to her misbehavior at school. She stated that school rules are absurd, they make her feels like a prisoner with no privileges, and that schools should have more liberal rules, in order to make school life become what she calls "Neverland", a reference to the popular manga series, The Promised Neverland. Later on she switched to use RPG Maker for creating the series.

Inspirations
As stated above, she cited Undertale as her greatest inspiration for the series, and she praised the game's "simple but eye-catching" art as a "revival" of retro RPGs such as the first installments of Pokémon series and the first installments of The Legend of Zelda series. She also said that its character design has influenced the design of the characters in the series. Deltarune is also cited as the inspiration for the multi-member party system, and its story has influenced the first game in the series' theme of prophetic heroes and the mysterious transportation of the protagonists to the mysterious world in a studying place. Both games' mechanic of including actions that can be used in-battle to end the battle peacefully and its option to end enemy battles without killing them by showing mercy have influenced the series' battle system. Most of the series' protagonists are based on Undertale and Deltarune characters. For example, the main protagonists of the main series, Kouyuri Higan and Aoko Azouno, can be interpreted as following: Kouyuri is based on Chara from Undertale and Kris from Detarune, respectively, while that Aoko is based on Frisk from Undertale. Similarly, Jane is based on Mettaton (especially his Mettaton EX form), and Reira Hayato is based on Undyne from Undertale and (to some extent) Susie from Deltarune. The style of the pixel art in the series (especially that of the characters) is heavily influenced by the pixel art style used in Undertale and Deltarune.

She also cited Touhou Project as another inspiration for the series' mythological beast and monster-themed enemies, the mythology-themed setting (s), and the female-majority set of characters of the series also influenced the series' set of characters, the majority of which are female, with very few male characters. The story, sometimes the gameplay, of the series' games are influenced by the Touhou series. The naming of the games in the series, as stated by CaraPrincess, is influenced by the naming rule of the Touhou series, which follows the format "東方ＯＯＯ". Similarly, the games in the series are named following the format "歴代史：ＯＯＯ".

She also cited | Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba as another major inspiration, for both of its theme of teenagers wielding edged weapons and facing monstrous adversaries, fighting with these weapons instead of the typical magical powers found in monster-versus-heroes genres such as the "magical girl" genre. However, she also said that the game series is an "alternative" for Demon Slayer targeted at audiences aged 13-15, due to her concerns over potential PTSD rates increasements, potential juvenile delinquency and mass murdering rates increasements regarding the "overtly graphic" content, when considering the cases of showing both the anime and manga to children of that age, perhaps even younger. See CaraPrincess' views on Demon Slayer for more details.

Aside from that, after reshaping the whole series' content, she cited Neon Genesis Evangelion as the inspiration for the series, after the said "soft reboot". The series' use of religious imagery, especially that of Christianity and Judaism, has inspired the use of such imagery in the series. Similar to NGE, nobody in the development "team" of CCoCB are Christian, but CaraPrincess choose such religious imagery because "it looks visually stunning".

The graphics of the game use the color palette of the Game Boy console, inspired by its usage in the game Dweller's Empty Path, by Undertale 's artist Temmie Chang.

Works
See also: Themes of Claire: Chronicles of the Carmine Blood

Main games:

 * 歴代史：鬼胎物語－Dæmonic Affright


 * 歴代史：不明恐夢－Fantasy of Enshrouded Horrors
 * 歴代史：原子乱脈－Atomic Mayhem
 * 歴代史：妖怪侵入軍－Blitz of Guileful Youkai


 * 歴代史：聖星話－Star of the Avatar
 * 歴代史：四季章－Yeartide of Phantasy

Satori's Adventures in the Angelic Dreams fangame spin-offs:

 * 東方天使絆：アバレギオネに初冒険－First Fantasy Dream

Name
The name “Claire” is selected by CaraPrincess as it references to one of the game series’ main protagonists, Kouyuri Higan, who was given the name “Claire” by her adoptive family, the Perkins. This idea is taken from the concept of a fan-made anime series created by CaraPrincess, originally created as a Pokémon doujinshi work, Claire: Mistress of Magick, where the main protagonist, also take inspiration from Chara, is given the name Claire by her adoptive family, also with the surname of Perkins. The word “Chronicles” refers to the series being a record of events listed chronologically, with the spin-offs follow after the main installments chronologically. The word “Carmine Blood”, at first with the meaning hinting that Kouyuri (then Koutou Shinkon) is from a heroic lineage (carmine is a shade of red, and red is the color of courage, somewhat symbolizing heroes), but after having the idea that Kouyuri is half-vampire, this is a reference to her species. However, after Megumi overtook her position as the primary main protagonist, the word “Carmine Blood” is meant to represent the Blood of Christ, representing sacrifice and martyrs, referencing to Megumi's selfless personality, and the choice of one of the deuteragonists, Nanami, to sacrifice for the sake of Megumi, their guardian angel.

Gameplay
Similar to bullet-hell shooters such as Touhou Project, in the Carmine Blood series the player will move their player character in the overworld to dodge enemy projectiles, but the Carmine Blood series lacks a function for the player to shoot bullets, instead, once hit by a projectile in the overworld, the player will enter a battle between them and the enemies that appear in the area that they are in, using a tweaked Undertale-like battle system. Attacks work like a typical Touhou game, which includes focused (charged), unfocused (normal) and Spell Card (called Thaumaturgy Attack here) attacks. Like the Touhou games, these attacks have some special specifications for them to be used: Unfocused attack type is the player's default attack type, which uses a timed attack system based off upon Undertale 's player attack system, and these cost no TP nor MP. Focused attacks use different timed attack systems than the normal unfocused attacks, and require the player to use different input methods in order to execute these attacks. Focused attacks cost the player some TP. Most Thaumaturgy Attacks use another different timed attack system than the other two attack types, despite some (such as Kurisu's time-freezing Thaumaturgy Attack) do not use the timed attack system. Defeating a wave of enemies in an area will trigger a battle against the enemies in that wave, and defeating all waves of enemies in an area will finish a "Chapter", a small part of the storyline that are divided from the "Books" (or Stages as we called in Touhou), and saves the game, which is a mechanic that is inspired by the 15th Touhou game, Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. However, unlike LoLK, the player must save the game manually through a window that pops up whenever the player finishes a Chapter.

Midbosses and Bosses battles still use the tweaked Undertale battle system. Unlike Undertale and like Touhou, midbosses and bosses will alternate between attacking normally and attacking using their own version of Thaumaturgy Attacks, called Magick Attacks. The condition to switch between attacking normally and attacking using Magick Attacks is the enemy's HP must be depleted to certain values, depending on how many Magick Attacks that midboss or boss have. Usually midbosses have only one or no Magick Attacks, while that bosses can have multiple Magick Attacks, with the exact number being more than one Magick Attack per battle. The player will win the midboss or boss when their HP is depleted to 0, similar to Touhou.

Spin-offs:
Note that all spin-off games so far do not support the Linux operating system.



Achievement system
This covers the integration of the Game Jolt API in each subseries. Game Jolt API contains "Trophies", which are equivalent to what CaraPrincess planned to be "Achievements" that the player can earn by playing the games.

Main games:
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