Nice writing and use of alignment/font color in NVL mode, as way as the title menu.
At the end I thought I’d have a choice but I guess it’s not that kind of story (or it would be too hard to explain the aftermath of 2 branches in 45 words).
The Next cursor is a document icon, and besides it is when window frame is large enough, so it looked like the image had not finished loading and it was some kind of placeholder (esp. when playing the web version)
Thanks for playing!! Glad you enjoyed the general presentation.
I really wanted it to be a kinetic novel (choiceless) from the start!
The early early plan was even more linear, since I wanted to have a more dialogue-driven story between Ellie and the Nameless One during the ascent on Mount Ségou, with a not-so-clear resolution (as in the true ending)…
but I realised I really really enjoyed the fairy-tale-like framing, that it came more naturally to me, and allowed me to pack in more style, more tone, more atmosphere. So I settled with a normal storytelling first, and then the “true” retelling! I really enjoy this kind of enforced reading order, and couldn’t really envision more choice than this!
(I think I may have considered turning the “true story” retelling into a choice that appears only the second read at the pivotal moment; but I feared people would miss the second read if the main menu didn’t change. I also found it more fitting to have to choose from the start whether you wanted to hear the truth or not. It’s less Ellie’s choice & more the player’s.)
I didn’t realise the document click-to-continue indicator could have been confusing, woops!
It’s completely lifted from the style of 2000s Japanese VNs made with the ONScripter engine, like Higurashi, Tsukihime (example screenshot) or Umineko (example screenshot), which I really love and wanted to emulate given how minimalist this VN is too!
OK, that makes sense. Now that the comment is a bit lower I fear spoiling less:
Actually I was wondering if I was supposed to kill Syna or Her Grace. The mention of the “heart” suggests she must betray someone close, so Syna, but it seems a bigger deal to approach and kill the country’s leader than one of the generals. The former is more dramatic though so it would make sense in terms of storytelling.
I was also unsure if fuel is made out of bodies of ancients priestesses (suggested by “butcher”), because in this case why would Ellie just have “ingested” a little bit of sand and not more? Or can any human just become a good fuel? Looking at FF7 and Tales of games I wouldn’t be surprised that a source of energy comes from life forms but I’m not sure about the link. But I see how making it more explicit would break the atmosphere (it works for a more pragmatic game like Tales of Symphonia where you explore factories and all).
For the document icon, I see how it looks integrated esp. in Tsukihime where it has the same color and style as the text font. Here it stood out more and I know Renpy sometimes uses placeholder or blurry pictures in web so it made me doubt more, I suppose.
I see, thanks for elaborating on the icon, I’ll keep it in mind if I reuse a similar style in the future!
I’ve definitely been wondering whether I was still missing an image at least once or twice when playing a Ren’Py VN online on itch.io too, so I see where you’re coming from! I tend to disable “progressive downloading” on my own Ren’Py web exports for this reason, I prefer all assets to be 100% loaded when the game starts.
You can definitely think of several possibilities for the Nameless One’s command!
As in a lot of places in this story, I leave it all in the hands of your imagination, I hope the style and atmosphere convey just enough otherworldly violence by themselves for you to picture it (though I have my own preferences).
And likewise (even more so) for azurium ahah, I wouldn’t want to make it any more grounded than I did… but I’m glad it struck you, or at least evoked similarly gruesome fantasy/JRPG dark secrets!
