itch.io

i saw this when i woke up this morning and had to screenshot it and send it to my parents, because all they’ve seen of my visual novel is like… pictures i draw of val in a thong, and they think that’s what it’s about. i’m always like “no, no, it has a plot” and they’re like “yeah, whatever. you can’t fool us.”

this is my way of saying i am very touched, especially hearing that you were putting off the ending because you didn’t want it to end. i felt similarly when i was finishing making this thing, because i just couldn’t bear to let these characters go. you’ll definitely see more in the future, because my love for this project has no end. thank you, in the most sincere way i can muster, for your support.

thank you so much for reading!!! <3

one time i was at a bookstore with kenny’s voice actor and i was complaining that a book on vintage perfumes didn’t have shalimar in it, and i started going off about how important it was to me, and he goes. “wow so i guess you could say… you’re really… nostalgic… for that perfume…” and i let out the biggest sigh of my life.

a secret: being able to differentiate between scents is overrated. i love just sniffing something and saying “yes” or “no.” we are all just humans. we were born to sniff.

if you like water scents, shi by alfred sung is pretty affordable nowadays. it’s supposed to legitimately be the “scent of water.” it’s a cool androgynous scent that i blind bought simply because i heard it was good and it was like 10 bucks at marshall’s. i did not appreciate it as much when i first got it, and i think i even regretted it a little bit, but now i really like it.

whenever i think of Basic Man Scent, i think of Dior Sauvage, but i would never recommend that to you, because i don’t hate you and i don’t want you to hate yourself. it’s just such an Asshole Guy fragrance. one time my mom had a sample of it and it fell in our toaster and ruined it, and also ruined my toaster waffle. i told her, “i told you to get that shit out of our fucking house, it’s evil.” my personal recommendations for Basic Man scents: jean paul gaultier le male (which is actually what val’s outfit is based off of. completely forgot to mention that) acqua di gio (my mom wears this she likes to smell like a dude) drakkar noir (super cheap but smells awesome and you can use it every day without feeling like you’re wasting it)

also if you want “marshmallow but for men” that’s mugler a*men. one of my absolute favorites. and another cheap honorable mention for Basic Man is a body spray my dad used to wear when i was a kid that’s still being made today from a company called Bod Man. it’s called “Really Ripped Abs.” I wish i was lying, i can’t look at this thing without giggling.

if i may recommend some scents for your characters…. eunice- mon guerlain sydney- all of the above basic man scents susan- genuinely the superior Old Lady smell is shalimar i would buy her that leon- pinrose pinrose. i’m so biased i love that fucking thing

anyway, there i go running my mouth. if you see any of these in stores, give them a sniff. it’s fun to sniff

thank you!! yeah i was like “no, i can’t let this perfume be ruined… i was supposed to pass this down to my children like my mom passed down to me… but i’m not having any children…” yeah, not any REAL children, but I DO have this vampire, and he is very much like an old woman to me. he is such a grandma to me. so he’s my grandma now. and also my child. apparently. either way, those are the two eligible candidates for a signature scent of shalimar.

i love when people who aren’t into perfumes have one that a relative gave them that they’ve just kind of stuck with. perfumes don’t really expire, and i think that’s such a beautiful thing, because it allows us to bond with scents for a long time. it allows them to truly exist alongside us and become special objects. sometimes people just kinda throw perfume at people as a gift, but they never really know how long it’s gonna be sitting on our dresser or what our relationship to it is gonna be. it’s just like… “here, take this new smell.”

i absolutely love that you have found a way to love different scents despite the headaches, but also, it is so funny to me that one of your scents of choice is tuberose overdose. that is like, the number one headache giver scent to lots of people, but i am personally also a fan of it. sooo many people complain that tuberose in general gives them headaches!!! I am a tuberose lover. actually, i’m so much of a tuberose lover that i’m a little weird about it. tuberose is a very love-it-or-hate-it scent, and there’s so many people who don’t like it, and i sincerely think that it says a lot about a person what they think about tuberose. i always know i’m not gonna gel with someone if they complain about not liking tuberose, especially if they say it’s “too feminine” or something, i don’t know. i don’t actually judge people by their opinions on tuberose, but i do know that historically, i have gotten along better with people who either really like tuberose, or can at least appreciate what it’s got going on. it has attitude.

i looked up all the scents you have listed in this comment on fragrantica so i could mentally picture them. there are some incredible notes in here. what fun taste you have! i also have a soft spot for dior j’adore, because i like to make pressed flower bookmarks and once bought little plastic flower preservers that were shaped like the dior j’adore bottle. I ended up with so many of them that they are all over my house.

always lovely to read your comments :) if you ever want to check out any new scents that are kind of affordable and simple and not too offensive, but still offer something a little bit different, i reccommend checking out jeanne en provence fragrances. i have un matin dans la roseraie, and it’s kind of a basic floral, but in my experience, the scents by this company are just really likeable and fun to explore!

i loved reading this. my brain is broken because i have like 647337 responsibilities today so when it comes to making further comments i will explode if i attempt it. but the memes really make this experience. i loved reading this. it did make me giggle. i love this

coming soon… parfum nostalgique light sticks… nancy shaped ☺️

the thing about her telling a story in a way that feels like she’s just “catching someone up” is really interesting because that’s a lot like how tiktok influencers tell stories of their lives while doing makeup, or how they relay stories in general. it’s this short form that’s supposed to keep your attention. i think that a character just kinda Talking Like That is really useful for characterization.

1. it reflects who she is and how that kind of culture and mindset affects everything, not just what goes on online and
2. the reason why this style of speaking is so popular on different social media platforms is because the ease of digesting it paired with a very clear and distinct influencer voice and personality helps people form parasocial attachments to the speaker.

what i’m trying to say is that it actually makes her more realistic and endearing to people reading her, especially because a PERSON like tiffany and a CHARACTER like tiffany are going to have different responses.

like, i’m a big fan of characters who are a bit vapid, because you get to see into their lives in the stories they’re in. sometimes, it’ll be a story of “my parents are rich and neglect my emotional needs and throw money at me instead,” or “there’s nothing good about me except my money/looks and i have rock-bottom self esteem,” and empathizing with them is much easier because they’re not real. but with real people… dude, rich people have SLAVES and shit. rich people will have clothing lines made in sweatshops and then go “oops haha didn’t know that was unethical.”

anyway really liked that part.

thank you for your wonderful comments. you really made me smile today!!

it is 10 at night… i have taken the gummy that helps me calm my nerves and sleep… i curl up in my bed after a long day of working on physical copy pr packages… i wrap myself up in blankets… i check itch.io on my laptop.

“ah. another lovely reply from ha neul.”

i smile warmly, for i have been seen and appreciated by another human being on this planet, and in turn, i see and appreciate you

i go to sleep peacefully, looking like this

I think we all have that One Little Piece of anne rice we like, because she really is everywhere. like, i remember my friend showing me the movie when i was in college, and i cherish that memory, because the only thing i remember about it is that lestat bit some lady in the boob and i thought it was so funny that i almost fell off the couch. now, when people eagerly ask me if i’m into IWTV, i’m like, “is that that movie where the vampire bites a lady in the boob” xD

i’m glad you like my ideas, being an adult is awesome because your 3 ft tall barbies can be 6ft tall scandinavian men who still very much look like barbie. my friends and i are always calling our characters our dolls who we “smush together.”

always lovely to read your comments 😊 ❤️

oniisama e. blonde evil teenager who looks 30

reading this really makes me want to keep writing devlogs regularly. thank you for telling me how much you enjoyed it! when you have your special journey, it will be an honor to witness it. whatever project captures your heart and takes you for a ride will be wonderful simply because it will be full of love. no matter how tough it is out there, the joy of creation is what makes life worth living.

ANYWAY SORRY FOR HOW LONG THAT REPLY WAS LMAO i just thoroughly enjoy your thoughts on my work and i appreciate you So so much.

you know how I was like, “I put Parf on r/vampires and they hated it?” For a while, I would post there for my own entertainment, because it was rife with dumbasses. Like, one of them assumed that Kenny faked his sight disability to “lure in prey,” and when I told them he didn’t, they said “ohh okay. so he makes people pity him and then lures them in” and it was SO weird and ableist.

but what got me to stop posting there, what got me to stop being entertained by that place, was when i explained val’s stance on vampirism and immortality, and i got GANGED UP ON. they found it incredibly bizarre that val thinks about death and dying on a daily basis and they were like, “that’s a sign of major mental instability, and he needs help.” lol. wow i so did not realize that 🙄. someone even called him the most depressing vampire character they’d ever heard of. this really puzzled me because honestly, i think val is as optimistic as he can be in his situation, his relationship to death is realistic for his own perspective on mortality, and most importantly, a character who is still worth engaging with. they were insistent that the way i wrote val was harmful, and that made him a badly made character who they were unwilling to approach with good faith. I was like, where even AM i right now? aren’t you people reading shit by like, anne rice, one of the most mentally unstable authors i have ever come across? and it’s not like there is a shortage of mentally unwell vampires. it made me think about how people insist that chronically ill people have an upbeat and happy demeanor all the time, and don’t show signs of mental turmoil. immortality is somewhat of an illness to me, and i wanted to frame it as such. immortality can be framed in many interesting ways, but anyone who fully understands the ramifications of it and appears to be mentally stable… really couldn’t exist to me, realistically. if people want to explore immortality in a way that is realistic there has to be acknowledgement of how much this world and our brains are not made for forever.

I absolutely loved seeing your play-by-play on Bsky. It wasn’t just enjoyable to me, it was valuable to me. I know people are playing my stuff, but I rarely get to see a play-by-play of it, and sitting with reading and reading through this game together in the same room or in a discord chat is just NOT my thing after working on it for so long. I really like letting people engage with my work at their own pace!

What really got me though, with you, is that it was my first time really seeing someone who wasn’t into vampires read this thing, and that is an audience that is SO interesting to me, as a guy who isn’t into vampires, and is not interested in writing them further if it’s not with these characters. I’m not a vampire fan. I’m a visual kei fan who wanted to make someone really old, really slutty, and full of existential dread. And vampires were right there. Either I made up a type of guy who was immortal, or I made a vampire. But obviously, most of my audience has been Vampire People, many of which engage with Parfum because they like vampires and they like the aesthetics. I often fear that the contents of this VN sit in a place that won’t make those fans happy, and also won’t make non-vampire people happy, either, but seeing how invested you were in it the whole time made me really happy. It was such a rare treat to see someone engaging with my work all the way through who wasn’t like… my husband play testing it, lol.

I also… don’t like to police how people interpret my art, but it felt like your perception of Val was so spot on to what I was going for. Referring to him as “grandpa” or “big walking dog plushie” is very close to how I see him. He is an old man and a teenage girl and a beautiful woman and Just Some Guy who needs a bath and a fucking cigarette. Even though this is how a lot of people tend to see him, I still get many people who are blinded by their attraction to him and think of him as Sexy and Dommy the whole time, and also people who straight up HATE him and have no trouble telling me they want him to suffer. Such is the curse of having the Stereotypical Blonde Vampire. This is gonna sound so hammy, but I think for both of those types, they fear Val’s sincerity. He is an embarrassing person, and I know that, because there are lots of parts of myself I gave to him that I was embarrassed of and wanted to accept more, and often I can tell these things make people uncomfortable enough to ignore them for the sake of seeing him as a Big Sexy Doll, or get angry at them enough to use him as a punching bag. No matter how people engage with Val as a character, I want them to bring him their sincerity, because he is not only bringing his, but mine as well. This goes for all my characters, but with Val especially. For some people, bringing sincerity is like bringing a handbag or a coin purse, but for others, it can be more difficult, as heavy as a suitcase full of bricks. Thank you for bringing your sincerity to engage with my work, however heavy sincerity may be.

also: you are like the first person to be afraid of kenny. while i’m not afraid of him myself, i think this is justified. kenny is the number one most thirsted over character in this game but if they ever got a chance to shoot their shot with him irl there is a 100% chance he’d do something that sends them running screaming out of clair de lune. they think they can match his freak, but they can’t. val sends lu to clair not just to learn about vampire shit, but also to see if it scares him away. but of course, lupino verona, a man who has sat at a table with too many italian mobster uncles with huge obnoxious cigars to count, is like, “uh… yeah. he’s just kinda weird i guess.” insane.

thank you jett. chewing on this

I switched over from t-gel to t-shots after 2 years. I’m taking my first shot tonight, and i remembered this existed. My husband is playing DND in the other room, and I don’t want him to make a big deal out of it, so I’m gonna do it myself so he doesn’t worry about me. I went to the tea-length visual novels list on my website, where I THOUGHT i had this thing listed, and then realized I didn’t, so I had to go and SPECIFICALLY search for it here, because I wanted to play it before I did my first shot to put myself in good spirits. I love this thing so dearly.

Thank you so much for reading 🥹

I haven’t played yet, I will, I definitely will, but I just need you to know what kind of joy it was opening my email and seeing “Meiri released a new divorce simulator” in the subject line. What a funny thing to wake up to! This looks great, and it looks like some great people worked on it. Can’t wait to crack this one open.

beautifully sincere as always my friend

good to have around for when i feel crazy. though i have only read this today, i’ve been following what is basically this manifesto for a while now. i’m a solo dev so the crushing weight of being in control of my own “marketing” and “success” in the current internet climate is harrowing. my art is how i communicate with others, and my work is free to play because i care most about making real connections from it, but i just haven’t been able to drum that up in an environment that treats everything as disposable. even when i know deep down, the internet as we know it has been broken, being able to hear it from someone every once in a while is great. it lets me know i’m not alone in longing for the real connection i used to experience online, and that there are people besides me out there who give enough of a shit about this stuff to write a manifesto about it. it was a pleasure being able to sit with these feelings i’ve had as not just a set of inside thoughts, but words laid out for me on pages.

she ate and left no crumbs

Read this because I also have a vampire-related story in the Queer Halloween Stories bundle, so I’ve been scoping out the other vampire-makers. I need to emphasize that no singular piece of interactive fiction has ever allowed me to depict the startle I feel when someone knocks on my door and I’m in the middle of something in my kitchen. “fuck the Brita, fuck the water spill.” You were so real for that. Toward the end, I treated my best friend kind of how I would want to be treated if I came out to them, which is, “don’t ask too many questions, just let this part of me take up space,” and I feel like I was able to do that pretty effectively, even with such short responses. I know it probably feels like I’m reading into this too much, but I feel like a lot of games like this tend to push you into asking all sorts of probing questions in order to pad out the substance of the game, and I wouldn’t want to ask too much about my friend being a vampire. I really loved just being able to say “oh cool!” and ask if they could have human food or not. Treating being a vampire like it’s a food allergy is so funny to me, but it’s also so real. Being a vampire can be being a vampire, but in this case, it’s just your friend, so I take their confession as like, “hey, I just wanna tell you that… I’m probably really old.”

Also, love when vampires can have human food/aren’t repulsed by it. Love when vampires just get to be people.

I love this thing. Absolutely fantastic. The artwork especially is so dynamic and expressive. Just looking at this thing makes me want to pick up my drawing tablet and start searching for some scratchy ink brushes to use. I sent a link to this page to a bunch of my friends and every one of them has said something along the lines of “this looks sick as hell.” And they’re right!!! This looks sick as hell.

I hope you know how much it means to me to have someone read and recount as much as you did from my project. Whenever my friends make games or write stories, I always try to give them detailed reviews like this, because it brings me so much joy when people write this kind of thing about something I’ve made. I’m gonna be self-indulgent and give you some comments on your comments and a bunch of behind-the-scenes about the making of Act 2!

-I’m glad you like the backgrounds! They were originally supposed to be fully rendered. My friends saw the fully rendered backgrounds, and rushed to tell me how bad they looked. It was the first time they really told me something I was doing was bad, but I don’t like ignoring criticism. They were the ones who suggested the more minimal backgrounds with lines. I’m so glad I listened to them, they were SO right, and they saved me a TON of work rendering backgrounds. Sometimes, less is more!

-Val’s cute new outfit is based off of a bottle of perfume! It’s based off of Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male Terrible.

I saw this bottle, the name, and the razor blade necklace, and felt so inspired. This outfit has existed since before Val was nice. He used to be kind of terrible! I’m satisfied with where he was then and where he is now, because I was able to write a nice guy who does messed up things as a result. I looked at that bottle, and thought, “whatever man wears this is trying so desperately to be a bad-boy type! Let’s put this on this Scandinavian dork!”

-oh my god I’m SO glad you said what you did about saturday because AAAAAAAAH! I really have trouble writing side characters. I mean, I don’t have trouble writing them, I just feel weird letting side characters be side characters. I want every character to have a spotlight, in some way, so when I have a side character like her (I have such a soft spot for her too) I worry that I’m letting other characters take too much of a spotlight over them. I really wanted her personality to shine through.

-Lupine is a trans guy, and Dash considers himself transfemme (he/her), but is not explicitly a trans woman. When I was writing Dash the most, I was in a transition period where I was in the same kind of spot as him, but I’m transmasc (so, inverse almost!) Now, I’m in a more explicitly masculine place, but I have a lot of friends who have settled into their gender feelings in a place that’s more like Dash’s. He’s a character that, whether people are transmasc or transfemme, they have told me they feel represented by. I feel like a lot of trans characters out there are put into neat little boxes, when in real life, gender is messier than that, yknow? I wanted to convey that with some of my characters, especially with Dash. Even I feel represented by Dash, despite being on the other end of things. For example, I still use “she” pronouns despite being a man (he/her). the important thing about any of my trans characters is that they are trans and that me and other trans people can look at them and go 🥰🥰🥰 omg i’m trans too

-The parts where Lupine or Dash say “don’t think, it’s bad for you…” This is something known within my circles, but my husband says this to me. I stole it from him! I was having trouble wrapping up a lot of scenes I wrote between my characters, because there were just so many thoughts and words that bubbled up inside them. But sometimes, you need to have silence, and I knew when they needed to have silence. I remembered what my husband tells me when I’m thinking too much. We’ll be in the car, I’ll be staring out the window, and he’ll say, “you’re thinking. Stop that.” And he’s RIGHT!

-Donna wouldn’t have killed Val lol. I know that, but I don’t think Val did. She’s too scared to kill anyone anymore, I think. Both her and Val could never kill anyone like that nowadays. She was a character that took a lot of work to write. I didn’t want to let people down with her. I didn’t want it to seem like Val was the good guy the whole time. I wanted to show how traumatized she was and how much she tried to look tough in front of him. So I gave her a glock.

Anyway, it’s been a pleasure to read and reply to this. Thank you so much for reading!

This is the least cursed reply I could have hoped for, thank you for explaining! Yeah, Val is genderfluid, so the “transgender protagonist” tag makes sense, but the “gigantic breasts” tag…? My friends and I had a really good laugh wondering how that may have occurred. It was probably tagged as “protagonist with gigantic breasts” by someone as a joke. It makes my heart warm that someone would love Val enough to spread misinformation about his boobs.

this is killing me. is that how you found this game? were you searching for protagonists with gigantic breasts? not that there’s any shame in that. I don’t know why it was tagged as that, and i am sorry for any misunderstanding. but my protagonist IS a 6’4” Scandinavian with not much muscle tone, and therefore, his chest is quite large and pillowy soft. to me? his breasts are…maybe not gigantic, but special and worth mentioning nonetheless.

I did my best to make Act 2 a satisfying experience, it means the world to me that you would take the time to tell me this. Thanks so much for reading this far ❤️

First of all, thanks so much for playing! It means a lot when someone takes the time to read my work. I hope you’ll forgive me for the text wall of a response, I just enjoy talking about this project a lot.

It always makes me happy when people point out how ambiguous Val being a vampire is in the beginning, because when I first started writing it, I debated whether I was actually going to go through with making him a vampire, or just some guy who is extremely committed to the bit. I threw it around a lot that maybe I could make people believe he was a vampire, but then when he turned out to just be some delusional loser, it would be a big twist, but as I kept writing Val, I wanted to be nicer to him than that, haha. He goes through a lot, I didn’t want to make him more pathetic than he needed to be, even though it would be kind of interesting. I would really like to hear what you think of Act 2, if you decide to play, because while everyone is very caring about each other, there’s a little more spice in the second act, and it’s addressed why Val is so saccharine-sweet all the time. Act 1 is cute, but so far, Act 2 has been hitting people like a bus, so I hope you enjoy it!

I’m sorry for it being such a trouble to download from an external source, but I don’t think I can make the game smaller, nor will any future installments be smaller. If people are afraid of the file having a virus, they’re gonna have to make that judgement for themselves. There’s really no point in my game containing any sort of a virus, because I’m a developer with an online presence, a Patreon, a website, etc., and if I were to put a virus on people’s computers, that would completely ruin my reputation. It would be pretty weird for someone to spend years of their life on a project, only for it to be an elaborate plot to put a virus on people’s computers. The external download link is also the same one on my website, priro.pro, and I’ll actually be selling the game as a physical copy on some pretty custom-made USB sticks soon, too.

I’m not sure what you exactly mean by that the game could use more visuals, but I assume by the context that this is a criticism of how static my sprites are. The reason my sprites are so static is because I have to cut corners in order to produce this game by myself, and also preserve the cadence of the game. It’s commonly advised for visual novel developers to add more body movement to sprites, or something that makes them a bit more visually interesting to the reader, but with the way my dialogue is written, a lot of body movement in my sprites feels strange. When playing, the player’s eye is usually focused on the dialogue box with more banter-like, back-and-forth dialogue, which is predominantly what Parfum Nostalgique has. I set up my sprites so they had a wider range of facial expressions rather than body movement, because when the reader inevitably breaks focus from the dialogue box, they are not left staring back at a sprite with an unfitting expression on the character’s face. I find that some games with more limited sprite range prioritize body movement, and it works well for expressive characters, but facial expression was where I could more easily add range in my characters’ expressiveness with my work capacity, being one person working on this whole project. I tried to add this range with Dashiell’s sprites especially, in the scene where he’s talking to Val in his room. A lot of subtle changes were added to Dash’s face every time he’s about to cry. If I were to make sprites with lots of different facial expressions AND movements, it would have been too much for one person to handle, and it also would have been an absurd amount of sprites, especially considering my characters have multiple different outfits and hairstyles depending on the scenes in this series. I also wanted to prioritize visually interesting sequences of stills, like Oberon’s scene and Val’s inner monologue scene, rather than creating a game where only sprites take the floor, so I had to consider that part of my workload.

Also, yeah the game doesn’t save screenshots when you save! I preferred the aesthetics of the roses, and Parfum isn’t really long enough that someone would need to make multiple save files.

I hope this explains why the game is the way it is, and that it was at least mildly interesting!

Thanks so much for playing! It really means a lot to me. The game is free now because the accessibility of the game is more important to me than the very small profit I was making from it. Most of the money I make for this project is on Patreon, but most of my traffic when it comes to downloads comes from in-person events and word of mouth, and lots of people who want to play aren’t familiar with Itch.io as a platform, and find it daunting to navigate it. Because of this, it’s been easier for me to make my game accessible for free on my website for direct download, and use Itch.io as a tool for spreading the word to whoever uses this platform. The age range of people who enjoy this series varies wildly, and some people who have played it don’t even know what Steam is, but scanning a QR code with their phone to a direct download link is something they’re more familiar with. Might not make a whole lot of sense, but it’s okay, because the joy of this game being accessible to more people has been more rewarding than any money I could get for it!

Ah, I’m glad!! Val’s a real sweetie, I hope he captures your heart <3

my dearest darling, you know they are going to suffer

YESSSSS! Please tell me what you think when you play!

Just got to reply to this now!! Thank you so much for playing the demo. I worked really hard on it. I haven’t heard my art described as “dreamy” before, but that is such an accurate word for what I’m going for that I have no idea why it has been out of my project’s descriptive vocabulary before!! I hope you’ll play Act 1, it came out like. A DAY after you wrote this, and when I saw your comment I was rubbing my little hands together like, “good because I’m about to DROP this thing.” Thank you for being enthusiastic enough to leave a comment!!