[English Visual Novel] Lost Winter Nights by Lekasoft Studio

[Nahilys]

Hello everyone,

I am Nahilys, leader of Lekasoft Studio and I am very pleased to introduce a revamped look for our first game Lost Winter Nights.

We are currently working on a 1st demo to be release to the public this summer. It will feature the whole Introductory Chapter of the game with one up to three poses with several expressions for each appearing characters. as well as half a dozen of original soundtracks and around forteen orignal unique backgrounds. We also plan to include a few CG for it.



- GUI SNEAK PEEK -

https://youtu.be/g9S60G4ZczE



- THE TEAM-


Nahilys : Project Lead, Original Idea, Scenario.

Dave Burns : Scenario, Script Writing.

Kia : Graphic Designer, Animator, Lead Programmer.



Vaatry : Character Design, Sprites & CG Artist.

Alexis Ril : Demo Backgrounds Artist.

Mock Off : Composer


Grey : Assistant Programmer




- THE GAME -


Language : English

Genres : Romance, Psychological, Drama, Thriller

Rating : 18+ (Sex, Blood, Strong sujbects).

All ages version : Yes




Special features :


- Animated Menus

- Animated CG

- English Voice Acting

- 3 Routes including variations depending on which order they are read.






- STORY TEASER -



Another winter passes, with nothing changing.

Ethan Wright is a 20 year old college student who lives a normal, satisfying life.

With his four best friends, he can't think of anything more he needs.

But something is wrong. An unshakable feeling that something important is missing.

Until, one night, he meets a strange girl, sitting in the falling snow.

As weeks pass, Ethan will learn that his life isn't as quite right as he thought and will inevitably get closer and closer to the truth.




- CHARACTERS -


Full cast (Unreworked art) :




From left to right (REWORKED SPRITES) :


Aika Sokolov

Age : 20

Aika is Ethan's childhood friend. She is the very possessive type of girl but would do anything she can so she and the people she loves live happy.




Morgan Crouch [WIP]

Age : 18

Morgan is a very smart girl who used to focus only on her grades but meeting Lisbeth in college made her discover real friendship. She is often treated as the child of the group.





Lisbeth d'Arcy [WIP]

Age : 19

Lisbeth is Morgan's best and unique friend. Quite rebel, she spends most of her time fooling around and doesn't care much about studies as she prefers to flirt with boys and especially girls.


Thomas Burns [WIP]

Age : 20

Thomas is Ethan's best friend. He has always been there for him, helping and counselling him about things he would not be able to decide on his own. Thomas is very adaptable to people and knows very well how to handle one's character.



Alice Deslauriers [WIP] [Non-demo character]

Age : N/A




- CONTACT -


E-mail : contact@lekasoft.com / elodonnet@gmail.com

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/lekasoft/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/LekasoftStudio



- GALLERY -



[Soundtrack] Mock Off – Memories Lost : https://soundcloud.com/joshua1207/memories-lost

[gekiganwing]

First of all, it is important to note that our game will not follow most of Japanese Visual Novels stereotypes...

It's your story. Write what you want to create.

Originality is definitely not bad. However, I don't think that it should be your number one priority. Why is that? Read TVTropes' article So You Want to be Original when you have time, and then think about it.

As a commercial project, we are currently working on a demo to be released as soon as possible which will represent a full week in-game as an introduction to our project overall. Its [release] will be followed by a Kickstarter crowdfunding to pay some of our members (mostly Animator, and Composer), which wouldn't mean a huge amount.

Have you already sold a work of fiction? If you are already an indie creator -- no matter whether it's a prose story, a comic, a game, or something else -- then be sure to use your experience to your advantage. However, if you have not yet created a commercial project, then you will benefit by doing some research. Take some time to learn about the indie game business.

Likewise, do you already have a successful Kickstarter or similar crowdfunding effort? If not, then make sure to do research before creating a campaign.

Feel free to give us any feedback, or advices that come through your minds.

[opinion]You may have noticed that I didn't include the acronym "OELVN" in the subject line. That's because I strongly dislike this term, and avoid using it as much as possible. I believe that the term is mostly used by fans who want to marginalize and disdain visual novels written in English. Also, I think that the term is meaningless to people who do not routinely read and enjoy translated VNs. If you ask me, I think you'll benefit by not using it to sell your story.[/opinion]

[Nahilys]

Hello,

sorry for the late reply.

To be honest, it took me a little while to find a proper answer to your post, since you seem to have been totally misunderstanding our mindset coming into this project.

It's your story. Write what you want to create.

Originality is definitely not bad. However, I don't think that it should be your number one priority. Why is that? Read TVTropes' article So You Want to be Original when you have time, and then think about it.

My policy has always been "I do what I want to do". I know where are my influences coming from, and adapted/mixed them to create something I wanted to tell. We honestly don't really care about originality, only making sure the game is interesting enough.
We only wanted to keep people in touch with the way the game has been written so far, as it ended up our writer is mostly influenced by western culture when it comes to writing games - which is totally fine with me & is not even an important part of the story.

Have you already sold a work of fiction? If you are already an indie creator -- no matter whether it's a prose story, a comic, a game, or something else -- then be sure to use your experience to your advantage. However, if you have not yet created a commercial project, then you will benefit by doing some research. Take some time to learn about the indie game business.

Likewise, do you already have a successful Kickstarter or similar crowdfunding effort? If not, then make sure to do research before creating a campaign

Although I do not have any experience in this field personally, we do have a few members who are quite experienced and are helping me take care of all this. I also contacted different people in my country who could give me some advices about money management, advertising...

[opinion]You may have noticed that I didn't include the acronym "OELVN" in the subject line. That's because I strongly dislike this term, and avoid using it as much as possible. I believe that the term is mostly used by fans who want to marginalize and disdain visual novels written in English. Also, I think that the term is meaningless to people who do not routinely read and enjoy translated VNs. If you ask me, I think you'll benefit by not using it to sell your story.[/opinion]

Although I don't totally agree with that point, I understand it. I just feel this term helps figuring out the style of game that is being used, as this is not something we are used to in the West, so people already have an idea of what's they're going to play in the end. The "Original English Language" part to me is mostly to show the amateur side of it, nothing else.

I also came with a short update :

Lisbeth & Kyo's designs have been added. I am not totally fond of the way spoilers are handled and I could not find an other way to use them, so I'll keep it that way for now. I just feel most people won't bother checking if there is text written in the blank boxes.

[Nahilys]

Hello everyone,

after quite some time of work, I am happy to finally post a huge update on the forum.


You will be able to find :

- several new assets such as backgrounds and soundtracks

- a first look of our revamped sprites

- a first look at our GUI and menus

We are not able to share a demo of the game as of now since we are using a lot of placeholders still to help us work, but I would happily give a DL link to our current state of development to everyone who has interest in it. Just contact me here and I will give it to you through Google Drive.


Obviously, any feedback would be highly appreciated

Thank you very much for supporting us.


P.S. : If you are interested in helping us in any way possible, feel free to contact us and tell us what would you be interested to do for/with us. Although our main development team is complete, we are still open to every proposition we could add to the game.


Nahilys

https://www.facebook.com/lekasoft/

contact@lekasoft.com

elodonnet@gmail.com

[Nahilys]

Hi and good day to all.

I am glad to announce that I finally launched our Twitter account, updating it everyday with new stuff although I'm a bit new to it. Stay in touch and thank you to everyone who support us.

https://twitter.com/LekasoftStudio

~ Nahilys

[Nahilys]

Hello there,

Today I'd like to announce our incoming Developer Demo which we are working on. It will be the first public playable demo release for Lost Winter Nights.

You can follow our progress on Twitter & Facebook.

Why a Developer Demo ?


We decided to release a short version of our bigger demo using our current assets for several reasons, but we are mostly interested in the community feedback to help us improve the game. We have worked for a good number of months, trying to find what fit the team and the way everyone wished to work on that project. Before we really go diehard into it, we are very interested in what our potential future players have to say about it ! Of course, we are totally aware that there are is still a lot of work to do, but we felt like people would rather get their hands on the game itself than just random pictures and threads.

On an other point, we also expect that demo to help us recruit some potential members such as a final background artist. Any other proposition about helping us developping the game will be gladly appreciated and examined.



What will that Demo show ?



That first demo will not feature every asset we worked on as we are currently reworking some of them /would like to keep some more for later. You will be able to learn more about both our demo heroines Aika Sokolov and Morgan Crouch, their characters and relationships in a few scenes of our choice.

Both those characters do have a good number a sprites, although they may not all be used in the demo cause the situations do not fit. Each one of them currently have a full-face and a 3/4 pose with a dozen of expressions.

Most of the GUI will be complete but the Gallery Menu. We also plan on changing two sprites on our Main Menu as we are currently reworking their designs a bit. Also, you will be able to have a look at our first Demo backgrounds, which will be used until our Kickstarter project, which is meant to help us hire an other artist for that particular matter - a BIG thanks to Alexis R. for helping us out until then.

Lastly, our composer Joshua will release our three starting soundtracks for the game.



The release date of the Developer Demo for Lost Winter Nights has no clear date yet but is meant to go out in two up to three weeks. Look forward to it !

~ by Nahilys

for Lekasoft Studio

contact@lekasoft.com / elodonnet@gmail.com / Skype : sep-hyth

[Noire]

Nice, I really like those character designs
Good luck with your demo

[Nahilys]

Nice, I really like those character designs
Good luck with your demo

Thank you for you support, so very much appreciated !

We do hope that first although very short demo will get people more interested in the project. >//<