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Break Chance Memento, also commonly referred to as "BCM", is an upcoming BxB or BL visual novel. It takes place in modern-day Nagasaki, Japan, but the genre is a mix of sci-fi and mystery. The big feature in this game is the ability to travel back and forth through time. (Note: I did a lot of research for the setting/culture, but of course a lot of places have been made up, so it's not going to be 100% true to life.)

The gameplay involves saving serial murder victims by traveling through time and piecing together clues to solve the whole mystery. Time travel is only possible if you have the proper memento for the point in time you’re wanting to go back/forward to, so you also have to figure out and find these items and utilize proper game time management. Also, during lulls between the murders, you get some downtime in which you can live life as a normal student and further personal relationships. Romance is not the main point of this game, but of course part of the gameplay involves talking to the potential love interests and getting them to like you. It's entirely possible, however, to get the true ending of the game without being romantically involved with anyone. After beating the game once as Shuuki, the player unlocks Natsume's storyline. Because the two storylines happen at the same time, decisions made in Shuuki's story will directly affect what happens in a subsequent Natsume playthrough. (it's possible to reset this and play Natsume's story with a clean slate, but certain assumptions will be made) Though Natsume and Shuuki's stories happen at about the same time, however, their goals and POVs are entirely different.

Disclaimers: The game is not going to be explicit. There will, of course, be sensuality, but any sex scenes will be "fade-to-black and implied" after a certain point. There's also the possibility of light incest in some of the game's routes. This game is commercial. Right now we are planning on selling the final product for for $15 USD. We recommend that players be at least 15 years of age due to the game containing inappropriate language, some sexuality and sensuality, and a moderate amount of blood and gore.


Events in Break Chance Memento center on the Amamiya family: brothers Natsume, Masaharu, and Shuuki.

Four years ago, Shuuki Amamiya’s world was turned upside-down upon the accidental death of his twin sister, Fuyuka, at just 12 years of age. Afterwards, their parents blamed Fuyuka’s death on Natsume, the eldest Amamiya brother, because he was the one who'd been with her when she died. Though the specific details behind Fuyuka's death remained murky, at best, there was no going back. The Amamiya family would never be the same.

In the summer of 2012, after their parents go abroad temporarily for work, the three Amamiya brothers have to move into the dormitories of their private high school. One September morning, Shuuki happens upon the dead body of his older brother Masaharu, who was brutally murdered. Not long afterward, an oddly-dressed stranger appears out of thin air and tells a grief-stricken Shuuki: “Do you want to bring your brother back? To fix your family relations? You can…if you learn to travel through time.”

Before he knows it, Shuuki is right in the middle of a plot far more sinister than he could have ever imagined. Soon enough, he finds that the key to traveling through time and stopping innocents from being killed lies in break chance mementos–items that are a link between the past, future, and present.

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Break Chance Memento is, at its roots, a story about a family that's very broken and trying to get back together again. It's about the uncertainties of life and time travel, how no issue is simply black or white, and focuses on two teenaged boys who have to come to terms with who they really are and what they really want out of life.


This is the main cast of characters. We have a complete cast of about 25, including secondary and minor characters... You'll have to wait and meet them all properly in the actual game, but we have posted up some of their sprites from time to time.


Shuuki Amamiya (天宮秋希), 1st year, 16 years old. The "hero"?
A fashion-conscious primadonna whose claim-to-fame is dating close to 25% of the student body (male and female). Shuuki has the nasty habit of falling in love with someone, bothering that person until the feelings are mutual, and then quickly losing interest and either dumping them or being so detached that he himself gets dumped. He is bright and quick-witted, but has a sharp tongue, tending to be blunt. Most of his peers find him hard to deal with. Though he loves his brothers, he goes out of his way to try to annoy them--just so they'll remember him.


Natsume Amamiya (天宮夏目), 3rd year, 18 years old. The narcoleptic.
The first thing everyone says about Natsu is that he has a very cold, aloof personality. It's exceedingly rare to see him angry, for him to even raise his voice or care much about anything. He falls asleep incredibly easily and it takes his brothers, or the few other people close to him, to keep Natsu interested enough in the present to stay awake. While he is intelligent, he doesn't put forth much effort towards things that he doesn't like--which is almost everything. That said, once he finally gets attached to someone, he becomes affectionate to the point of ridiculousness.


Masaharu Amamiya (天宮政春), 2nd year, 17 years old. The serious one.
Growing up, Masaharu's always felt too normal compared to his brothers and ended up with a need to set himself apart from "the two weirdos". In truth, he genuinely loves and cares for the both of them, no matter how annoying or embarrassing he may find them, but expressing said love and care is a different matter altogether. Ever since he discovered his natural talent for sports, he's been putting most of his effort into that. Masaharu is the captain of the basketball team, even though that position is normally reserved for seniors--a testament to his ability.


Chiaki Sorata (空田稚空), 3rd year, 18 years old. The chibi.
A childhood friend of Natsume's, Chiaki is known for his diminutive stature--that is, he's incredibly short for his age. Those who are stupid enough to point that out to him, however, are immediately subjected to his wrath. Chiaki is somewhat short-tempered and a hard worker who dislikes lazy people and being distracted, so it's a wonder how he and Natsume ever got to be friends. He likes teasing people and has a dry sense of humor. He's also oddly clingy and touchy-feely, but only around those he knows well and/or are not Natsume. Chiaki becomes Shuuki's dorm roommate.


Yukinari Hosokawa (細川行成), 2nd year, 17 years old. The dreamer.
Yukinari grew up in a strict, old-fashioned family that maintains influence and power in both local and national government. There's a certain amount of privilege coming from that background, but mostly Yukinari feels a burden of restrictions, keeping-face, and achieving academically. Yukinari is easily distracted, tends to dream, and is not very self-conscious. He loves the ocean and sailing. A bit masochistic, he enjoys annoying the people he likes until they snap at him. He is physically sensitive, so he doesn't like to be touched randomly. Masaharu's classmate and later, Natsume's dorm roommate.


Kyousuke Hisashi (久志京助)
Kyousuke comes from the future, about 10 years or so ahead. He's a future friend of Natsume's and is the one who gives Shuuki the time machine. Though he can't interact with Shuuki face-to-face that often, he often sends Shuuki messages and helps him through this whole ordeal. He doesn’t like to reveal much about himself, but it seems that he genuinely cares about the Amamiya family and wants very much to help them. Kyousuke is mature and goal-oriented, but also somewhat sarcastic and mysterious. He's rather difficult to understand.


UI: We have a secret GUI planned for Natsume's story that Lazcht hasn't started on yet since I haven't gotten to that part of the script yet. I also still have yet to code the CG gallery, which she designed a while back, because we have no CGs yet.
Art: Auro has finished the sprites and BGs. She's currently working on the CGs.
Writing/programming: Currently writing Shuuki's chapter four (out of five) and coding in the new sprites/BGs.

I've actually written more that hasn't been converted to game script yet, so this isn't totally accurate, but it's close enough. XD

Overall: According to our roadmap, we're about 50% done.

Screenshots: (click to enlarge)




Note that these screenshots still reflect a game in process and things may change at any time.


Other points of interest are my dev Twitter, Auro's tumblr, my game dev Tumblr, and the Cyanide Tea blog. The official website is here and you can download the prequel/demo (released 10/31/2011) here. (also available in German as of 11/12/2011)

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1/2 of Cyanide Tea | BCM | Ristorante Amore | The Elevator | @Twitter
I'm extremely busy as of late, so I'm not around here very much. If you need me, Twitter's probably the quickest way to get my attention if you don't have me on Skype already.

And to start off discussion, I have a few things to draw people's attention to...



I put together a video of a few scenes and gameplay from the beginning chapters of the game, including the parts where you have to find mementos and use them to time travel. You can view the video in HD here on YouTube. Any comments regarding what's shown in the video would be very welcome.

Recently I've been working on coding two things:


This is an alternate NVL screen for the recurring dreams Shuuki has about drowning/his sister's death. Is the text legible? I've been trying to work on this with my beta testers and Auro and we settled on this gradient text style, but is it still too hard to read?


This is a gallery that keeps track of the mementos you collect (and use) throughout the game. It also allows you to view the scenes again, either in Action or Stealth mode, so it's both an item gallery and a scene replay menu. Would you use such a feature? If I were to create a separate scene replay menu with the romantic/important scenes, would that be something people want? That sort of thing seems to come up a lot in JVNs and I personally enjoy it, but I'm not sure if it'd be useful to anyone else.

Aaaand I suppose that's it for the moment.

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1/2 of Cyanide Tea | BCM | Ristorante Amore | The Elevator | @Twitter
I'm extremely busy as of late, so I'm not around here very much. If you need me, Twitter's probably the quickest way to get my attention if you don't have me on Skype already.

I think the answer is yes, but perhaps not for the obvious reason. To my eye, the light coming from the top right of the screen is really interesting, so my eyes keep getting drawn towards it. That tends to break up the top-to-bottom flow of the page, making it harder to read then it otherwise would be.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt

Hmm that was something I considered and, in fact, one of the testers brought up the point that the aspect of that BG that makes the text hardest to read is the gradation of light streaming from the upper right. Though I think we were mostly talking about colors and not about the eye being drawn to the light source, as you mentioned. But I think background images need a light source to look more real and this NVL screen would certainly look a lot flatter if that light was taken out. Ultimately, players can just spend a while longer staring at the screen to read everything (this dream is fairly short and over after two NVL screens) and after seeing this a few times, hopefully their eyes just get used to it? But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Would it look better if I perhaps just put a color overlay on top of the BG instead of putting the text directly on top of it? Though I think that'd be sort of ugly-looking, it's a preferable alternative to removing the light (though Auro painted this BG, so I'm not sure if she even CAN remove the light without redrawing the whole thing) because I think it's pretty. :C Or is it the contrast of color the draws the eye? Because the contrast will still be there even if we put an overlay on top of it.

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1/2 of Cyanide Tea | BCM | Ristorante Amore | The Elevator | @Twitter
I'm extremely busy as of late, so I'm not around here very much. If you need me, Twitter's probably the quickest way to get my attention if you don't have me on Skype already.

have you tried what it looks like if you flip the bg so that the light-source is in the left corner and where the reader automatically looks to start reading? It wouldn't require any redrawing because the water bubbles will probably look good either way.

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Re∞Birth (in development)

looks fine to me, i like the gradient makes it easier to read when the background fades to a lighter color.



i like all those ideas, i would really like to see stuff like this.

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That... could work. And it's something I reeeeeeeally should have though of. Omg, so embarrassing //)>_<(// I should know better. Thank you for giving the suggestion!

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The other 1/2 of Cyanide Tea l My Deviantart Account I My Tumber Account I Break Chance Memento I Ristorante Amore

I have to say: this looks brilliant. I'm not a BxB fan, but this is a visual novel that I am very, very eagerly anticipating. It looks ridiculously great and the story is quite compelling. Will this be out soon?

I ended up tweaking it based on Natsumachi's suggestion (thanks, Kei! ;;). I also added a very very light color overlay to help with contrast, as well as edited the colors used in the gradient, of course. I think this looks better now:


(click to enlarge)

@applegirl: It's hard for us to really give a release date until we get closer to finishing, but if we continue at our current pace, I'm pretty sure we should be done by this summer. I'm almost 100% sure we'll have it done this year, just not exactly sure when. XD Sorry I'm being so non-committal, I just don't want to give a date and then not have the game done by that date. But thanks so much for your support! We really appreciate it.

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1/2 of Cyanide Tea | BCM | Ristorante Amore | The Elevator | @Twitter
I'm extremely busy as of late, so I'm not around here very much. If you need me, Twitter's probably the quickest way to get my attention if you don't have me on Skype already.

Oh wow, the gradient looks really, really good now O_O Just a suggestion, but since there's a bit of empty space in the bottom-right corner maybe the bubbles could be moved there slightly? The bit of text on top of the biggest bubble is a bit hard to read, also moving the bubbles would kind of help them "frame" the text. If you know what I mean >>; But if you can't do it I don't think it'll be a big issue xD

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Haha coincidentally, I've actually been IMing back and forth with Kura about this and based on their suggestions, added a bit of a gradient to the BG itself to fade out that bottom bubble:


(click to enlarge)

Does that help? :O

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1/2 of Cyanide Tea | BCM | Ristorante Amore | The Elevator | @Twitter
I'm extremely busy as of late, so I'm not around here very much. If you need me, Twitter's probably the quickest way to get my attention if you don't have me on Skype already.

Yes, it's spot-on *A*

Regarding a scene replay menu for important events etc., I'd like having it around and I don't see why anyone would have a problem with it. \o/ (sorry for not being terribly helpful orz)

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Regarding the legibility of the words, I do agree that the background light is less distracting when it's flipped to the left side, but the words are hard to read (for me) when you changed the gradient on the text as well. I know it makes the entire image "flow" better if the text has a similar gradation to the background, but wouldn't the words also be easier to read if the gradient flowed in the opposite direction? (i.e. if the background goes light-->dark, left to right, the words should go dark-->light, left to right). ...Does that make sense? ^^;

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@Joey: I think I'll go ahead and code it, then, though not until the game is further along since there aren't that many scenes to be replayed yet. XD I mean, people can just ignore the feature if they don't like it. It'll be in the bonus menu, so it shouldn't bother anyone, really.

@Reikun: The reason I flipped the gradient is because we originally started off with darker text on the light part and it was nearly impossible to read because of the lack of contrast, so I knew from experience that if I flipped the bg, I'd also have to flip the gradient. XD; Here's the screen with the gradient unflipped. Not sure about you, but I find the text over the lighter parts (especially the upper left) very hard to read. XD

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1/2 of Cyanide Tea | BCM | Ristorante Amore | The Elevator | @Twitter
I'm extremely busy as of late, so I'm not around here very much. If you need me, Twitter's probably the quickest way to get my attention if you don't have me on Skype already.

Oh yes, I see xD;;;;; Sorry for the unhelpful suggestion ''OTL
It should probably be fine then with the gradients going in the same direction.

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