RE:BURN [Nano2019][Horror][Email Inbox/Chat Simulator]

[parttimestorier]

Overtired graduate student Charisse LaFlamme picks up a part-time job editing a small academic journal. Her first task is to sort through a long backlog of emails that the previous editor never dealt with, deleting anything that doesn't look useful. As her university's email servers slowly sync the data and more and more old emails show up, a stranger starts messaging her to angrily insist that she stop deleting them. But Charisse needs to get paid, so she isn't going to let some random internet weirdo interfere with her work—no matter how bizarre some of the old emails get.

I started working on this a little early because I wanted to make sure it was possible for me to program all the features I wanted. Fortunately I think I've figured it out, so here are a couple screenshots! The email inbox code I've been messing around with is from a post by saguaro, and Charisse's avatar comes from a sprite by Red Chan.

One question I have is how I should describe the genre of this game. Similar to stuff like Digital: A Love Story, I'm planning to have the whole story take place in emails and instant messages with no narration or scenes of characters interacting outside their computer screens. Would you still call something like that a visual novel, or is there another term that you think would be accurate?

[Zelan]

This sounds super interesting! I like the mystery aspect of it.

As for your genre question, I think "chatbox simulator" might be the closest you can get, or maybe just going with the label "interactive fiction?" I think you could probably still call it a VN since there are avatar sprites, but there's no definite right or wrong answer here.

Good luck on your NaNo!

[minyan]

I think you could call it a visual novel! I think people consider that one text message game that got really popular a visual novel, and it was mostly texts. I never played it so I can't remember the name ^^;

But anyway, this looks super cool! I can't wait to see more about this.

[parttimestorier]

Thanks Zelan and minyan! I've been hard at work on this and I'm happy to say that I've finished writing a full draft of the story, so now I'm just tackling the programming. Here are a couple more screenshots of what I've been working on: a reply Charisse sends to her friend Bianca, and a student newsletter about the recent death of a professor - one of many emails that give you some background about Charisse's university and might provide some clues for figuring out exactly what's going on.

[parttimestorier]

This project is now complete! You can check out the Completed Games thread here, and download it on itch.io!