Tea & Sympathy (short KN, vampires)

[Sheridan]

My mother disowned me when I died. Now she's trying to make things right.
What does she really want from me?

A short kinetic novel exploring family drama through the eyes of a vampire.

(10.1.13 update: decreased file size)

Windows download
Linux download
Mac download

(5.20.14 update: HTML5 version by Alte)
Play online

This is my first visual novel, so any and all criticism is welcome!

I guess this is a practice project for me. I adapted a short story I had written a few years ago, added free music and art, and tried to see what I could do in Ren'Py with my limited coding abilities, before I do more work on my visual novels that have actual choices and, you know, length. It was kind of intimidating to discover how much work goes into making something that takes 5 minutes to play, but also very satisfying to complete it.

[specialtantei]

Congrats on completing your first VN! I'll give it a read and tell you what I think once I get some free time .

[fleet]

Congrats on finishing your first KN. I thought the story was interesting. You might want to consider using several pieces of music, and looping them, instead of using one large music file. It took me longer to download the KN than it did to read it.

[Sheridan]

Thanks for the feedback. I chose this particular piece of music because I thought it really fit the atmosphere of the story. I figured this KN was small enough that file size shouldn't be a major consideration. However, I'm definitely looking for shorter pieces of music that I can loop for my next project, since I'll need more than one musical theme and I'll have more than one scene to put them in.

[sharkiecutie]

The artwork is absolutely beautiful I think I'll download this tomorrow <3

[Sheridan]

The artwork is absolutely beautiful I think I'll download this tomorrow <3

The artwork is all free resources from lovely people! Backgrounds by OokamiKasumi, plus a photo of the moon, and sprites by skimlines on DeviantArt. There's a text file in the main folder with full credits, including URLs, of where I found everything.

[FlawedFlare]

I really like the story to this. I do wish it was longer though. I think this story would've delivered a good impact if you delve deeper into it. One thing does bother me as to how the mother looks. I mean, she looks so young! Assuming that she didn't have her daughter so young and she takes good care of her skin. However, I do understand that this is your first visual novel. It's scary at first, isn't it? Haha.

I like the ending, it was really open. To me at least. I had to play it twice and think about it. I mean, did the daughter go "hunting" or did she go hunting? >w<;; You just never know!

Anyway, congrats on your first VN!! (:

[Sheridan]

Thanks! The mother sprite... I looked for an older free sprite to use, and couldn't find one. I ended up just deciding, "OK, gray hair, good set of expressions, close enough." As for the length; it ended up being a bit shorter than I had originally intended, in part due to some last-minute edits to make the narrator seem less bitter and more resigned. But in terms of the actual information imparted, it's only meant to scratch the surface.

[FlawedFlare]

Thanks! The mother sprite... I looked for an older free sprite to use, and couldn't find one. I ended up just deciding, "OK, gray hair, good set of expressions, close enough." As for the length; it ended up being a bit shorter than I had originally intended, in part due to some last-minute edits to make the narrator seem less bitter and more resigned. But in terms of the actual information imparted, it's only meant to scratch the surface.

In that case, I can't wait until you (if you do) reveal the whole story!

[Sheridan]

Well, this took ages, but I've finally fixed the file size problem; it's a much more manageable ~25 MB download now.

New download links here (I'll fix them in the OP as well).

[Fenrir34]

A little bit of me wishes that this game was a little longer because I got into it a lot. Still I enjoyed it .

The mother was a very selfish woman. I mean I feel sorry that she had Cancer but she was only seeing her daughter so she wouldn't die.

Anyway, good job with your first game. I'm looking forward to some of your other stuff.