Sword Daughter [GxB] [Fantasy] [Commercial]

[papillon]

All your life, you dream of adventure: knights, dragons, magic rings, chests of gold, and all the danger and glory that awaits a professional swordswoman. But every dream has a cost. You are on your way across the desert wastes to compete in the Warrior Games when your caravan is attacked. Orcs and bandits murder your father, capture your companions, and leave you for dead.

Now alone in the world, will you choose to seek glory, vengeance, treasure... or love?

This is my first 'Hanabira' release, which means a game whose story I had nothing to do with writing (I'm hoping to be able to publish a few more works by other writers in the future, since I'm so slow at writing my own games!) This game is actually an adaptation of a printed gamebook from the 1980s, choose-your-own-path style. Lots of choices leading to 22 different endings.

Game Website (with more screenshots)

[potouto]

Oh yay! This finally came out! I was waiting for this ahah
Gonna grab a copy right when I have my computer. Looking forward to play it!

[Obscura]

Gamebook, you say?

AAAAND using art that reminds a lot of those wonderful character portraits from Baldur's Gate? (That's not the same artist...is it? Because....omg...if it is...)

I'm only cursing because I don't have time to play this right now. But I've bought it and god bless you for making something like this. I love gamebooks. I grew up on Ian Livingstone/Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy series. I never knew there were other authors with other books out there.

[papillon]

Not from Baldur's Gate, no. The artist has done some RPG work though.

She has a tumblr here: http://kimsokol.tumblr.com/

[wifom]

Oh, wow! The art is absolutely stunning!!

[ririruetoo]

Is there going to be a demo? While the game looks fantastic, I really want to try it out before buying it.

[papillon]

I'm afraid there can't be a demo for this, since the text comes 100% from a book and the book's branch structure was not designed for that. You could wait for LPs?

[Katta]

I expected the game to be pretty short, but it still turned out unexpectedly short)

[Kirlett]

I expected the game to be pretty short, but it still turned out unexpectedly short)

How long does it take to play it? I'm thinking about buying it, but if it's too short...

[papillon]

Like many gamebooks of this style, depending on the choices you make, you could get a 'BAD END' very quickly. If you're the sort of VN player who only likes to play through things once this is not a good buy for you.

Completing all endings... 2 to 4 hours? The only review I've seen posted yet said 4, I'd pin it at less than that, but reading speed varies.

[Katta]

Well, I think the second ending I got was one of the longer ones and it was like 15mins, but what I meant is not exactly the length itself but that the story was kinda abrupt (the route I got:

MC's supposed quest is to free some prisoners from orcs and avenge her father's death. I fell into some tunnel dug by orcs, there was a dragon there, next room was an evil wizard, when running after MC he fell into some water and died, MC decided to throw his favourite vial with him and the water got clear from poison, MC tells she fulfilled her quest - what? Didn't she want to free the prosoners? I didn't even know the river was poisoned.

Especially romance comes unexpected, not in this exact playthrough but in a shorter one, the elf is really cute though)

After playing a couple of routes more I came to the dreadful realization:

you can't romance anyone except the elf(((

[CarSteph]

Even if the game too short, does it makes the player satisfied or not?
Can this game be upgraded?

____________
nunchaku techniques

[Cith]

A short comment on this VN's length.

The book format is not an ideal one when it comes to branching storylines - its limits on size (books were fairly small back in the 80s) combined with the author’s habit of including plenty of choices meant gamebooks offered a fairly short reading experience. I would suggest this was part of the reason they died out (although Michael Ward has recently resurrected the genre with his impressive 700 page debut… and sequel. I have both of them and love them to death :3.)

EDIT: At the end of the day the book this VN was based on was fewer than 200 pages long, and once you factor in all those choices.....

EDIT 2:

I love gamebooks. I grew up on Ian Livingstone/Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy series. I never knew there were other authors with other books out there.

http://www.amazon.com/Legion-Shadow-Des ... 0575118733

[papillon]

This game is now available on Steam - if you already own a copy, you can email me to get your free key, so that you can collect trading cards and backgrounds and all that jazz.

[noeinan]

Just got it, but somehow I didn't see that it was on steam so I bought it from your site. (Derp!) I'll message you to get the steam key, thanks!