Driftwood - Act 1 (BxG)

[wakagana]

Driftwood is a fictional bishoujo visual novel—in short, a text-based dating simulation game (dating sim)—that follows the life of adolescent protagonist Marcus Feick from Boston, Massachusetts.

In Marcus’s junior year in high school, after asking the girl of his dreams out on a date, he finds himself caught in a catastrophic event that leaves him physically and emotionally wounded.



Because of the incident, as well as complications with his newly formed relationship, his overprotective parents decide to transfer him to a boarding school south of Boston and nearly a hundred miles away on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. This act relegates his old life to nothing but sour memories and broken promises.



At the new boarding school on Martha’s Vineyard, Marcus is introduced to a variety of cultures and personalities. The story and game focus primarily on five main female characters that can affect Marcus’s life positively or negatively based on the player’s choices.



(From Top Left to Bottom Right)
Noro, Taryn, Ellen, Kyrie, Yuko

Each character is designed to teach Marcus a profound life lesson, helping him better understand the world and the difficult process of becoming an adult.



Download - PC/Mac/Linux
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1lhN_ ... ZCR3M/view

Simply unzip/find the appropriate file type and have fun!

Mild Adult Themes/Some Cussing. +13 Plus in terms of a raiting.

For updates regularly - follow our facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/DriftwoodVN/

Driftwood - Act 1, was created over the course of 4+ years by a huge team of artists, musicians and programmers - It's not perfect, but we'd love your feedback/support.

[gekiganwing]

I used my Linux laptop today, and tried to access the Act One file on Google Drive. The first message that I saw said "Whoops! There was a problem with the preview." I then clicked the Download button. It lead to a page which said, "Google Drive can't scan this file for viruses. DriftwoodAct-1.0-all.zip (2.7G) exceeds the maximum size that Google can scan. Would you still like to download this file?" *If* your demo is 2.7 GB in size, then it might be difficult for even people with a reliable broadband connection to download it. You might want to release the demo as a torrent.

It has been a while since I'd thought about Driftwood. Its original discussion topic began in 2012. I first replied to the topic during the same year, when the story had some science fiction elements.

Driftwood is a fictional bishoujo visual novel—in short, a text-based dating simulation game (dating sim)—that follows the life of adolescent protagonist Marcus Feick from Boston, Massachusetts.

Is there any complex simulation gameplay? Or is this a story with occasional choices which eventually lead to different endings?

The story and game focus primarily on five main female characters that can affect Marcus’s life positively or negatively based on the player’s choices... Each character is designed to teach Marcus a profound life lesson, helping him better understand the world and the difficult process of becoming an adult.

These are interesting themes. A few questions:

* What conflicts do the characters face? What's keeping them from achieving their specific goals?
* Talk about your characters' strengths and weaknesses when you have time. Help people who are thinking about reading your story know what you find exceptional about them.
* What's the current content rating of the story?
* How much of the story is focused on giving the reader a lesson?
* How many endings do you have in mind? How do they vary?

[Reikun]

Congratulations on the release! I remember Driftwood from way back and I'm glad to see it's reached completion ^o^ Kudos to the whole team! <3

[wakagana]

I used my Linux laptop today, and tried to access the Act One file on Google Drive. The first message that I saw said "Whoops! There was a problem with the preview." I then clicked the Download button. It lead to a page which said, "Google Drive can't scan this file for viruses. DriftwoodAct-1.0-all.zip (2.7G) exceeds the maximum size that Google can scan. Would you still like to download this file?" *If* your demo is 2.7 GB in size, then it might be difficult for even people with a reliable broadband connection to download it. You might want to release the demo as a torrent.

Ack, sorry about the download size - It's a bit of a mess up and we'll be uploading a new version that's much smaller in the future once all the bugs we've found are fixed.

Driftwood's changed a lot over the early course of it's development, and the whole fantasy-future idea was scrapped for a more realistic and simple slice of life style story, which I think was the best possible direction we could've taken. Fantasy is going to be the goal of the next project I work on.

Most of the actual premise of the game is fairly vanilla-esc, it's all simple every day life with every day choices and dialogue between characters.
Most of the story is just a way to help people learn from their own experiences in a more simplistic way.
Because of this being Act 1, there's only about 6 endings, but each character has a good/bad ending, with some having Neutral ones.

Either way, I'm glad you remember Driftwood! It has been a long long time.

[philip]

@wakagana-

Hi! Downloaded this a couple of days ago, and decided to try it out yesterday. Seemed to start out a little slow, but maybe that was my mindset, and not the fault of the story. After just a few minutes, I was REALLY into it, and spent the rest of the day playing through as many branches as I could, getting to various endings. Went back and finished this morning; I think I have probably seen everything . . . at least once. It's a good story, and I enjoyed it very much; will look forward to the continuation! Can you give us a timetable for what and when??? The characters are well defined, the sprites and backgrounds are excellent.

I noticed when I glanced at the "Gallery" that all the pictures are visible before the game has begun. I am more used to having the pictures locked, and then appearing as I reach the proper point in the story. In addition, there are a number of locked blocks on the last to pages of the gallery. I assume that these are placeholders for scenes to come?

And I will also be looking forward to seeing completion of the "Scenes" display in the next release. Good job so far . . .no, GREAT job so far, I will look forward eagerly to the next release!!

philip

[Electromancer]

Wow, this actually came out!

To be honest I cannot even remember when I started following your development, it's been that long.

But I'm glad to see you've successfully released your Act 1 and I will be playing it ASAP.

[wakagana]

Thanks you two! The game has been in the making for a long long time - so I'll be taking a bit of a break on it to follow other interests for the time being - but if we can get funding for the second portion of the game, we certainly will continue it. The bulk of the content is within each character's storyline - so I really do hope we manage to continue this.

The current copy of the game is littered with small bugs here and there and we're going to be green lighting it on steam shortly once we also get a mobile release up and running that's more polished up.

The Gallery is that way due to some last minute decision making - but once the full game is entirely done and it's all one big file, each CG will be unlockable like in most games.

Also, yes, the intro is by far the slowest and hardest part of the game to get through. If you're able to read through that I'm sure anyone can enjoy the rest of the game ^.^

[PurpleMind]

Oh wow! There is the thread. And the game, the fruit of all efforts. I'm just past the intro, planning to seriously dig in soon. Haven't heard my music yet in game, the hell, it better be somewhere there.I'm going to be somewhat surprised if these old tracks still made it into the game after all that time.

[Dollarluigi]

Just finished Act 1. It was amazing. I loved the humor.