The Year Without Summer [Very Short][Custom VN Engine][Free]

[Keric]

The Year Without Summer


Lightborne Lore's first visual novel release

This VN has been ready to post for about 3 years now, but some personal struggles in my life kept me from doing so
(and from doing anything creative, really). In an attempt to recapture my creativity, I am dusting off my old projects and finally
posting The Year Without Summer to the forum that introduced me to visual novels back in 2006.

Game Synopsis

Asked by a former lover to find a rare book in the library archives, you debate her motives in approaching you.
The relationship did not end well, and your choices in this short game might grant you closure.
There are three endings.



Production History

This game is, so far, the only finished story to come out of a 2-year visual novel development initiative by Lightborne Lore, a company that had seven people at its height. Long story short,
most of us went our separate ways, leaving behind a prototype VN engine and a large amount of art - both characters and photo backgrounds. Veil, our major project, was a paranormal
mystery with romance routes, meant to be released in episodic installments. We went on short hiatus due to some trouble with one of our character artists and, in the downtime, I adapted
some of the background art assets of Veil into a standalone short, a cathartic story about a breakup: The Year Without Summer. In the end, no projects were officially released.

My friend Sarah Brand (you can check out her art here) created some one-off character art for the project.
The game features original music by David Young (on Soundcloud as Rex Kalibur).

Over the next several months, I hope to dig up the company graveyard and frankenstein together a game. I will probably abandon our engine and use Ren'Py. A prototype of the first
episode of Veil exists, but I want to rewrite much of the project; I still love the heart of the story, so many themes, the setting, and a few characters will remain.

Download and Play

The game is free, available to download from a Dropbox link on my website. I am going to look into uploading to other game download services - recommendations would be much appreciated!
Click the image below, scroll down, and then select PC or Mac to download a .zip file containing the game and a Readme.txt



Note: I have not tested this game extensively on Windows 10. It ran flawlessly on Windows 7, and seems to run okay on a new Windows 10
machine that I recently built...but I have only played it a few times. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

Thank you so much for taking the time to play TYWS. This is the first creative work I have ever published.

[Zelan]

Itch.io is a pretty widely used hosting site.

I'm on my phone at the time of this post, but I'll download this and give it a whirl when I get back home. c:

[Keric]

Itch.io

Cool, I've seen people post download links to there, but I've never uploaded something myself.

I'll download this and give it a whirl when I get back home. c:

Thank you so much. I am going to download and play the short that you recently posted. I like the concept!

[Selwyn]

Congrats on finishing this project! This looks interesting, I'll play it asap.

[Zelan]

Thank you so much. I am going to download and play the short that you recently posted. I like the concept!

Thank you! c:


Okay, so the first thing that I have to say is that the display was kind of messed up on my screen (I'm using a Mac, OS X Version 9.5). It looked like this: http://i.imgur.com/oyxGRpb.png

Because of the weird resolution, some of the text leading up to the "bad end" was cut off. I tried scrolling down but there didn't seem to be a way to do that.

Overall, I liked the story. I really got a feel for the characters and what their relationship was like before and after the event. The first ending I got was "Closure" and the second one was "Bad End." I played through a couple more times but couldn't figure out how to get the third ending. Still, I think that the pieces of the story that I got from both ends really fleshed out what had happened between the characters.

[Keric]

Okay, so the first thing that I have to say is that the display was kind of messed up on my screen (I'm using a Mac, OS X Version 9.5).

When you see this window, is there only one resolution option? What happens if you run fullscreen instead of windowed?

This is an odd problem. I might be able to fix this and upload a new build, but if I can't...

I'll have to post the game text that is clipped in a spoiler block. By the way, thanks for spoiler tagging that post; I don't want to drive people away before they even play the game!

Overall, I liked the story. I really got a feel for the characters and what their relationship was like before and after the event.

Thank you for the feedback! That was one of my main goals in writing this.

I played through a couple more times but couldn't figure out how to get the third ending. Still, I think that the pieces of the story that I got from both ends really fleshed out what had happened between the characters.

Those are the two main endings, meant to give you the bulk of the story. I recommend that players try for both Closure and Bad End, despite the name of the latter.

You actually won't learn anything new from the third ending. If your questioning in the first section of the game is dismissive, and you don't dig too deep, you should get the third ending.

[Zelan]

When you see this window, is there only one resolution option? What happens if you run fullscreen instead of windowed?

Yup, I only get one resolution option. Fullscreen was no better than windowed.

Those are the two main endings, meant to give you the bulk of the story. I recommend that players try for both Closure and Bad End, despite the name of the latter.

You actually won't learn anything new from the third ending. If your questioning in the first section of the game is dismissive, and you don't dig too deep, you should get the third ending.

Ahh, okay. Good to know. c: