Tales From Windy Meadow [Fantasy/Slice of life/Pixel Art] [Steam]

[Aureus]

Tales From Windy Meadow is now available on Steam!

A slice-of-life interactive story about choosing your path and living in a community. Help three protagonists make the most important choices of their lives. A unique fantasy Visual Novel blending coziness and melancholy.

A small village known as Windy Meadow may not be rich or famous, yet it offers something even more valuable: harmony. Gorgeous views, serenity of the forest, gentle rivers and fertile land... Even beasts and dragons seem to usually keep their distance.

Nevertheless, not everyone can find peace here. The time has come for three young people to decide what are they going to do with their future. And it’s happening much sooner than they would wish for.

Will Vena, the best huntress in the village, stay with her family? Is it better to take the lucrative job offered by distant merchant guild?

Fabel wants to become a famous bard, but his rough past complicates so many things. Should he follow his dream, or is it finally time to wake up?

And is Iudicia, the local outsider and talented herbalist, going to marry a man she doesn’t love? Is spending her future alone and lonely the only alternative?

You can find more details about our protagonists on our website!

KEY FEATURES

• Three intertwined stories. For 2,5 hours you get to play as three protagonists with their own problems to solve. Each route offers different moods, topics and perspectives and all of them share the dramatic, final chapter.
• A multitude of side characters. Their varying personalities and complex relationships make this community feel alive and relatable.
• An immersive, detailed village. You get to visit multiple buildings and outdoors and see how they change over the course of the game. The carefully thought-out fantasy setting reflects through both the dialogues and visuals.
• Choices matter. Choice-shaped endings significantly shift the game's atmosphere, while even smaller decisions influence dialogues, events and how your protagonists are perceived by other characters.
• Heart-warming scenes. A unique mix of coziness and melancholy supported by colorful pixel art and emotional music.
• Animated visuals. Unlike most Visual Novels, Tales From Windy Meadow replaces the majority of narration with animated character sprites. More than 99% of the in-game text represents dialogues.

Buy the game on
Steam | Itch.io | Kartridge

[Preseva]

Finishing this game gave me the same kind of empty ache that I get from finishing a good book that I don't want to end. In the span of only four hours, it feels like I've known these characters for years. Every person in town has a story and I wish I could hear all of them. That's part of what makes the world seem so alive, that there's more than you'll ever be able to find out, but I still want to. Are you planning on releasing other games in this universe, or do you have any other supplemental material? Short stories, maybe? I saw The Tavern on Steam and picked it up just in case that Nalia was the same as this one. She was one of the most interesting characters and I really want to know what happened to her in her past to end up where she is in Windy Meadows.

[Aureus]

Finishing this game gave me the same kind of empty ache that I get from finishing a good book that I don't want to end.

I'm so happy that Windy Meadow didn't disappoint you! But also so thankful that you decided to share your opinion with me - it feels so great to be able to read your thoughts about the game!

The setting of TFWM is actually something that I've been working on for probably over 10 years now. I call it Viaticum and I could talk about it for hours. A couple of years ago I self-published a tabletop RPG (available only in Polish) that was using the same realm and I love it so much that I'm actually working on the second edition of this game, currently testing it with a group of very nice people. We're having a blast.

TFWM and The Tavern are both set in the "original" version of this setting and the one I'm currently working on is an updated version - though Windy Meadow would need only a couple of small changes to perfectly fit into it. I have a lot of information about this world written down, though I plan to update it a bit before officially sharing it.

I don't mention The Tavern often. Not because I'm ashamed of it, but it's far from perfect and I can see now that I could make it better, even much better - both on the level of design and the level of polish. It also differs significantly from TFWM as far as the gameplay, mood and topics go (after all, The Tavern is an 18+ game and is quite disturbing). I'm happy to talk about it, but I don't want to recommend it as a part of the same experience. A person that played The Tavern for about 30+ hours, helping me with the language and bug testing, absolutely hated TFWM and considered it boring and not worthy his time. I think both of these games were expressing a very different part of myself.

Also... There is a chance that you don't follow me on Facebook or Twitter. So just in case, I'd like to paste here my post from maybe one hour ago. And if you celebrate during this season, I wish you happy holidays. <3

[Aureus]

Marcel Weyers, a very kind writer from Germany, took a closer look at Tales From Windy Meadow and since he found our story to be worth spreading, he decided to help us by translating it into German!

In result, I started working on all the useful tools that could make this translation come true. And since we’re doing it, it will also help us create other language versions, so we already made the first steps into creating the Polish version of the game. ^^

So yeah, I'm already after the game’s release, but I'm not resting yet! : D Are there any other languages supported by Tales From Windy Meadow that you would like to see?

[Aureus]

I mentioned before that we're working on some translations of Tales From Windy Meadow - and so far, it's going pretty great! It's also an opportunity to fix minor typos or tiny bugs, so once the Polish and German versions will be ready, I’m going to update the English version as well and push it one step closer towards perfection. : D

By the way, in German version Windy Meadow was translated into Windige Wiesen. Pretty cool. ^^

Also, there's a good chance that our Visual Novel will be translated into Indonesian (or - an Indonesian version of Malay) and Ukrainian... Though it doesn't look like our main font is going to fit it well.

And if you'd like to support our game but you've already bought it, it would be a great help if you could share your review on Steam or Itch.io. Let us and other people know how did you like it! And if you need some nice, relaxing background music, maybe my old lofi mix would help? : )

Have a great weekend!

[Aureus]

When a character I've created starts dissing my game...

[Aureus]

We're still translating Tales From Windy Meadow, but a large update is coming next week:
* a big patch for the core, English version (with about 30 minor fixes);
* German version of the game;
* Polish version of the game;
* the game should be available in one more store.
Since our Visual Novel is praised for its soundtrack, we're also going to create a nice video with at least some of the best music from the game. Not all of them, since all the tracks combined would last for more than 3 hours... You can expect the video at the beginning of February.
Oh, and also - we are planning to add Chinese version of the game to our list, though it's still a long way ahead of us. ; )
Thank you for your support!

[Aureus]

Greetings! Our latest update is now live - English version is now updated, German and Polish introduced. Also, the game is now available on GameJolt.

You can read all the patch notes here!

[Aureus]

For this ScreenshotSaturday we have a YouTube playlist with some of our my favorite tracks that are a part of Tales From Windy Meadow!

The original plan was to make one, longer video with some visual fireworks in it, but ultimately I decided to make it more of a "let it play in the background and make my own playlist from it" thing.

Here is the link to the full playlist!

[PeterKmiecik]

Oh an pixel art VN that's something I've didn't seen yet Please let us know how gamers received this style, it's quite interesting

[Aureus]

Please let us know how gamers received this style, it's quite interesting

Hi there, Peter! The game is selling poorly, but it gathered over a dozen of great reviews on blogs and websites, from positive to very positive. And yes, the game's pixel art was often described as beautiful or at least interesting. : )

[PeterKmiecik]

Sad to hear I guess that this is quite unusuall take on VN art side. As much as pixel lovers will buy the idea and praise it, rest of VN community probably felt alienated with this approach. You know it is always a risk.

[Aureus]

A fantasy website Exilian made an interview with me! We talk in it about Tales From Windy Meadow, more specifically, topics like:

• writing about characters that struggle with mental and physical disadvantages,
• the world in which the game is set,
• the development struggles (a small postmortem?),
• the significance of selecting pixel art as an art-style for the game.

[Aureus]

Hello again!
It's ScreenshotSaturday, and a bit of a special day for me. Tales From Windy Meadow is now on sale (15% off!), and we're happy to share with you some quotes from the reviews that are focused on my Visual Novel.

Cutting out and putting together these quotes was quite heartwarming. We were met with an extraordinary kindness and a lot of encouraging opinions. We're happy to see such a positive perception of our work.

Of course, we also participated in an interview a couple of days ago, and now it's time for us to look forward. Moral Anxiety Studio is going to become a more of a one-person initiative, and if everything will go according to plan, my next game will be officially announced very soon.

Thank you and if you have any questions or would like to discuss your adventures in Windy Meadow with me, feel free to do so!
And have a great weekend!

[Aureus]

Hi there! It’s summer sale on Steam and “Tales From Windy Meadow” is currently 20% off!