DeMentor Institution [Mystery] [Romance]

[ichiban]

DeMentor Institution is a visual novel about "MC" who after attempting suicide finds himself leaving his hometown to start anew in a Mental Institution for high schoolers. Depending on your choices, the novel could lead to romance, friendship, mystery, and justice. I plan on this to be a long project... very very long. I hope for the highest quality with unique additions to the gameplay. First decision is that some characters will feature only a bad end, only a good end, or both.

Please keep in mind that I'm new to this forum and writing visual novels, however, I am not new to writing. I am an editor for CNET, Gamespot, and GameFAQs. This is just my first real venture in fictional writing.

Characters
Here are the major characters I have in mind. I apologize in advance for not thinking up names or their physical attributes. I have ideas for that in mind but I want to think a bit more before making my mind up.

Main Character
Someone important to him died causing interpersonal lonliness he couldn’t get over. This soon turned into a terrible state of depression resulting in a suicide attempt. He awakes in a hospital later to be told by the therapist he is to go to a new school in a new country. He soon learns that there is nothing worth killing yourself over and decides to make the best of things in his last year in high school. Through the choices made at the new school, the MC could find love, unforgettable friendships, terrible fates, and/or rewarding experiences.

Female 1 - A Condoling Story
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression

This girl is good friends with Female #2. She features only a good end, no bad. In school, she is skeptical and finds the bad in everything. She's not mean or hateful, just scared.

Goal - To find out more about the character without making her upset. To comfort her in the process while keeping the trust with her friend who has Bi-Polar. To gain a friendship strong enough to hold a relationship. To make her smile again, love life for what it is, and leave the state of depression for good.

Solution - In order to achieve the goal, MC must show compassion that the Bi-Polar girl can’t show. But first, MC must show signs of trust through the Bi-Polar girl… which is tough. She won’t trust anyone with any kind of conversation aside from academics unless it is one of Bi-Polar girl’s friends of which are minimal to none, unless you played the cards right.

• Sob Story idea: End of WW2, a mean billionaire man enslaved Japanese women. One woman gave birth to a family of slaves. A mixture of events caused a riot outside and the house burnt down. Girl has been admitted to this school for the mentally ill since the age of 14, now 17 and it still haunts her.

Personality Traits
Listens more than talks, very patient, kind, but scared and skeptical of change and sudden movements and loud noises. Strong sense of compassion.

“I know that if I’m not happy, then you aren’t happy, Character 2 isn’t happy, and everyone else around me isn’t happy. And When I panic, so does everyone else… usually. As this is the way it is, why must I continue to exist? Why?”

Female 2 - Love Rollercoaster
Bi-Polar

Goal – To gain trust as you learn to cope with her Bi-Polar. To understand how to deal with her hyperactive to depressed mood swings correctly. To break a fight between her and someone else. To find love with her and cope with her sudden urge to spontaneously change her mind on many issues. To get her to relax and make her mania less panicky and depressed state less depressed.

Wonderful friend with Female 1. How that works, I don’t know. Perhaps Female 1 finds a great sense of security in Female 2 as Female 2 is rough edged yet sweet at times. You don’t see any dramatic signs of the bipolar except in the end scenarios. She has both a good and bad end.

Personality Traits
Relaxed, tough with a “Heh who cares” attitude, strong willed, strong sense of security. When her Bi-Polarness causes her to be very depressed, she usually has a sense of compassion. It goes hand in hand with F1.

“I’m so sorry. I know what you // Wait what did you just call me?! You know what?! I’m going to ram my thumb up your ass and you’re going to beg for mercy! Why?! Because I just said so! Don’t you walk… run away from me! Get back here!”

Female 3 - Faceblind
Prosopagnosia - Cannot distinguish people's faces

Good friends with Female 4. Is a loner but loves to get out. She is a photographer and loves to collect dolls. She probably will wear gothic clothing and may resemble an appearance like Patchouli Knowledge from the Touhou series. She features both a good and bad end.

If heading down this path, she is raped. Since you just started to date her, you are expected to be the attacker even though she does not think you are. Depending on how you handle it, you could go down the good end or bad end, both ends lead you to be innocent.

Personality Traits
Intrigued about what life has to offer, finds artistic elements and talent in pretty much everything. Thinks everything is innocent. Naive. Likes to be alone.



Female 4 - Two Faced
Multi-Personality

Only a bad end on this path. This character is the most cheerful in the game. However, you find out some crazy stuff about her. Throughout the game, she tells you she's just reacting strangely due to her ADHD. She even claims that's why she is at DeMentor. In reality, she has split personality disorder.

Through naive choices, the MC starts dating this girl who is there supposedly for ADHD problems. Little does he know, the school rumor (students periodically going missing within their first week there) turns true as this girl has Split-Personality Disorder. Her main personality is the cheerful ADHD high spirited girl you fell in love with. The other is a mean, ruthless, murderess character who sounds different, facial expressions are different, and she commits something terrible right before your eyes, she kills Female 5. Finally, you put two and two together and realize your utter naiveness but it's too late. You have a blade sticking out of your chest.


Female 5 - Lalita

• 100% normal. Just a shy, timid, somewhat anti-social, but is kinda downer at first.
• In this route she doesn’t commit suicide at all and everything is seemingly peaceful. The end is you proving that Female 5 is normal and is not suffering from depression, in a clever way somehow.
• The suicide is featured in all stories but this one. Only in C4’s end do you find out the reason. In the others, it is simply a tragedy that all students mourn over.
• She enters the school just days after you and everyone rumors that she is completely depressed and nobody should get to know her cause of it.
• Good end only on her route.

Dorm Roomate
Hypnagogia

Hypnagogia makes you hallucinate in the transition from wakefulness to sleep.
After long adventurous days, you come back to sleep at your dorm to await for the next day. However, some nights will be hilarious as the Dorm Roomate wakens you up as he goes absolutely nuts.

School Therapist
Works in the office and you see him weekly. You ponder and overthink things about life.

Minor characters would include parents, teacher, office staff, therapist in the introduction, nurse in the introduction, specific characters only featured in certain paths.

Route Outline
Keep in mind that the choices are not listed here. And to reach a path at all, you pretty much read most of the first half.


Issues
Is it okay to work without a team for now? I've been working on this by myself for a few weeks. I have a friend who is a professional coder. He's willing to code the visual novel using javascript, thus it being a web based VN. I can easily learn to code with RenPy but it would be easier for someone else to. Is it okay to wait before getting some type of team? I'd also like to note that I will be able to pay for good quality digital art. I'm not sure how much will be required but I will be on a 250-300 dollar budget when the time comes. Both art and music actually.

As I am new to writing VN's, what could you recommend me to either work on or keep an eye on?

Thanks for taking a look

[Auro-Cyanide]

Actually it's recommended to start off without a team so you can get a good start on the story so you have a better idea of scope and the things you will need. It's better not to join up with people until you have things for them to do and you are more sure that the project can be completed.

I'm... not sure what to make of the story. It's Katawa Shojo with mentally ill people instead of physically disabled people. It's pretty much a mine field. What was your reason for wanting to tell this story? That will probably dictate which direction this will go.

As for things to watch out for:
-Study the psychology of the illnesses. Not the Hollywood version, the real version (especially split personalities and depression, that one is way more complex than it is represented). These are real, I would hope you would show them respect. Personally I think it would be quite hard to get this right. The characters should not be defined by their illnesses, but it has to be apart of them. You are already thinking of them in terms of their illnesses instead of who they are. They don't even have names?
-Why a school?
-If the main character isn't depressed any more, why is he going to another country? And why isn't he going to a consoler in his own country? Depression like he is described to have isn't server enough for him to be placed in a place that also is meant to help major illnesses.
-He shouldn't be helping these girls. No. These are series conditions, they should be receiving professional help. The boy has no training, he shouldn't even be trying. Getting to know them is one thing, trying to 'fix' them is another.
-As an extension to the above, the people at the institute would be on the lookout for anything that may upset the patients, including stuff like broken friendships and romances. These people are already on the edge of the knife, they don't need the emotional see saw that is love. Just saying that realistically people would be watching very carefully to signs of emotional instability and would remove the cause of it (ie. the main character).
-The murder endings seem a little... off. Make sure it works well in a realistic sense of the illness. Plus, where would a mentally ill person with aggressive tendencies get a knife?

You are free to tell whatever story you want to tell. Just be careful not to have crazy for the sake of having crazy. These are really complicated issues so I think it will take careful planning and writing to make the characters full and meaningful and not just shallow embodiments of illness. It could be very interesting story if done correctly, these characters could have a lot of potential if they were really well fleshed out. You could do the usual BxG thing, or you could make use of it to tell a strong story. The choice is ours. People will play it either way.

[ichiban]

Thank you very much for responding! It's a relief to know that I don't necessarily need a team now

I have a personal experience from the age 12 to 16 at an institution for mentally ill children, mine being autism but later changed to aspergers. It was a good experience, yet bad at times. When making friends, one has to cope with other people's disabilities, much like how it's described in my first post. I want to write a novel on the experience but I would like the reader to feel involved with the story. Creating a visual novel just seems like it would simply work well. This is why I would like it to be a school as in my experience, it is a school. I mean, the characters are all under the age 18/19 so they still got studies to tend.

I understand your concern for the characters. I do have names in mind but I'm following advice given to me from a family member who has written many novels, to focus on the character's traits and importance to the story before coming up with minor details. I do have a word document full of ideas for names for each character.

The main character's depression is enough to be admitted as he attempted to kill himself. They decided on the school with the best ratings which is a few hundred miles away from his hometown, but still in a new country. (I'm thinking of a fictional city based in Maine, USA to a rural area outside of Montreal, Canada). It's only a few days after the beginning of the new school he finds slight enjoyment and decides to make the best of his final year at the new school.

He's not going to want to try to cure people from their disabilities, he wants to learn to cope with them to be a better friend. Later, some of the characters may break out of their mental shells, a goal for most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other therapists. By that I mean, they show signs of less depression or other moody states.

I'll keep your advice in mind. I like the idea of realism but I also would like to add creative fiction in it. I also want to connect the ends together so readers would be motivated to read all ends to get the full picture. I felt this was missing in many "dating sim" types such as Katawa Shoujo. After completing one end, I feel as if I'd be cheating on her to pursue another girl. Shizune to anyone else was tough... still is lol. Katawa Shoujo has motivated me to further this novel but I have my own original idea outside of romance stuff.

[Auro-Cyanide]

From what you have said I think you have to primary ways you can tell a story along these lines that will be quite powerful.

1.Slice of Life. Focus on experience and realism, draw on your real life experience. Drop the things that are out of the ordinary too much (eg. murder, lolita, the characters of the split personality person, slave backstory etc). They seem to forced and cliche. Drag it way back down to earth so it is relatable to other people. Find moments that can touch people's hearts instead of trying to make the characters seem 'different'. For instance, my mum once worked at a nursing home. There was a women there who was schizophrenic. She used to tell my mum stories about her son, what he was doing and what he did when he came to see her. Except her son had passed away many years ago. Stuff like that. more dramatic or violent moments are also fine, but focus on them in a real world context.

2. Fiction. Focus on exploring mental illness through narrative. In this case I would give the main character a serious/server illness (or if you stick to depression, biological depression), something that will paint the world that the reader will view. Make the viewer experience the illness from the inside as well as the outside. It would make for a very powerful experience and, if done well, could allow the viewer to experience something outside of their own experience and hopefully learn something. Here you could take way more liberty with dramatic moments, especially from the main characters POV. Silent Hill is a nice example since many of the elements revolve around the main character's own mind.

I wasn't so much concerned with the lack of names (though they do help form them as a person) but the fact they were defined by their disabilities. Can you remove the name of the conditions and then describe them as a character without pointing out what they have? There should be personality traits that are inherent to them outside of their condition as well. They shouldn't be 'The PTSD girl' or 'The Bi-polar girl'. You don't describe people in real life like that if you know them after all. Basically, don't stereotype them. You might be fine with it anyway and it might be just how you wrote it, but just something to keep in mind.

You could also make the main characters depression different. Right now it's directly caused by something bad happening, but a lot of depression is caused by biological chemical imbalances that can not be cured by 'happy thinking'. It is a very hard thing to pin down and a very hard thing to control, even with medication. Just be wary of sending out the message that depressed people should just 'be happy' since it is rarely that simple.

[ichiban]

Alright thanks for the advice I'll fix it and add the traits but as it's a VN about a mental institution, the characters are somewhat defined by their dissabilities. It's not stereotyping, it's just the way it is. I'll work on it though.

As for the two primary ways, I've been planning it to be fictional. I never thought of it that way though. Thanks

[meh]

The premise is interesting and has the potential to be unique. At the same time, it has the potential to get pigeon-holed into a stereotypical story of school romance. So I'd be careful with it. But it seems like you've given it a lot of thought so I wouldn't stress. Also just pointing out that finding romance at a school for the disabled has been done rather recently as I'm sure you know already. But if it's what you really want to write and if you think you can bring a new perspective to it, don't let that stop you.

I agree with Auro that you should pay a lot of attention to trying to avoid designing a character around the disability s/he has. If it makes it any easier, try to think of the disability as just another characteristic of the character. Don't build your characters out from their disabilities. A great way to do this is to try something seemingly illogical. Katawa Shoujo does this rather well. Who would expect a girl with no arms to paint? Reality, strangely enough, seems often to work that way.

As for a team, I agree that you should probably do all the writing yourself if you want a coherent story with a constant writing style throughout. Having failed at doing just that though (making a VN solo), I would also say, don't be afraid to ask for help. And before you start shelling out money, ask around in the recruitment section first. If people are really interested in your project, I'm sure there will be many who'll offer to help you for free.