[Race Against Death] [thriller?, supernatural, love][VN]

[ebi brain]

This is an idea I have been thinking about for the past four or so months.
I was going to use it for Nanoreno, but I managed to get a flareup of RSI this month so I thought I would just wait for the pain to go down a bit and then just take my time making my first visual novel.
Well, the pain is still here but I thought it would be a good idea to slowly get started anyway. I’ll just have to make sure that I don’t go overboard with the computer work. I mean doing a small amount of work every day will probably be much better than doing a lot of work on one day and then having to take a rest again for a month.


Synopsis: A boy on his deathbed makes a request to see his loved one one more time before he dies. Death agrees but they will play by his rules…


Race Against Death (totally a working title)

Story:

Lately, Mitch has been plagued by a nightmare that repeats itself every night. It started off as just a few horrible images, but slowly the whole picture starts to unfold. Since Mitch can’t remember anything from his childhood or teenage years, his friend suggests seeing a counselor as he might be suppressing some traumatizing memories. Nightmares are just a way for the brain to process these incidents subconsciously.

Strung out from insomnia and with the prospect of losing his job, Mitch agrees that now would be a good time to dig into his past and find out what is causing this nightmare.

Mitch finds out is that the nightmare is a replay of the day that he was murdered. Memories start to flood back and what ensues is a race against Death, literally.

(not sure if spoiler worthy but...)

The only reason he is still on this earth today is because he made a deal with Death. If he could get to the girl he loved before Death comes to get her, he can live. If he doesn’t find her, he dies.
Now that he remembers this, it’s time to find the girl. If only he could remember who it was!

The game would be presented as a visual novel. There will be at least two endings (one bad, one good) and a handful of premature bad endings.

As I’m just starting out, this game will be rather short; I suspect that it won’t go over an hour or so of gameplay.

And because I can’t really draw, I’ll just put some crappy placeholders here for the characters. I’ll try to improve though!
I’m still working out character profiles, so these are all pretty much subject to change.

Mitch
20 something-year-old who can't remember anything beyond five years ago.
Nightmares plague him every night, making him rather jittery and anxious when he is awake.
He lives in a quiet fishing village where he helps catch fish and fixes boats.



Felix
19 years old. Mitch's friend who works at the same place as Mitch does.
Always bright and cheerful he's ready to take on any adventure.

Status:
Rough outline: 100%
Detailed outline: 4 days out of approximately 21
Writing: 5% of day 1

Lint, first draft:
Statistics:

The game contains 49 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 706 words,
for an average of 14.4 words per screen.
The game contains 0 menus.

Note to self: learn to make opening text look better!
April 4th - worked out profiles some more. Not ready yet though. Wrote some more of day 1, need to transfer it to Word.
April 10th - I freaking lost the second scene I was writing T_T (I write everything on paper first d'oh. Lesson learned! The moment I have something on paper, I'll put it in a txt file or binder or scan it!)
But losing my writings made me realize how freakin' gloomy everything is, so.... I'm going to rewrite it so it'll be somewhat... more light hearted and a whole lot less AAAAAANNNNNGGGGSSSTTTTTTTT XD


Next update in May!

[Ran08]

Awww, I already like the working title! Hahaha. )
I like it. I like the concept and also the prologue you presented so far, especially the one about living again just because he made a deal. Although if that's the case, then he already lost a few days or even months! :O And that's weird if he just decided to dig into his past and find out that he's already been dead once. Hmm... maybe you can work around that. But I think this is really interesting!

I'll be waiting for updates.

[ebi brain]

Awww, I already like the working title! Hahaha. )
And that's weird if he just decided to dig into his past and find out that he's already been dead once. Hmm... maybe you can work around that.

I'll be waiting for updates.

Thanks for the encouragement!
I was really nervous about making this thread, but I know that if I didn't make it, it would take me a lot longer to finish this game. Or I might have even scrapped it all together, due to a lack of self-confidence.

It's nice to get feedback like this, it helps me to stay on track. So thank you.

You are right that it's a bit weird, And I'm having a little bit of trouble to make this come across as realistic as possible. But the big gap in not doing anything and then suddenly digging into his past does play a role in the game. I'll Try my best to find a good way to explain all this in the game itself.

Though, if I find out that it doesn't work at all, of course I'll try and work around it.

[Ran08]

Thanks for the encouragement!
I was really nervous about making this thread, but I know that if I didn't make it, it would take me a lot longer to finish this game. Or I might have even scrapped it all together, due to a lack of self-confidence.

It's nice to get feedback like this, it helps me to stay on track. So thank you.

You are right that it's a bit weird, And I'm having a little bit of trouble to make this come across as realistic as possible. But the big gap in not doing anything and then suddenly digging into his past does play a role in the game. I'll Try my best to find a good way to explain all this in the game itself.

Though, if I find out that it doesn't work at all, of course I'll try and work around it.

You're very much welcome. Oh, and I know how you feel! I was really nervous about my first VN post here as well. But it's really motivating when somebody comments on your work and it's like... ahh, the feeling is hard to explain, but it's really wonderful. And it's good that you didn't scrap it! The concept is really very nice.

Haha, well, I just thought it was weird because... if I were him and I find out about something like that, I think the first thing that gonna come to my mind is, "Then I'm a ghost?!" Hahaha, so instead on focusing on the deal, the storyline would move to something like... a person thinking he's just a ghost roaming around the Earth. But goodluck on that! I'm sure you can work around it.

I'll be checking for updates~~