Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Paranormal][Commercial]

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Jackkel Dragon
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Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Paranormal][Commercial]

#1 Post by Jackkel Dragon »

Image
Characters from left to right: Kasumi, Akomi, Kagami, Yue, Cho, Misaki
Solana Academy is a prestigious all-girl boarding school in a remote corner of Japan. Despite its distance from major cities, it never wants for students or funding.

However, the ideal school life at Solana Academy is disrupted by the sudden appearance of grotesque monsters from the formerly sealed-off old dormitory. A chance discovery of magical "petals" leaves four students as the only line of defense against this threat. But as the girls investigate the old dormitory for a way to be rid of the monsters, they begin to uncover a sinister truth regarding their school...

Information

Eldritch Academy is a romance/paranormal thriller visual novel with horror elements. Yue Ishikami must search for the source of the monsters attacking her school and investigate the secret of the petal that gives her power. How Yue spends her downtime and who she chooses to partner with determines whether she finds someone to support her through the ordeal or ends up alone.

- 3 Dateable Girls
- 5 Ending Routes, some with alternate endings
- Planned Price: 15 USD

Characters

Yue Ishikami
The protagonist and viewpoint character. Yue is a first-year at Solana Academy that has few friends due to her abrasive and standoffish personality. While raised by otaku, Yue has tried to avoid becoming as obsessive as her parents.

Kasumi Kawamura
Yue's classmate. Kasumi prefers spending time with her friends to studying, and she has a reputation as an airhead. She spends a lot of time with Yue, to Yue's annoyance.

Cho Fukuda
Yue's classmate. Cho has been pegged as a tomboy because she wears uniform pants instead of a skirt, but this illusion is broken quickly by anyone who takes the time to talk to her.

Akomi Miyazaki
A first-year at Solana Academy. Akomi is known for two things: enjoying food and making perverted comments. She seems to be able to make a lewd joke from just about anything.

Kagami Nakayama
A first-year at Solana Academy. Kagami is usually quiet, and when she does talk she tends to use formal address and a carefully selected vocabulary. She doesn't smile much, and most don't really know what she's interested in. She often wears a scarf, even when it isn't cold.

Misaki Asahara
A second-year at Solana Academy. Misaki has known Kasumi for years, and they have recently begun dating. She is outgoing and friendly, always looking for new friends.

Junka Fujikawa
An instructor at Solana Academy. While young, she is a competent teacher and does her best to make sure her students do well in their classes.

Machi Hirata
The school nurse at Solana Academy. While she acts cold and cynical, she doesn't hesitate to help students that come to her for treatment.

Progress

Script: 100%
Art: ~98%
Music: 100% (?) (making use of royalty-free sources in current build)
Sound: 100% (?)

Questions
  • What is your first impression of the concept? Of the characters?
  • Is there any information that you consider important that is not present? Is there anything that seems unclear?
  • Do you have any other questions about the project?
  • A scene replay feature is being planned for the game. Should scene replay allow replaying of any scene from the game, or only important/romantic scenes? (EDIT: A scene replay feature that allows replaying almost any scene has already been implemented.)
Last edited by Jackkel Dragon on Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:09 pm, edited 29 times in total.
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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#2 Post by Morhighan »

This looks really interesting! I'll try to read over it more and answer the questions soon. :)

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#3 Post by Noire »

Looks really great. I like your poster :)

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#4 Post by bellice »

I like horror stories and I like GxG, so I'm totally down for it. But as usual when a VN by a presumably (correct me if I'm wrong) non-Japanese creator is set in Japan I wonder...why? Why not set it in a familiar environment?
Obviously, it's up to you what to do, but there are many people that might not even give your VN a chance simply because it follows the old 'Japanese High School' setting. (Or, well, boarding school in this case.)
Last edited by bellice on Tue Feb 17, 2015 2:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#5 Post by Razz »

Yuri horror game? Yes please!
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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#6 Post by Jackkel Dragon »

Thanks for the interest! Let me know if there are any questions/comments about the game. (Answering the intro questions from my first post would be a great help.)
bellice wrote:I like horror stories and I like GxG, so I'm totally down for it. But as usual when a VN by a presumably (correct me if I'm wrong) non-Japanese creator is set in Japan I wonder...why? Why not set it in a familiar environment?
Obviously, it's up to you what to do, but there are many people that might not even give your VN a chance simply because it follows the old 'Japanese High School' setting. (Or, well, boarding school in this case.)
Yeah, I noticed while lurking these forums that there are a lot of people that are really tired of the Japanese High School setting. To be fair, it is a bit overused in the VN scene when there are a lot of other settings out there.

However, even if Eldritch Academy wasn't already over a year into development, I don't think I can change the setting now. The game ties into a few things that have already been written and a few things that I've been planning to write that take place in Japan, so I can't change the setting now without rewriting major parts of the story and reworking my other writing projects. Hopefully the game does well enough despite its setting so that future games in the same universe can be created (most of which have a different setting in the current plans).
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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#7 Post by eileen »

Yuri horror game!?!?! You got my attention for sure. I really hope you finish this game! I need to play it. :D

The only thing I can think of that isn't present at the moment are the samples sprites, bgs and possibly screenshots.
Though, the poster does amend this a bit. Could you label under the poster who is who. That might help as well for me at least. ^^;;
Also, what kind of horror is it? Psychological horror or horror we see in horror movies?
I would prefer only the important/romance scenes but replaying any of the scenes is just fine. It's depends on if you want to spend the time on it.

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#8 Post by Morhighan »

*What is your first impression of the concept? Of the characters?
I'm enjoying the concept so far. I'm a sucker for Eldritch stuff so the title caught my eye, as did the plot. Also GxG for the win! <3
The characters seem interesting so far, I can't wait to see more of them.

*Is there any information that you consider important that is not present? Is there anything that seems unclear?
I'd love to see sprites next to the character descriptions so I can know who is who from the poster.

*A scene replay feature is being planned for the game. Should scene replay allow replaying of any scene from the game, or only important/romantic scenes?
I'd say any scene.

*Do you have any other questions about the project?
Not at this time. :D

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#9 Post by Jackkel Dragon »

I'm glad that the concept is interesting! Hopefully the game lives up to the expectations when it's ready.

And now to answer a few questions:
The only thing I can think of that isn't present at the moment are the samples sprites, bgs and possibly screenshots.
While the designs of almost all of the characters are complete, there are currently no finalized sprites. There are some old sprites from earlier drafts of the game, but I think it might be better to wait until the new sprites are finished instead of showing those.
Could you label under the poster who is who.
I added a short list of the characters in the poster underneath the image itself, hopefully that helps a bit.
Also, what kind of horror is it? Psychological horror or horror we see in horror movies?
I consider the story as it's written so far to be psychological horror mixed with a few elements of cosmic horror (like the concept of eldritch abominations). The story primarily focuses on the first kind and the romance, though: it's not quite as bleak as a true cosmic horror story.
I'd love to see sprites next to the character descriptions so I can know who is who from the poster.
I'll look into adding those once the sprites are finalized, then. For now, I've listed the characters in the poster underneath the image.

For scene replay, it looks like I should consider ways to make most scenes replayable from the gallery. That said, if I make every scene replayable, it looks like I'm going to have to play only the "default" version of scenes in a lot of cases. (For instance, some lines may be altered based on how close Yue is to certain characters in the main game, but the unaltered line would have to be used in scene replay.)
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Includes information about and links to many of my current and past projects.

Major Game Projects
[Nightshade] Eldritch Academy, Eldritch University, Blooming Nightshade, Flowering Nightshade, Life as Designed
[Team Despair] Corpse Party D2 series

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#10 Post by Jackkel Dragon »

Progress has been a bit slow due to other responsibilities I need to take care of, but I've been working on a few character-specific scenes in the common route. The common route is nearly finished now, and once I finish and review the draft of the common route I can get started on the ending routes. (I'm probably going to end up writing the alone route first, since then I'll have a baseline for pacing the other routes.)

I'm currently at about 65k words in the script draft, so I'm guessing the final common route will be ~70k words and the full game might be somewhere between 100-150k words. I'm a bit curious what people think about that length. From what I understand, a 100k visual novel might be considered "short", and since I plan to sell this game, the length would be an important factor is deciding the final price.
Main Website
Includes information about and links to many of my current and past projects.

Major Game Projects
[Nightshade] Eldritch Academy, Eldritch University, Blooming Nightshade, Flowering Nightshade, Life as Designed
[Team Despair] Corpse Party D2 series

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#11 Post by Jackkel Dragon »

I've been doing some work on the GUI, so while it isn't nice enough to show off yet I managed to get the coding to work with placeholder art. Might need to look into how save game screenshots are handled in Ren'Py, though. They're visibly stretched in my current save/load screen, which looks a bit strange.

I also did some testing to check the length of the game so far, and a single playthough of the finished parts of the game took me about 2 hours. Extrapolating from there, I'm guessing the full game will take about 3-4 hours per playthrough, assuming no scenes are skipped past. (Still curious what people think about the length of the game. It can't really be extended at this point of development, but opinions on the length may have to come into consideration when I decide the final price.)

Since this technical stuff isn't very interesting, I'll also post some links to stuff related to the game that the artist and I have released on Tumblr. Hopefully these will help raise some interest in the game:

"New Year's at the Ishikami Household": A short story taking place a few months before the events of the game, written as a New Year's teaser.
"Apathetic Heroes": A sketch of Cho and Kagami, drawn by the artist.
Main Website
Includes information about and links to many of my current and past projects.

Major Game Projects
[Nightshade] Eldritch Academy, Eldritch University, Blooming Nightshade, Flowering Nightshade, Life as Designed
[Team Despair] Corpse Party D2 series

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#12 Post by Jackkel Dragon »

I've been busy with other commitments lately, but I recently found some time to continue drafting the common route and work on the GUI for EA. I think I have placeholders for all but one of the menus working now (even scene replay, which caused me some problems at first). The current script is at 71k words and there are only four more events left to write before the common route draft is complete.

Out of curiosity, how important is profile/bio information for the main characters (things like height, birth date, etc.) when providing pre-release information for a game like this? I didn't feel like it was something important enough for the initial announcement, but I wonder if those sort of things are important to some people. (And if it is, what kind of profile information is important.)
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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#13 Post by bellice »

Well, can't say it's important to me, unless there's something interesting going on. Like, if one of the characters was way older than the MC, that would be interesting to know, or if one of them is insanely tall or something. Those are some small things that make me more interested in the characters, but generally speaking, I don't think very many people will care.

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#14 Post by papillon »

IMO the only purpose for 'profile' posts is filler to cover up that you have nothing else to say.

Which can be true, with a game whose plot is full of surprises such that you can't say very much about it. In those cases, posting profiles with completely irrelevant information and cute doodles of the characters helps keep interest going. It's not that any particular piece of information is actually important, most of the time, it's just giving you something to talk about.

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Re: Eldritch Academy [GxG Romance/Horror][Commercial]

#15 Post by Jackkel Dragon »

Looks like the common opinion might be that profile information isn't very important, so I'll probably hold off on posting that information unless it becomes important.

In status update news, there is now only one scene left to draft for the common route of the game before it's playable from start to finish. While there are still the ending routes to work on after this (altogether probably as long as the common route based on the outline), it feels cool to finally be in reach of this milestone. I'm looking forward to writing the ending routes; while they all have similar plot points that have to be addressed, not needing to feed back into a shared set of events means that each route can be more flexible in how it handles the main plot points.
Main Website
Includes information about and links to many of my current and past projects.

Major Game Projects
[Nightshade] Eldritch Academy, Eldritch University, Blooming Nightshade, Flowering Nightshade, Life as Designed
[Team Despair] Corpse Party D2 series

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