Siren's Ballad [Mystery/Horror] [linear]

[Abbie]

Basic info:

Development blog
Genre: Mystery/horror linear visual novel
Commercial project

Features:
Available in two languages – English and Polish
Choice-based ending differences
New Game+ mode included
aprox 40k word count



Story

Many of us have a purpose in life, a passion which we want to pursue. We strive to achieve the dreams, hard working, overcoming obstacles and developing themselves.
Cassie Rider’s dream was unusual.
She wanted to be a mermaid.

Her interest in children's stories turned into unusual hobby in her adulthood, until the day Cassie stood in the doorway of Siren’s Ballad, a bar organizing professional mermaid shows, as her first job in the profession of her dreams.

Mermaid shows, full of emotion and magic amuse both children and adults.
They are joyful detachment from the grim reality that surrounds us.
Cassie Rider felt that the beauty of sharing this joy was the missing piece in her yet undefined life.

But she could not know that darkness is hidden even in the grandest of dreams, magical beauty can only be hypocritical mask of evil and hope which she herself bear will be put to a severe, painful test...

“Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined... or one great figure... or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.”
Philip K. Dick “The Man in the High Castle”

Characters:







Visuals








The Team



Siren’s Ballad is the first project of an independent developer Kasztan Studio. We are a small group that wants to share their works with the world.

Writer: Mnyonywaji
Editor: tba
Sprite Artist: kairek, Loreen
CG Artist: kairek, Loreen
BG Artist: Loreen
Logo and GUI Artist: kairek
Composer: tba
Coder: Mnyonywaji, kairek



Progress Report

Writing (Polish): 40%
Translation (English): 0%
Sprites: 30%
Music: 0%
GUI: 10%
Backgrounds: 67%
Illustrations: 0%
Trailer: 3%

update posts:
10.03.2017 || 17.03.2017 || 24.03.2017 || 31.03.2017 || 07.04.2017 || 14.04.2017 || 21.04.2017 || 28.04.2017


Question corner

Have any question for us? Leave it on our devblog or here in comments!

Please comment on following topics:

What do you think about the game so far?
Which character looks the most interesting for you?
Is the content shared so far interesting to you? Do you have any comments to it?
Based on currently shared info about the game would you be willing to buy it? If not, why?
We know that for you Siren’s Ballad exists mostly there, on lemma, but what is your basic, preferred source for gathering info about projects like that? (fe. Facebook, itch.io, twitter, mail list)?
Would you like to see more of step-by-step or timelapsed art pieces - backgrounds, sprites (without additional comment)?
Since you got to know some details about the story and characters - do you wish us to elaborate on any certain theme, topic or character?

[Evy]

What do you think about the game so far?
MERMAIDS ARE MY JAM so yes. I'm interested.

Which character looks the most interesting for you?
I'm town between Cassie and Caren!

Is the content shared so far interesting to you? Do you have any comments to it?
I like the characters' designs and they seem to have some good variation in attitude, but to be honest, their blank expressions make it a little hard to really "feel" their personalities. Other than that, I'm excited to see that this will have a mystery/horror story.

Based on currently shared info about the game would you be willing to buy it? If not, why?
Sure!

[Zelan]

What do you think about the game so far?: It looks interesting! That horror tags is both terrifying and intriguing.
Which character looks the most interesting for you?: Vito. I like his design, and I'm also interested in the fact that he's the only one who doesn't have a true passion for the mermaid shows.
Is the content shared so far interesting to you? Do you have any comments to it?: Yup! I like the art style. ^_^ The only critique I have is that some of your grammar and syntax is a little off. I see that you already have an editor, but I would suggest getting at least one more (preferably a native English speaker) to make sure everything's perfect. The screenshots are all understandable, but the dialogue seems stiff (not like what a person would say) and is not totally correct.
Based on currently shared info about the game would you be willing to buy it? If not, why?: I probably would, if I had the money to do so.

[Abbie]

@ Evy
Thank you for the comment! Most of sprites that we showed have indeed blank faces (neutral emotion). I hope once we publish more of variation that uncanny feeling will disappear. Nevertheless It's important matter and we will invest our time in testing and fixing it since last thing we want is 'dummy parade' in game haha.

@ Zelan
Thank you for pointing it out.
We will hire editor for sure late in development, but since we don't have a proper translation yet (story is written in Polish) preview will look rough.
I think same goes for my replies, since I'm not even a writer ^^; sorry for inconvenience.

[Zelan]

@ Zelan[/b]
Thank you for pointing it out.
We will hire editor for sure late in development, but since we don't have a proper translation yet (story is written in Polish) preview will look rough.
I think same goes for my replies, since I'm not even a writer ^^; sorry for inconvenience.

It's okay! I know from experience that writing in a language that is not your native language is very difficult, and this writing is quite good considering that. It could just use a little bit of polish, but it would still be understandable without editing.

[Abbie]

Update 10/03/2017
Small weekly report of Siren's Ballad development ~!

Biggest visual news - Loreen has finished another amazing background.



Cassie shares room with Caren, hopefully they doesn't have trouble with keeping it tidy.

As for sprites, we're slowly making progress with finishing 'regular' expressions and clothing.
It might not be mentioned before, but our sirens work is not only looking fancy and swim all day - they all have to take care of bar (it would be pretty bad if they didn't have barman, wouldn't it?).
Here is sneak peak of Judie in her work attire alongside with few expressions.


uniform is not final yet, for example stylish scribble will be replaced with Bar logo

Waji took break this week to recharge, but hopefully she will wrap up some decent teaser next time!

Thank you for following our development.
If you have any remarks, comments or advices please don't hesitate to share. Feedback is extremely appreciated.

[Abbie]

Update 17/03/2017

Aand, it's time for another update on the little VN of ours!

First of all, I'd like to introduce myself. I am Mnyonywaji, writer for this little project. As Abbie mentioned last week, I was on holiday so I couldn't properly help her with previous update

This week we managed a few things.
We are currently working on the characters' sprites and backgrounds.
Since we have a cheerful mermaids theme twisted with horror story, our characters have a wide variety of expressions planned. From smiles and laughs to fear and terror... poor visual artists! (← says the one who planned all the expressions in the first place ;> )

What would be of a story about professional mermaids if we didn't show you....



...their swimming suits! I know, I know, you probably wanted the mermaid attire, didn't you? But professional mermaid shows are soo much about preparations, trainings, creating routines and choreography. The swimming suit is a vital part of daily life of a mermaid.
Only after lots of hard work the mermaid can finally wear her scales and create the magical atmosphere at the show.
Oh, and don't be sad. I'll talk someone into wearing their mermaid suit for the update next week


As for the backgrounds, one of them is what we want to boast about today - Loreen finished men's bedroom this time. Obviously, since these are in the same building, it looks awfully familiar with women's, right? But the little details are what make the difference! Can you try to guess who are the two guys living there?



As for writing, I resumed working on the scenario after my break. I am currently working on the not-so-horror part, where all the characters meet, develop likes and dislikes for each other etc. And it is hard, I tell you I am probably too aware that it is the part which translates to player's attachment to characters in the next part of novel, when things start going WRONG (whatever that means, I am not spoiling you now, not yet at least )


Speaking of which, you probably wondered, how come we came up with this twisted idea of cute mermaids in horror story?
It started in June, last year, when Loreen and Abbie stayed at my place for a few days.
Lots of chatting, laughing, playing board games.
One of the talks ended up in pondering about mermaids as real life performing professionals (hmm, no, I don't really remember HOW we did reach that theme, we totally jumped from topic to topic in some wickedly brainstorming).
We agreed it sounds like a nice background for VN idea, which we have thought of making for a long time already.
But as we considered obviously heartwarming idea of people performing as mermaids, we strongly declared it sounds too positive to realize it simply as it is.
And so the dark theme appeared, introducing hopefully interesting twist to the mermaiding idea.
We keep our fingers crossed that you like the final outcome!
See you next week!
- Waji


Thank you for following our development.
If you have any remarks, comments or advice please don't hesitate to share. Feedback is extremely appreciated.

[Dovahkitteh]

Like others have said, the contrast between the cheerful mermaid theme and the horror tag is pretty intriguing and unsettling in a cool way! Kind of curious as to what that's all about...

I noticed that you have it tagged as a kinetic novel, yet you have choice-based ending differences listed as a feature. I'm pretty sure kinetic novels are defined by not having any interaction with the story, so wouldn't it be more accurate to list it as just a regular visual novel?

[Zelan]

The background looks great! The right side is definitely Vito's, but I'm not sure about the left. Maybe Abraham?

[Abbie]

@Dovahkitteh
Glad to hear that!

Choice-based ending differences is actually literally what it is. It's not 'different ending' feature like in most visual novels I know - no scenes are changed, final outcome of the story is sill the same. It's more like on epilogue depending on your choices you can get few lines different (random example - if you encourage someone to pursue dream on end of game there is a sentence that implies them move out to do it, but no branch story wise is created.) I think 'Oxenfree' would be similar in that concept although there were some minor changes along way in that game. We want to keep our game branchless thus we thought kinetic would be better class to pin it after.

Thank you for pointing this out, I kinda felt in guts it might be wanky term but we didn't know any better.
I wouldn't want anyone to feel 'trapped' by it, so for actual game description we might rephrase that, or if there is some term for that kind of feature I will change it right away.

@Zelan

Haha, Vito side is too obvious it seems yep, That's right guess!

[Zelan]

If your game has choices but no branches, a better term instead of 'kinetic' would be 'linear.' c:

[Abbie]

If your game has choices but no branches, a better term instead of 'kinetic' would be 'linear.' c:

Thank you <3 yeah that makes sense, fixed it!

[Abbie]

sup!
We make small poll before this Friday >w<! Who would you like to see in mermaid attire in next dev post? let us know!



edit: thank you for votes! poll is closed

[Abbie]

Welcome again, everyone! ~<3
As scheduled we are back with another weekly update.
First of all, thank you very much for all the votes we got in our mid-week pool!
The results are there and the winner is….

Dorothy!

You got bewitched by her girly charm, didn’t you?



Actually, it is one of the earlier sprites that have been done, and the first mermaid costume designed. Dorothy, as mentioned in the character preview, emanates an aura of tranquility.

As kairek made the design, she was inspired by general idea of “sea treasures”. That’s why it includes both gold accessories and pearls - the precious stone of the depths of the ocean.
Loreen, as colorist, decided that soft tones are needed for the design. Her first idea was blue as the dominating colour, however she decided to go even softer, in the gold-pearly direction in the end.

Dorothy’s mermaid costume was stylized as the mermaid princess, ephemeral and subtle, as if she were to disappear in the sea foam any moment...

Do you like the design?
Tell us your impressions of her costume!



In the background department, we would like to elaborate a bit on probably the most important background of the game.
Which is - the Siren’s Ballad bar!



One couldn’t imagine the work of our mermaids without the title bar itself.
The apple of Brandon’s eye, Siren’s Ballad is a part of a bigger business - Picea Bay's Aquatic Kingdom Leisure Friends&Family Park. The Park itself is open for a few months already, but Siren’s Ballad starts with its mermaid shows only now, when the mermaiding crew finally gathered.
As it was designed specifically for the mermaid shows, it’s main attraction is the aquarium. The interior design was meant to resemble inside of a luxury, antique ship, thus lots of carved wood and the sailing ropes over the bar.



The solution for service in the bar is not the most popular one in the mermaiding business: the performers are also the bartenders of the bar when not performing.
And the bar itself? Well, just on the other side of a fountain plaza, the bar is at, there is a big, family restaurant. That’s why Siren’s Ballad is what it is - a bar. Alcohol beverages, assortment of teas and coffee, some small snacks. By daytime it invites people to relax with book or newspaper, in the evening it gets more of a “clubbish” feel, both because of the choice of music and the visitors’ profile.

However, with the forthcoming mermaid shows, some evenings will finally be available for special reservation - for the mermaid shows themselves!
- Waji

Thank you for following our development.
If you have any remarks, comments or advice please don't hesitate to share. Feedback is extremely appreciated.

[Zelan]

Man oh man, I've always loved bar backgrounds for some reason. It looks great! And Dorothy is lovely as well, the pearl and gold work well with each other. ^_^