Best Wishes is a WIP romance-adventure visual novel about a young, hot-blooded elf attempting to get her crush a present in the wake of his oncoming birthday. Unfortunately, Kree is an idiot, so this may (definitely) be far, far harder than she expected it to be.
In the mountainous nation of Fyrholde, strength is respected above all else, and no pursuit held in more esteem than that of glorious battle. The long nights and brutal winters foster close-knit communities, and such is true of Astrid's Oathbound, a unit of warriors who share a feasting hall affectionately known as Attyrhus. Their work is, on the whole, simple - Fyrholde is filled with threats ranging from dragons to petty bandits, and for a fee, Astrid's Oathbound will... eliminate problems. Violently.
It's not a glamorous life, or a particularly easy one, but they all seem happy enough.
Of course, not every day can involve conquering a beastly foe, though today certainly feels like that for Kree, a young elf from the southern Sylphlands who has, through mysterious circumstances, come to make Attyrhus her home.
Kree is good at many things. Screaming a lot! Brewing potions! Fighting bears! But when she learns that tomorrow is the birthday of the man she's secretly in love with, Kree finds herself honor bound to acquire a present and celebrate his existence in the Fyrish tradition... which is something that's much more easily said than done, given that Kree's skillset basically ends at scholastic dismemberment.
Not that she'd ever let that stop her. Kree is, if nothing else, determined, which may very well land in more trouble than she bargained for.
Underneath her brash exterior, she's a very inquisitive, thoughtful, curious person.
He doesn't particularly care much that it's his birthday tomorrow. Kree takes this to mean that she needs to go 200% in caring for him.
Vis a vis stabbing.
Her most notable traits are her even temper and regal demeanor. Briar looks the part of a holy paladin, and boy howdy, does she hate the forces of darkness. While Kree doesn't care much one way or another about demons, zombies, and necromancers, she thinks Briar is pretty gosh-darn cool and will gladly follow her into battle. Today, she's going on a trip to a dwarven ruin to find replacement parts for her hands. This may or may not get bungled up by Kree.
Not really on great terms with the local wizard, even though Kree isn't a particularly... austere one.
He can, occasionally, be kind of nice, particularly when it comes to Folke, a man he holds in pretty high regard. That might be why he's amenable to the idea of helping Kree pick out a present in keeping with Fyrish tradition. Whether or not Kree accepts, and whether or not they can refrain from trying to kill each other for two seconds is... up in the air.
- * Roughly 150k wordcount for the full game (there's lots of branching). Demo includes ~32k words.
* Numerous, indepth ways to die and fail horribly, usually accompanied by a quasi-divine entity making fun of you. The demo includes one good ending, 3 was to die, and one "to be continued" ending.
* Discover hidden truths about the world and the characters inhabiting it by gathering information between multiple paths.
* Three distinct adventures, one focused on dungeoneering, one focused on domestic mishaps, and one exploring just how horribly wrong a shopping trip can go, all with multiple branching paths within them.
* Plenty of poorly picked fights full of improvisational combat and bad decisions
* Spooky stuff involving dwarves that might not actually be dwarves
* Dogs.
About
Hi! Thanks for reading this far. Best Wishes is a WIP freeware romance/adventure game that I'm making to flesh out characters and a world that I'd like to use in a much longer, route-based otome game! The available demo was my submission for NaNoRenO-17, and as such, it's a bit... rough around the edges, featuring some WIP assets (read: dear god, those backgrounds), missing sprites, and far fewer endings and choices than I'd like in the full game. Still, I think it's enough to get a taste of the tone of this project and some of the story! This is my first visual novel, so I've got a lot to learn, but making this demo was a seriously educational experience, and I hope you enjoy it if you decide to give it a shot.
(Here's another link to the demo, if you don't want to scroll up.)
If you're interested in the game, I have a few questions for you.
1.) Who is your favorite character?
2.) Does the premise sound interesting?
3.) Is Kree your kind of protagonist? Do you think following her stupid misadventures will be fun?
4.) Is there anything you're really interested in seeing in the finished game?
And, more specifically, if you've played the demo -
5.) What was your favorite scene?
6.) Do you enjoy the world this is set in? Are you interested in learning more about it?
7.) And finally - did you have fun?
Thank you so much for your time, and I hope you have a very nice day!