A high school student in search of his soulmate tries to shake off increasing paranoia that he will destroy the delicate peace among his circle of friends with one wrong move.
A high school student is convinced that he will find his soulmate and resolve his problems all at once in doing so, but soon realizes that he had led himself down a path of regret. You, the player. must navigate through numerous what-if situations and ultimately steer the main character to get closer to one of four important people in his life. Desperately, you search with the protagonist for a happy ending.
You can also read the original concept document (HEAVY SPOILERS)
Fifth Love is a bishoujo game which tries to deconstruct bishoujo games. That is to say, the writing is very focused on exploring the consequences of simply taking a girl's route.
We don't want to spoil the entire story, but at its core it involves a Main Character (MC) who wants to fix his problems and directionless lifestyle by deepening his relationship with one of four important girls from his life (his twin Sister, his childhood best friend/Rival, his first crush/Romance, and a Confidant he meets through the Internet). In each of the routes, MC's connection with the girl in question are explored and eventually shown to be incompatible with MC's existing problems. As well, each of the four routes uncover hints pertaining to a tragic event which occurs in MC's junior year.
Details for each route (non-spoiler version):
- Sister: MC's twin sister who looks a lot like him at the start of the story (due to a haircutting mishap) and who gradually grows apart from him. She was part of a trifecta with MC and Rival before distancing herself. Although she is the younger twin and has been treated as the "younger sibling" since birth, she gradually becomes the "older sibling" in the relationship, with MC slowly eschewing his family duties.
- Confidant: A stranger who MC meets via the Internet. They become writing buddies and begin to share a special bond. Slowly, it feels as if Confidant understands him more personally than a simple stranger could...
- Romance: MC's high school crush and eventual romantic interest (and girlfriend, depending on the route). She and MC have been aware of each other even before high school, yet meet recently through a mutual friend. They hit it off and develop a more-than-friends relationship which they both work tirelessly to make meaningful and special.
- Rival: MC's childhood best friend. She moved away before the events of the VN, right before middle school. Her sudden return, as well as her massive outpacing of MC since they were young, strain their fateful reunion right off the bat.
Concept art for the characters
In addition, there are two very important supporting characters (Best Friend and Mentor) who form the Squad with MC. You can read a sample interaction here.(You can read more about the characters on the dev blog or in the dev wiki. You can even just ask us directly )
After playing these four routes, a fifth route is unlocked where MC did one thing differently before the start of the story. The resulting timeline has MC become friends with all four of the girls, who help him realize through their support that he never loved himself. With this new knowledge in mind, he finally takes his life into his own hands.
The timeline of the story extends from sophomore year of high school (10th grade) all the way to graduation (in 12th grade).
The game is a subtle jab at the bishoujo genre, where the guy gets the girl and it's happily ever after from there. Instead, we wanted to create a story that really showed the human condition: the seemingly-contradictory duo of both soul-crushing helplessness and the humbling power to change your destiny in an instant. Fate can (literally) be decided by a single coin toss.
We want the game to appeal to seasoned bishoujo players (who want cute girls and interesting relationships) as well as uplift players who don't usually play this genre (or maybe who don't play VNs) at all! One of our biggest inspirations is the famous OELVN Katawa Shoujo, which was the first visual novel of several members on our team.
We will be updating our dev blog twice a week with content relating to the VN as well as explanations on decisions we made for characters/plot/setting. We are aiming to start a Patreon in May 2017, both to start funding development for the game as well as provide a direct way for the OELVN community to influence the development of the game (we will take suggestions and make special commissions from especially generous patrons!). For example, we may create certain special scenes for them (which will be unlockable in the final game) or even give them a small cameo! If the idea is especially good, it might even become an important plot point >:)
After this point, we will release both a full "playable" text-version game (where in place of dialogue you effectively read through synopses of what happens and then make decisions), as well as a fully-functioning demo for the first section of the game. We will try to get this done before Christmas 2017.
By now, it's mostly a matter of time (and resources). We will start a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund editing, artwork, music, GUI design, and tech help. Then, we will aim to release a full beta version of the game before finally releasing the game in September 2018.
The pricing for the game is a flat price for a regular version as well as an additional price for a version with "extras" (full art gallery, e-book version, etc.). After some period of time (which the team will discuss), we will make the game free for all and sell only the special version (at a reduced price).
We will also be aiming for a novel version of the game to be released. This is obviously a huge undertaking and may well fail based on paper book market conditions, finding an agent/publishing firm, etc. At the very least, we will release an e-book
I hope that this game concept interests some of you! I thank you for your time and your potential readership <3
Also, check out LoiLoi! She is our artist <3 she has done some really good work for us already