7th Goddess [pre-rendered][3D][free][mystery][fantasy/modern][DEMO]

[DirkB]

Synopsis: A young college student unwittingly becomes the main protagonist in a series of extraordinary events which will determine the fate of the world.

Themes include: modern day society, magic/psychic abilities, an advanced alien culture with robots, spirits/undead, world creation/domination/destruction, unusual relationships, time travel, alternate dimensions, split personality, memory loss, deception/manipulation, rebellion, polygamy, fantasy creatures, insanity, moral ambiguity.

I have a blog on tumblr http://7thgoddess-vn.tumblr.com and a youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNN9HB ... Yr4YHffHeg. You can download a demo on https://imavera.itch.io/7th-goddess .

This is the first novel I am making. I started working on it a year ago, first with images from video clips (K-Pop) and then with some free art and character generator and finally I moved on to DAZ. As engine, I started with Novelty, then Tyranobuilder and now Ren'Py.

It's made entirely with pre-rendered images. I know that using CG characters is very rare for non adult visual novels, but I can't draw well and I actually do like the characters I am able to make now. I use different expressions/poses for all scenes and characters are realistically integrated into the background. It plays entirely from a first person perspective and there will be different camera viewpoints within the same environment. I have some form of animation with open/close mouth (using the show/hide command in Ren'Py) and things like gestures or characters walking around with dissolve transitions.

It's starting as a kinetic novel and as such I will in any case share it for free. Initially I wanted to add many choices from the beginning, but as the story became longer than I expected, I will focus first on the main story and then see what I can add next.
I will upload video's as the work progresses and then I will publish the final version on steam I think.

I am doing everything alone now, and I could use some help with proofreading as English is not my first language. I used to make music in the past in various styles and I guess I can use that now, because none of it has ever been published.

There are no explicit/adult scenes or strong graphic violence but it does contain at least some references to a few disturbing things like rape and cannibalism. There will be a lot of (extreme) plot twists, weird things happening and unusual relationships.

I am including a few pictures from the first short episode that I put on youtube.

Here are a few questions:

1) Do you like the graphics and the overall concept of 3D/first person with multiple camera angles and pre-rendered graphics?

2) Do you like the music and sound effects? Is there a tune or effect you think should be improved or different?

3) Do you like the story so far? Do you like the characters? Do you have a particular favorite moment or character?

Any comments are always welcome. Especially, if you see mistakes with language or graphical issues, please let me know. Thanks and good luck all with your stories

[fleet]

Visual novels made with 3D art are rare at lemmasoft. I hope you enjoy making your kinetc novel. I watched the first few minutes of your youtube video. The images and text started out nice and sharp, but soon both became blurry. I stopped watching at that point as it hurt my eyes. I don't know if the blurriness was the video itself, or something is messed up on my computer.

[DirkB]

Thanks for the comment. Maybe it's an issue with the internet connection, I don't know. I can watch it in HD perfectly the whole time.
3D art has its limitations and I understand that many people don't like it for their novel.

[fleet]

Thanks for the comment. Maybe it's an issue with the internet connection, I don't know. I can watch it in HD perfectly the whole time.
3D art has its limitations and I understand that many people don't like it for their novel.

I re-tried playing the youtube video a minute ago and it worked just fine. There must have been a problem on my end. I didn't notice any grammar or spelling mistakes.
I don't like scrolling text, but that's a personal opinion. Others may like it.

[DirkB]

Thanks a lot for trying again and checking the language.
I set it on an auto display speed that was comfortable for me to read and I personally like scrolling text for feeling more immersed in the story. I am thinking maybe I should speed it up a bit for next video's.

[DirkB]

I have a demo now on https://imavera.itch.io/7th-goddess
It is +6800 words and still covers the early stage of the story, leading up to a big plot twist at the end of the demo.
I will regularly update the demo with more content. There will be many more characters added to the story.

I thought about turning it into a cartoon like style, but I feel less connected to the characters this way.

Someone put a video of my story on YouTube, which you can see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6b-vZjSQow&t=

A few questions:

1) Do you like the graphics and the overall concept of 3D/first person with multiple camera angles and pre-rendered graphics?

2) Do you like the music and sound effects? Is there a tune or effect you think should be improved or different?

3) Do you like the story so far? Do you like the characters? Do you have a particular favorite moment or character?

[DirkB]

The demo on https://imavera.itch.io/7th-goddess has been updated to +16000 words.

[DirkB]

I updated the demo, which now has +33k words. https://imavera.itch.io/7th-goddess

As always, I hope some people will want to give it a try and give me some feedback about how they like the story, characters and graphics, music and sound effects.

The kinetic version without choices is still far from finished but I think I am probably somewhere half way the story now. After that, I hope to add a good number of choices, some of which will not affect much but others should have far reaching consequences.

[philip]

@DirkB-

Just finished playing the demo on my mac .... WOW . . . it sure covers a lot of ground. I found the story to be very interesting, if a bit complicated, and the effect of the 3D art is wonderful! Can't wait to see more.

philip

[DirkB]

Just finished playing the demo on my mac .... WOW . . . it sure covers a lot of ground. I found the story to be very interesting, if a bit complicated, and the effect of the 3D art is wonderful! Can't wait to see more.
philip

Thanks a lot for the comment! It was a bit of a worry to me that the story may seem too confusing. It's my goal to explain every weird thing that happened sooner or later during the story. There's one big upcoming plot reveal that will give a different meaning to many things happening since the beginning. That should already clarify a lot and I just hope readers will be willing to stick with the story at least until that point.

Thank you also for appreciating the 3D art. It's a bit of a gamble, because it uses material that was not exclusively created for this novel (like environments and clothing).

[DirkB]

I posted another update for the demo. It's now over 41k words. I consider this version an important one, because at the end of it, the reader finally learns about many things that are different from what they appeared to be since the beginning.

I look forward to hearing from others how they experience the story until that point.

You can download the demo here https://imavera.itch.io/7th-goddess

[DirkB]

The main story line is almost finished now and I started adding choices.

As of now, there are choices for the first two days of the story, which is only a small part of the full story but I think it already gives a good impression about the style.

For each dialogue line or some specific action from the protagonist, there are always two choices. Sometimes this doesn't change anything, sometimes it changes just one line in the dialogue, sometimes it will affect futur dialogue or thoughts, it may also lead to different scenes and in a few cases it will also lead to very different story development.

You can download the demo at https://imavera.itch.io/7th-goddess

Any comments are always welcome.

[DirkB]

I posted a few more updates to the demo. The current content concludes what I consider to be chapter one (out of five) along all possible storylines. All constructive comments are always welcome, thank you. https://imavera.itch.io/7th-goddess