String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

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Avior
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String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#1 Post by Avior »

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He opens his eyes to find walls of thick concrete blocks stretching to a cavernous ceiling, the fluorescent floor tiles unable to make any meaningful claim in the darkness. His chest aches from the fine metal strings threaded deep through his skin, but no memories return to him as he sits up and looks around.

The only clue he finds is a thick pamphlet of instructions left behind on the low table across the room—

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"Hello and welcome to the Trait Interference Experiment (TIE) Program. You are participant number SIX."


He’s been selected to participate in a game to test the experimental technology embedded in his chest; he and seven other participants will be forced to navigate a large maze while using the strings to corrupt each other’s personalities.

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"We would like to take this moment to inform you that, despite your current lack of verifiable memories, your participation in this experiment was entirely voluntary. We ask for your continued cooperation."

"Please use your traits wisely to find your way to the end of the maze."


He puts the papers down and looks towards the room’s exit.

This game was made for him.


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String Us Together is an adventure visual novel with psychological and philosophical themes where eight participants in a maze-based death game have a set of strings implanted in their chests which allow them to inflict their personality traits on each other. The last one standing is promised a secure future, along with any single piece of information they desire…

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Participant Number Six
A handsome young man who is perfectly willing to step on anyone and anything that gets in between him and what he wants. What prize is he seeking so desperately that he's willing to put even himself underfoot to get it...?

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Participant Number One
A gentle and leaderly young man who seems wholly unsuited to such a cutthroat game. He must have come here with the intent to win for some higher purpose, but with him, should be question be "for what?" or "for whom?"...?

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Participant Number Two
A young professional desperately fighting to gain a foothold in this competitive world. Did she choose to join this game because she's lost the will to fight? Or has she put her life on the line to forge a new battlefield...?

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Participant Number Three
A peppy young woman who radiates confidence with every word. Her speed at jumping to her own defense puts her obvious sense of pride in full view, but just what prize would make someone like her come here...?

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Participant Number Four
A softspoken young woman who is nonetheless vigorously optimistic in helping others. She often seems lost in melancholy, but is unwilling to accept help given her in kind. Can this game give her back whatever it is that she lost...?

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Participant Number Five
An obviously anxious young man who is all too quick to give up. Why did he choose to be here? Is this his way of trying to turn the tides on his bad luck? Or is it just his way of finally throwing down the cards for good...?

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Participant Number Seven
A rather cute young woman with a quiet determination far exceeding her age. She speaks little of herself, but she too must have something that she will give up anything for. What kind of future do those observant eyes envision...?

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Participant Number Eight
A rather tired looking young man whose nonchalance betrays a motive dissimilar to his fellow players. He chose to be a part of this game, so why is it that he seems so uninterested in fighting for his prize...?

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  • Visual novel with adventure game elements
  • Five first person mazes to navigate
  • Dynamic story that changes with the choices you make
  • Projected ~50k+ word script
  • 10 unique endings
  • Focus on non-repetition as a design choice
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“Team” Introduction
Hello again! Or, if you’ve never seen me before, nice to meet you! I’m Avior, an indie dev specializing in speculative fiction. This will be my eighth visual novel, and I’m aiming to make it my most ambitious project to date! It's a (hopefully) unique concept that's also a love letter to Zero Escape, one of my favorite game series.

This will be another solo project, so almost everything will be created by my own hands! As usual, my budget is only my own time, so sprites and audio assets will be taken from free resources. Pretty much everything else will be made and designed by me!

Writing, Editing, GUI, Programming, Backgrounds: Avior
Maze Framework: Nyaatrap
Sprites: Charat
Music: TBA
SFX: TBA

Release Date
I’m hesitant to give a hard release date just yet, since this is a bigger project than I’ve previously attempted, but my tentative goal is December 2021. Please be patient with me if that goal has to be moved a bit!

Follow the Project
I’ve been posting Twitter updates weekly, every Friday, since the game’s official introduction in May, and I intend to continue doing so throughout development! This thread will also be updated frequently from here on, but if you want all the in-between, real time updates, I recommend following my Twitter! Additionally, you can follow the tag for this game, #StringUsTogetherVN.

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2021.5.17 - Game is announced!
2021.7.4 - First 10k words complete
2021.7.9 - Character introductions complete
2021.7.11 - Lemmasoft Thread Created
2021.7.23 - First two mazes complete

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This is a story that’s been stewing for quite a while; I’ve done several jam games and shorter works, but I really wanted to tackle something bigger! This seemed like a good time to do it, so I’m pulling out all the stops to make this game longer, more in-depth, more engaging, and more polished than anything I’ve made before! I’m also starting with a new planning and work approach that has already proven to be much more effective at keeping a steady pace of development.

I’m making this thread to hopefully drum up some interest in the game, to serve as a development log, and to get feedback on various aspects of the game as development moves along. I hope you’ll join me on this journey!

Activities
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Take the TIE Program Personality Assessment! This short quiz will tell you which participant you are most like.

Questions
Some are just for fun, while others are more about feedback on the current concept. Feel free to answer all of them or only the ones you want!

Feedback:
1. Does this kind of premise for a death game sound interesting? Is it different than other death games you’ve seen/played in the past?
2. My “design of non-repetition” is an effort to reduce the amount of times that it’s necessary to use the skip function and go through the same sections again on new playthroughs. I especially want to avoid the confusion that can occur in branching storylines when you start to forget what has occurred in the route you just skipped through. Do you think this is a good approach, or do you think it will lead to bloat?
3. Do the characters seem interesting and varied? Who do you like the best? Who do you think has the best chance of winning the game?
4. If I gave you the option to skip the maze/adventure parts of the game without having played through them first, would you skip them?
5. Do you like playing villainous protagonists like Six? Or would you prefer it if someone else was the protagonist?

Fun:
1. Did you take the personality assessment? Which character did you get?
2. What kind of prize would you ask for to take part in a game like this? Is there any prize that would make it worth it?
3. What do you think each character asked for as their prize?
4. If you could give one character an advantage in the game, who would you give it to and why?
5. If I made a VR version of the mazes in the game, would you be interested in playing them that way?
Last edited by Avior on Fri Jul 23, 2021 8:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Avior
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#2 Post by Avior »

Biweekly update time!

The first major chunk of the game is complete, sitting at just under 12k words. You can read a short excerpt from the game here!

The sprites are complete, but haven't been exported and added to the game yet. You can look forward to a preview of the sprites next update!

Finally, the first two mazes have been designed and implemented into the game at the "prototype" stage! There are still some bugs, and the events need to be added to the map, but it's possible to go in and walk around!

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See you next update!
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Avior
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#3 Post by Avior »

Time for the next biweekly update!

All the sprites have been exported and added in to the game! I'm currently working on blinks, lip flaps, and other face animations, as well as dynamic positioning and animated frames!

Here's a preview of everyone's sprites (click to view fullsize):
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You can look forward to a sample of the sprite animations next update! Thanks for reading!
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#4 Post by quillyquillquill »

Looking forward to this - games tagged with "philosophical" seems like something right up my alley!

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Avior
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#5 Post by Avior »

quillyquillquill wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 7:39 am Looking forward to this - games tagged with "philosophical" seems like something right up my alley!
Thanks for the response! I've always loved when games tackle philosophical concepts and I've always wanted to make a game with that kind of premise too. I hope you enjoy the game when it finally comes out! :D

Time for the another biweekly update!
The basic facial animations are complete! All the participants can blink, talk, look around, and move their eyebrows. The sprites' frames will also be animated, but I'm still working on that.

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I spent some time organizing my script files, but I had a little bit of time to fiddle around with the prototype for a nonogram puzzle!
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Lots of work still to do, so I'll see you next update!
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#6 Post by alexei »

That's amazing Avior! Looking forward to playing it!

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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#7 Post by Avior »

alexei wrote: Fri Sep 03, 2021 1:06 am That's amazing Avior! Looking forward to playing it!
Thanks! I'm hard at work so I can hopefully have a demo out before too long. I hope all your projects are also going well! :)

It's been another two weeks already!
The update this time is mostly focused on mockups for the various say screens. There's two versions of the say screen for the main game sections:
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(Click to view fullsize.)
Left is the 1v1 layout, for conversations occurring between two people, and right is the 2v2 layout, for conversations occurring between three or four people. I plan for both of these layouts to have dynamic elements, but you'll have to wait for the actual game to find out what they are!

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(Click to view fullsize.)
This is a special say screen to be used for the maze sequences. This one's a bit of a rougher mockup than the other two, and probably will be changed quite a bit before the final version.

Thanks for reading, as always! See you next update!
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#8 Post by Avior »

Hello everyone! It's time for a delayed biweekly update!

If you don't follow me on Twitter, I've been sick these past few weeks and opted to take a break from working on the game so I could get some rest, which is why there wasn't an update. I'm doing much better now and am largely back to where I should be!

I've been working largely on secret parts of the game this week, so unfortunately I can't share them. Instead, I hope you'll enjoy another short excerpt from earlier in the game!

https://bit.ly/39Ctezm

Until next time!
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#9 Post by Inksword »

I really like the concept of this! The thing that really caught my eye was the swapping personality traits part? That seems like a really unique hook, so I'm really interested in seeing how that develops! I'll keep my eye on this!

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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#10 Post by carrot_ »

Loving the concept here. I got "Five" as my character when I took the quiz. Seems pretty legit even just going by the art haha.
Will be watching this moving forward!

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Avior
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#11 Post by Avior »

Inksword wrote: Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:11 pm I really like the concept of this! The thing that really caught my eye was the swapping personality traits part? That seems like a really unique hook, so I'm really interested in seeing how that develops! I'll keep my eye on this!
Thanks! I'm really trying to do the personality traits concept justice and give the players lots of opportunities to alter the course of the game. I hope you'll give the game a try when it comes out! :D
carrot_ wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 2:21 pm Loving the concept here. I got "Five" as my character when I took the quiz. Seems pretty legit even just going by the art haha.
Will be watching this moving forward!
Thank you, and thanks for telling me your quiz result! It's always fun to see what people get, haha. I hope you'll play the game when it comes out and help Five find his way to victory! :)

---

Time for another update! Most of my time was spent working on the script and wrestling with ATL... it really wanted to give me some trouble, but I have some nice animated sprite frames to show for it! The NVL dialogue box has also officially been implemented.

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See you all next update!
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#12 Post by Avior »

The biweekly update returns!

I've mostly been plugging away at the script as usual. I've also put in a bit of time improving the mazes, but they're not quite ready to show yet. Hopefully I'll have a preview ready for you all soon.

In lieu of that, I have another excerpt to share! This one one has some light spoilers for later in the game; nothing that will spoil the experience, but if you would rather go in blind, I'd recommend skipping it. You can read the excerpt here!

Until next time!
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#13 Post by Avior »

Biweekly update!

This time will be another excerpt; I've mostly been working on the script still, so there's not much to show for other aspects! Like last time's, this excerpt contains light spoilers, so if you don't want to know anything, I'd skip it! You can read the excerpt here!
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Re: String Us Together [ADV VN | Death Game | Psychology/Philosophy]

#14 Post by Avior »

Biweekly update comes again!

I've been continuing work on the script. Current word count is just under 25k, and still a lot to go! I think hitting the 50k goal is going to be easy (well, in terms of having enough content to fill it. Writing is Hard haha.).

I've also finished writing most of the room and game tutorials, so I've been fiddling around with how I want the instructional screens to look. I'm thinking about a Portal-esque minimalist design to match the rest of the game's mostly monochrome design!

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(Click to enlarge.)

See you next update!
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