Feedback for a fantasy VN

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MiraiZura
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Feedback for a fantasy VN

#1 Post by MiraiZura »

Hello there, my first post on this forum. :D So I am in the middle of writing a fantasy VN that revolves around the concept of lies and how lies determine our reality(I am currently 150,000 words in, the whole project is meant to be about 230,000).

The VN features 3 different romance routes(Each with good end, neutral end, and lots of bad ends).

I am aiming to give the player as much control over the story as he would like, so there is a choice every 10 minutes(on average, of course).

I only recently discovered this forum, so I wanted to ask people about my introduction , and maybe you could it tell me how should I improve it.

If you liked it, feel free to ask me to post a small bit of the start of the story.

The introduction

Code: Select all

(Picture-Black Screen) 

Lies shape reality. 

If it weren’t for lies, our reality would be a boring, linear story. 

Led by nothing but truth and random events, our lives wouldn’t be worth living. 

This is the story behind “predetermined fate” that god has created us. 

But we can fight it, we can deviate from the straight, boring road god built for us. 

Our weapons are lies. 

Lies shape the mind, mind shapes reality. 

Using lies, one creates reality for others. 

And themselves. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that the liar is in fact a semi-god. 

A fighter of true freedom.  

Lies possess great power, but even greater danger. 

Once you get caught in one’s lie, you are now in their reality. 

Where they are the absolute ruler. 

This is the story about the greatest lie, a lie that expanded beyond reality. 

But every lie, begins with a little bit of truth. 

… 

The kingdom of Alteria.   

A place of peace and prosperity. 

And the last resort of human kind. 

Once, humans had the freedom to go wherever they wanted, but now, beyond the borders of Alteria, a living hell awaits. 

(Picture-Demon king) 

The Demon King. 

A ruthless and vulgar beast, who ravaged the outside world, leaving only Alteria in one piece. 

It is his fault that the people of Alteria are living in a golden cage. No one can get out and no one can get in, if anyone survived the slaughter of the demon king. 

Yet, the question still remains: Why the demon king refuse to crush Alteria? Why does it stand alone in a sea of blood and ashes? 

But there is one thing the people of Alteria know, the demon king WILL attack. 

The great devil is known for having no mercy at all, as no soul managed to escape from his blood bath. 

And when he will, the kingdom will be set on fire. 

Thus, everyone is living in the shade of the demons. Not knowing when their fate shall be sealed. 

(Picture- Question mark hero) 

But not all hope is lost. 

The kingdom of Alteria still holds a secret weapon up its sleeve.  

The Hero of Fortune. 

After countless prayers and offerings made by the people of Alteria to the gods, a certain god offered her help. 

She blessed a small child, and designated him to be a great warrior, with enough power to defend the kingdom against the Great Demon. 

She gave the small child a sapphire ring, in order to signal him as her champion. 

However, there is one condition, at the age of 18, that child must eat the Holy Onion  in order to achieve his true potential. 

Only then, will the Hero of Fortune must raise his sword against darkness, and restore the freedom and safety the people of Alteria once had. 

But one question still remains, who is that hero? 

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Curtid21
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Re: Feedback for a fantasy VN

#2 Post by Curtid21 »

Hey MiraiZura,

Welcome! I liked this intro. It gave me a classic, straightforward feel that also had capacity to go anywhere. I felt the same way after the intro of the classic, Princess Maker 2.
My only issue is that I want you to post more of the story. I'm not sure where the first third of the intro about lieing fits in with the rest of the passage at the moment. Anything I could say more would be creative/fun speculation on my part.

This is a great place with some active, helpful people. I'm also new and glad I found it too.
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Re: Feedback for a fantasy VN

#3 Post by Mammon »

A good start, certainly. Beginnings are always hard, because you have to start from literally nothing and explain everything at once. Or not. The lies part certainly aided to draw in attention and create a question as to how exactly you plan to weave that into a story. The second part is a bit more stereotypical isekai (even if it doesn't involve someone transported to another world), but that's good too. It gives some familiarity after the mystery of the first half.

Fix "Why the demon king refuse to crush Alteria?" to refused or another grammatically correct sentence, and maybe be wary of comma's. As a rule of thumb I usually say to never have more than one per sentence, unless adding a sentence within a sentence like this, lest you make your sentences too long for the player to follow.

The second half is where some tinkering can be done, if anything needs to be changed at all. How much do you want the people to know, and don't think you'll have to tell them everything. How silly is the story, or is the holy onion completely serious? But I'd say that this intro is already good.

Good luck with your story!
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Re: Feedback for a fantasy VN

#4 Post by MiraiZura »

Curtid21 wrote: Mon Sep 17, 2018 12:08 am Hey MiraiZura,

Welcome! I liked this intro. It gave me a classic, straightforward feel that also had capacity to go anywhere. I felt the same way after the intro of the classic, Princess Maker 2.
My only issue is that I want you to post more of the story. I'm not sure where the first third of the intro about lieing fits in with the rest of the passage at the moment. Anything I could say more would be creative/fun speculation on my part.

This is a great place with some active, helpful people. I'm also new and glad I found it too.
Hey, thanks for the reply.
I prepared an about 10 minutes worth of the next part.
I would be really happy if you will tell me what do you think about it.
Attachments
Heroes love to lie sample.txt
(14.79 KiB) Downloaded 37 times

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Re: Feedback for a fantasy VN

#5 Post by MiraiZura »

Mammon wrote: Mon Sep 17, 2018 3:29 am A good start, certainly. Beginnings are always hard, because you have to start from literally nothing and explain everything at once. Or not. The lies part certainly aided to draw in attention and create a question as to how exactly you plan to weave that into a story. The second part is a bit more stereotypical isekai (even if it doesn't involve someone transported to another world), but that's good too. It gives some familiarity after the mystery of the first half.

Fix "Why the demon king refuse to crush Alteria?" to refused or another grammatically correct sentence, and maybe be wary of comma's. As a rule of thumb I usually say to never have more than one per sentence, unless adding a sentence within a sentence like this, lest you make your sentences too long for the player to follow.

The second half is where some tinkering can be done, if anything needs to be changed at all. How much do you want the people to know, and don't think you'll have to tell them everything. How silly is the story, or is the holy onion completely serious? But I'd say that this intro is already good.

Good luck with your story!
Hey, thanks for the reply.
I will fix the grammar error.
And I liked the tip with the commas, I will implement it in the rest of my script.
If you want I posted the next part of the story in the post above(about 10 minutes read).

By the way, about the onion, the story is serious, but I like to add sprinkles of humor in important plot points.

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Re: Feedback for a fantasy VN

#6 Post by Mammon »

Good start, quite a fast dive into the meat of the story for something that's already 150000 words long and will eventually be 230000. I saw that these sprinkles of humour are quite thick, at least at the start. Just don't go for the low-hanging fruit, if there's too much humour everywhere then the story will have a hard time to actually be serious once it's necessary.

What engine will you be putting the story in? I saw you have a consistent way of referring to who's speaking etc. but I also know from experience that this doesn't necessarily mean that the writer is working according to a system that you can actually directly import into code. If you were to be working with ren'py f.e., you'd have to remove all those - between the name and the sentence.

I also saw plenty of errors and typos in this script, clearly suggesting that it is still a first draft. Don't worry, there's just as many typo's in my work when it's first written. Just don't forget to go through the entire script several times once it's done, careful to find and eliminate these issues. And maybe get a proofreader once you've done that to find the errors that you yourself don't see. (Don't do it before proofreading yourself, correct everything you can find so that they aren't bothered by it.)
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Re: Feedback for a fantasy VN

#7 Post by aliciarune »

I must say, it's amazing that you've written over 100,000 words. Sounds like you're going at a good pace. May I ask how long it took you to get to this word count, how you go about planning, and is it fun to write for you? I know the latter is a weird question, but I've been finding it hard to write lately and I always admire anyone who can finish a game or get far in their story or even write 10,000 words. It's hard to get to that amount. Please let me know if you can.

As for your story, I like it. Like others have mentioned, it has errors and some misspelling, but all you need to do is go back and edit. The flow of the story is okay. Maybe adding a bit more detail to the characters thoughts, it's not needed in every line just some so we get to know them more. Also, it seems you're not coding this into ren'py which is fine and a smart way to write, though when you code you'll have to rewrite everything in. Besides that it was an overall nice read.

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Re: Feedback for a fantasy VN

#8 Post by MiraiZura »

aliciarune wrote: Mon Sep 17, 2018 6:39 pm I must say, it's amazing that you've written over 100,000 words. Sounds like you're going at a good pace. May I ask how long it took you to get to this word count, how you go about planning, and is it fun to write for you? I know the latter is a weird question, but I've been finding it hard to write lately and I always admire anyone who can finish a game or get far in their story or even write 10,000 words. It's hard to get to that amount. Please let me know if you can.

As for your story, I like it. Like others have mentioned, it has errors and some misspelling, but all you need to do is go back and edit. The flow of the story is okay. Maybe adding a bit more detail to the characters thoughts, it's not needed in every line just some so we get to know them more. Also, it seems you're not coding this into ren'py which is fine and a smart way to write, though when you code you'll have to rewrite everything in. Besides that it was an overall nice read.
It took me about half a year to get from nothing to where I am right now(because I had to balance school and many computer science projects and cyber competitions, and because I am lazy :lol: ). Right now, I got accepted to a special program in the army so my writing rate will be cut down in half. So I am planning to finish the writing+editing in about 3/4 year, and in the meantime I am going to find an artist who will make the sprites and CGs.

As for the last question, I have a good reason for writing(I also enjoy it, most of the times. except erotics scenes since they are pretty repetitive). I put myself a goal for making as many people as I can happy with free quality visual novels(not 1 hour or 2 hour stuff, at least 10 hours, I want sometime to write something at the length of 30 hours). I have few ideas for my next visual novel, some very unpolished stuff about hacking, highschool and yaoi. So that's my reason for writing, because my goal in life is to make people happy.

EDIT: While I am here, I want to share with you a technique I have for writing. Sometimes even my goal is not strong enough to get over my urge to watch anime, so I use this method.(I don't know if it's a common method since I invented it before I saw this forum and the writers community) So basically the main idea is that you have to be excited about some parts of your story, not necessarily and even not recommended all of them. Because you want to get to that part already you just push forward and say "I am almost there, I am almost there". It's about setting mid-goals, which are plot points/character developments parts that you are excited to write.

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Re: Feedback for a fantasy VN

#9 Post by aliciarune »

Thanks so much for getting back to me. It's really cool of you =D. And still, even if it took that time to write all that, you should be really proud. Most don't finish their projects, mainly the writing parts because writing can get really difficult. It's also cool you want to see people happy as well. That's my goal to. I wanna write for myself to and like seeing what I can do with the characters. As for you your method, I think it works. I'll try to use it for my own games. Thanks so much =).

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