One Night at Amphora [Magic Realism][Comedy][Modern][Nano15]

[YossarianIII]

A five-act comic fantasy about a girl trying to return to normal life after the death of her mother

Setting

Everything takes place during one Saturday night at Amphora Institute of Charm--a university where you can study magic... or you can study something practical that will get you a job after college.

Characters

Lyn--Lyn is a freshman engineering student at Amphora who studies electricity. She likes loud music and striped socks. Her mother died suddenly, and Lyn has just come back after the funeral... but she's eager to pretend that nothing's wrong.

Ashkii--You play from his perspective. He's a freshman at Amphora who can't decide whether to study Levitation or econ. He likes 1920s horror films and sleeping. Out of compassion or maybe guilt, he decides to hang out with Lyn for the night. And so the adventure begins...

Music

Here's a link to the main theme.
The goal for the main theme was do something super sparse in the vein of Studio Ghibli or the Amélie soundtrack. The rest of the soundtrack will be more upbeat and draw on hip-hop, indie rock, 90s lo-fi, and maybe more...

Goals

One Night at Amphora will be a fairly short (10,000-word?) VN where your choices affect the main character's personality and therefore the ending. There are three planned endings. There are two main ending "forks" with a lots of minor variations... so kind of a completionist's nightmare, but the intent is more for people to play once or twice and get a subtly different story than someone else who plays once or twice.


Progress

Writing--100% (edits ongoing)
Backgrounds--100%
Music--50% 75% 100%
Sprites--30% 90% 100%
GUI--LOL nope, going with the default, just with prettier colors.

Questions (Optional)

Does this preview make sense?
Would you play this?
(More questions to come at a later stage)
How'd you find this page? (Through the NaNo board? Through active topics? Through my signature?)
Can you think of any VNs (or games, books, etc.) that might be similar? (Because if you know of any, I want to play them! )




And as always, feel free to any sort of feedback you want. Thanks for checking this out!

[Godline]

Yet another magical school VN.
I hope you do something unique with it.
Good luck!

[Googaboga]

Does this preview make sense?

Yeah, I think so. Unless I'm interpreting it wrong XD.

Would you play the VN?

I'd try, but I can't make any promises since I don't have much time to play games anymore :'D.

Good luck. I hope you reach your goal and make something awesome :>.

[YossarianIII]

Yet another magical school VN.
I hope you do something unique with it.
Good luck!

Thanks, Godline!

Yes, the conventional setting is actually part of the challenge I've set for myself.

The goal is less J. K. Rowling and more Richard Linklater. Maybe that sounds pretentious, but I just love his "Before..." films and they way the conversations in them are structured.

I don't play school VNs, so I'm coming at this more from the perspective of someone who loves Freaks & Geeks and that weird funny-sad fantasy version of adolescence that only exists in the music of The Replacements, The Mountain Goats, and The Smiths.

Does this preview make sense?

Yeah, I think so. Unless I'm interpreting it wrong XD.

Would you play the VN?

I'd try, but I can't make any promises since I don't have much time to play games anymore :'D.

Good luck. I hope you reach your goal and make something awesome :>.

Yep, I'll be working on that goal, Googaboga. Thanks for stopping by!

[Auro-Cyanide]

It's great to see more comedy VNs! I also like the idea of a girl dealing with the passing of her mother and the art has a cute appeal to it. Good luck with finishing!

[uminee]

Does this preview make sense?

i think so, at least to me it does

Would you play the VN?

yep, with a cup of coffee and a cookie!

i like the doodleness of Lyn. really cute! good luck on this ^.^

[YossarianIII]

It's great to see more comedy VNs! I also like the idea of a girl dealing with the passing of her mother and the art has a cute appeal to it. Good luck with finishing!

Thanks for checking it out, Auro-Cyanide!

I'm always looking for comedies, too! Especially ones that ground the comedy in the context of the story and the personalities of the characters. I'm not sure if I'm at that level yet... but that's the perfect reason to practice and do NaNoReNo!

Fingers crossed, but I'm super ahead of schedule at the moment. Making good progress on the first draft of the writing and even had time to work on some of the other assets.

Does this preview make sense?

i think so, at least to me it does

Would you play the VN?

yep, with a cup of coffee and a cookie!

i like the doodleness of Lyn. really cute! good luck on this ^.^

Glad you like the character, uminee! Not to spoil too much, but what you see in my original post is the first of several looks for Lyn. Each act of the story will have a slightly different "version" of Lyn... but I want to keep them a secret for now so they can be a surprise for the player!

[YossarianIII]

Hey, I haven't had much content to post here recently (because I want to keep a lot of it a surprise for the final game!), so this can just be sort of a general I'm-not-dead-yet update.

I'm writing Act 5 of 5 now and so can pretty much guarantee there will be something at the end of the month -- it's just a matter of how pretty and shiny (or not) the final VN will be.

I can also guarantee that jello will play a major plot role. It wasn't something I'd planned in the outline, but now you will definitely have to make some tough decisions about jello.

Finally, I can guarantee that the soundtrack will contain at least one pastiche/parody of miserable indie rock and a cuter, sparklier take on Mobb Deep-style East Coast hip-hop.

[Mad Harlequin]

Finally, I can guarantee that the soundtrack will contain at least one pastiche/parody of miserable indie rock and a cuter, sparklier take on Mobb Deep-style East Coast hip-hop.

This is the funniest thing I've read today.

[YossarianIII]

Finally, I can guarantee that the soundtrack will contain at least one pastiche/parody of miserable indie rock and a cuter, sparklier take on Mobb Deep-style East Coast hip-hop.

This is the funniest thing I've read today.

Glad you liked it!

I'm toying with the idea of using one motif throughout the whole soundtrack so it's a solo piano melody in one song, a synthesized riff in another, a bass line in a third, and so on.

Just got to wrap up the writing first...

[YossarianIII]

Writing is done! Well, it's never really done and I'll be making revisions until the last minute but it's done enough to say it's done... The 10,000 word estimate was more or less spot on.

Making good progress on the music, too. Here's the main theme, which is intended to be something super sparse in the vein of Studio Ghibli or the Amélie soundtrack.

There will also be an ending credits song... not going to post that in advance, but it will be kind of like if the Mountain Goats decided write a sitcom theme song.

[YossarianIII]

Left: How I feel at the start of a long sprite-making session. Right: How I feel at the end of a long sprite-making session

Update: I spent lots of time making sprites and very little time making a logo. Lyn is going to have, like, a billion different simple animations (actually closer to 40-50) to show emotion when she's talking. What that means is that "angry" in Act I is going to look different from "angry" in Act V, hopefully complementing her character arc.

Ashkii... is going to be lucky if he gets a sprite. Sorry, dude, that's the drawback of being a first-person narrator. I really tried to write him as not just another faceless-player-surrogate-bro, though--honest!

[YossarianIII]

Welp... looks like we're done here. barring any massive last minute problems oh man please let there be none of those; things have been going so smoothly and i don't want to jinx it

Art, music, and writing are all more or less wrapped, leaving only sound effects and final testing. So the release date is getting bumped ahead to the 25th.

After trying a million different versions of the title screen, the "blank space" version above just worked best.

Excited to release something soon!