Red Carpets and Empty Faces [Romance/Horror][NaNoRenO 2015]

[Qazhax]

Red Carpets and Empty Faces
[Romance/mystery/horror]

Story
The story revolves around a lonely boy named Yuki who leads a rather monotonous and dull life as a servant to repay a debt to a travelling witch. The witch has set up shop by the edge of a small and peaceful town in a cozy log cabin, which doubles as a pub late in the evening. Yuki’s main role is to do household chores around the cabin and run errands for the witch. It does not take long until Yuki meets new friends in the town and realizes his life may not be so dull after all, but suddenly something begins happening in the town. Soon Yuki finds himself in the middle of a gruesome mystery and has to figure out what is going on.


Characters

Yuki:
The protagonist in this story, a boy - indebted his life to a witch, working as her servant. Angsty as a teenager - not planning to stick around.

Teressa:
The witch who'd switch some coin for her exotic liquors - that being her work. The savior of Yuki - her kindness easily unseen.

Lise:
The girl from out of town - clad in gold and furs alike. Staying at her relatives - that's about it?

Sara:
Eyes filled with energy - She seems like lightning. Local country girl - as boring as it gets?

Roza:
That hair looks like snakes - Those glasses too hipster. Who is this girl - working as librarian?

Reko:
The map of the town - He's run it through all. Friendly as he seems - Fed up with the city, he actually is.

Goals
FINISH IT!

Progress
Sprites: 75% - more faces, poses and outfits could be added but these should be enough
BGs: 100% - all planned BGs done, more could be still added but these are enough
CGs: 1% - Ran out of time, one quick/messy CG done but not added.
Storyboard: 100% - done I guess
Writing: 90% - 11k words, 3 endings so far but running out of time too
Coding: 99% - It doesn't crash when I test it and everything seems to work, lacks proper testing
Music: ?% - Ran out of time so we decided to use creative commons music
GUI: 5% - A quick main menu image but decided to use stock gui for everything else to save time

I say this is finished enough.
Completed thread: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 11&t=31425

Team
Art, Coding, Other stuff - Qazhax
Music, Story, Writing - xZidene

We are both complete noobs in making games, this is hopefully the first thing we actually finish.
Is this like, the only non otome VN here? is this not allowed or something? I'm scared D:
Cool, I'm just too nervous around new people..

[yoshibb]

All types of art are welcome, no worries! It'll be my first project too. The premise sounds cool with the fantasy/magic elements as well as the addition of possibly a murder mystery? Can't wait to see more, good luck!

[Godline]

There are other non-otome ones I think.
I do like mystery though, so this sounds good.

[AntiquedFae]

This sounds like it could be very much my sort of game. Fantasy+historic small town+gruesome murder mystery? Yes please. I'm very curious to see how this develops. Best of wishes.

[Qazhax]

Thanks for cheering on us

Update:

showing off some mediocre sprite work.. why do I even attempt to draw them anime eyes -_-;

I'm also pretty proud of these shoes you probably can't even see in the game

[Auro-Cyanide]

I love stories with witches! I'm not sure why, but totally love them. And I know your pain about full bodied sprites :'D All these under appreciated shoes...

Good luck with finishing your game!

[Qazhax]

The whole cast

We started off with slightly inadequate preparation, the planning was also left a bit late and vague.
Half of the story had to be rewritten due to an iPad syncing error and problems with the ISP posed additional challenges.
I also find out I need much more time on stuff outside NaNoRenO than I had thought I used on it.
In the end our designated writer gave me the wheel and I tried my best improvising a random end that doesn't conflict the rest of the story.
I'm even slower in writing than I'm in drawing...
I hadn't drawn properly in ages and I happened to that each new consequently drawn sprite was easier to draw.
maybe not drawing the shoes after the first two sprites was a significant boost?
can't say same about backgrounds tho...

But despite all the odds I think we have a game that can be considered finished although just barely. It has slightly over 10k words and two ends.
We had to cut scope a lot in the last week. A week(or several years, who knows lol) more and we could have 8 ends and some CGs.
I probably should had been more active around these forums, in other threads too, but forums are too scary for me.
I also tend to spend hours writing every single post so I thought that time would be better spent drawing..

Due to vague planning the description isn't any less vague and might lead you a bit astray,
originally the whole plot was only 7 words we got first from a random word generator.
tbh most of the stuff in this game has gotten in there from random ideas that sounded so bad we just had to use them.
Later we nerfed the witch until their function was more like that of a pharmacist/brewmaster. only the name stayed.

Is it looked well upon to first release a version that lacks a lot of planned features and later re-release it with CGs and more endings?
Can a VN even be considered finished if it has no CGs?
Is there any use in continuing a NaNo project after the event of would it be better to just start a new project when we have caught up with real life?
So do I now make a thread in the completed games section?

And finally some of the backgrounds I was supposed to show off ages ago