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Synopsis

You are trying to fall asleep.
In the midst of a silent night, a shadowy being approches your bed.
You can't see it... but across the darkness of your eyelids, a silhuette forms nonetheless.
It seeks one thing: for you to open your eyes, and tell them how they look.
Will you comply? Or refuse, and share the night with your new visitor?
The choice is yours.


Description and Features

"(Don't) Open Your Eyes" is a short, horror-themed Visual Novel about an encounter with a mysterious being... all within the comforts of your own room. Make the right choice and engage your nightly visitor in conversation, learning more about its past, about its thoughts, and about how it sees itself.

But that's not all. As the story progresses, you'll be asked to tell your visitor how it looks... or at least, make an approximate guess. You have 3 sets of eyes, hands and facial expressions from which to choose from, resulting in 27 different ways your visitor can look. But remember: this is all within your head. The only way to *truly* know what they're like is to open your eyes.

Lastly, "(Don't) Open Your Eyes" is a fully-voiced project. Let yourself be relaxed (or intimidated) by your visitor's whispers as you listen to what they have to say.









Team

Writing, Programming and GUI - Daniel "Via" Cuturrufo
BG and Sprites - Carolina Cuturrufo
Voice Acting and Editing - David Acosta
Music and SFX - Creative Commons assets

(Links to social media and portfolios soon to come.)


About

A bit of a late entry, huh? But hello, my name is Via, the writer and creative lead behind this project.

"(Don't) Open Your Eyes" was planned with a limited scope in mind, given that I knew art assets would be few, and sound assets much more so. It's also my first time making a visual novel in renpy from scratch, *and* designing/drawing a simple custom GUI to go along with it. First time using Photoshop as well or trying my hand at something art-related, but I think I did a good job at it, all things considered. Thankfully, a family member was kind enough to draw the essential art assets for this story, and a friend offered their voice and sanity to our noble cause, making this visual novel a bit less limited in scope than initially envisioned.

The script has been fully written, edited and implemented into the engine. The GUI is done as well. Voice lines have been recorded and implemented, needing just a few retakes here and there. Lastly, BGs have been drawn and only a few sprites are left. All-in-all, we are probably about 80% done.

We might be cutting it a bit close, but we'll definitely finish on time.

I'll be updating this thread during what's left of the month (or follow me on twitter if you want to see me tweet about it... sometimes.)

It's never too late to start a project you really want to work on (I'm wishing you the best of luck on this). The premise is interesting! I always love a witty horror game, and given the fact that they can look one of 27 versions of itself based on my choices is creepy, to say the least. Knowing that it's going to be voiced will definitely add to the creepiness factor. Hope you'll post more updates!

As a fellow horror writer/reader, I command thee to finish this. (I'm joking of course.)

It is never too late to join in, and I quite like the idea. The art also sends slight shivers, making me recall the nights where I would inch away from the edge of the bed.

I look forward to your project's completion and will be giving it a looksy once nano ends.

This looks so cool and creepy! I'll definitely check this one out, but also I'll definitely be scared the whole time I'm playing it haha... That's great that's it's going to be fully voiced too, I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Good to know that you guys like the premise.

Today we completed a set of expressions for the creature, meaning that there's only a few art assets left until everything's done (will show some of it in the next few days). The voice lines that needed retakes have also been re-recorded. At this rate it'll be done by next week easily.

Well, every art asset is (hopefully) finished now. Now I just have to put everything in aaaand...

...fix the audio balancing because by god I can't hear their voice over the bgm.

Sneak peek:



They have a beautiful smile and some worringly-skinny hands.

(Updated the header image as well to something that looks a lil bit better)

And with a couple of days left for the hard deadline, here it is, "(Don't) Open Your Eyes"!



https://via01.itch.io/dont-open-your-eyes

It was a bit challenging, especially since I wasn't considering how much time-consuming the voice acting side of things would be... but all-in-all, I had fun.

I hope I get to hear you people's thoughts.