Hello! We're Crystal Game Works, a Visual Novel studio that focuses on female-oriented games. Every year, it's our tradition to participate in NanoRenO. Last year, we participated with Enamored Risks: an otome Visual Novel about urban exploration. It was a fantastic success, and here we are once more in 2021!
Varsha/Varshan (name/gender changeable) is a young witch who just graduated high school. While their friends were off jet setting and travelling around the world, Varsha had to go back to their hometown Lynnsdale to take care of their grandparents who ran a small magic store. There were two major issues though: one, magic is strictly banned and two, their grandparents store is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Play as Varsha/Varshan as you try to revive your grandparent's store, avoid scrutiny by the authorities, and find love—All in one summer.
Varsha’s concept art, by Violora
LI1: He's a rich young master who's never seen a day of the real world and a grudge against magic. After his phone breaks around you, his dad cancels his allowance and he comes to the store everyday to bother you.
LI2: A mermaid princess who desperately wants to live life as a human, but just can't get used to it. She's a long-time customer of the store, purchasing potions that allow her to retain human form.
★ The finished game will be free to play with no paid DLC nor merch*.
★ This project is purely volunteer, i.e. no one will be paid for it.
★ The finished game will be published on Steam, Itchio, and Google Play through Crystal Game Works.
★ Communication will be done in the Crystal Game Works Discord. A discord account is mandatory. It's free to sign up: https://discordapp.com/
★ NaNoRenO is a month-long visual novel game jam. The project should be finished by the end of March, with some bug fixing allowed in April if need be.
* In the rare chance that the game becomes the “next DDLC” an option for everyone to be paid through DLC / merch can happen, but this is only in writing for the 0.0001% chance of it.
As this is a project meant to be a learning experience so you can add to your portfolio, we’ll be accepting volunteers for basically everything! This includes…
★ ART: character sprites, character cut ins / CGs, backgrounds, promo art, GUI
★ MUSIC / VIDEO: background music, sound effects, trailer (for Steam)
★ WRITING: outline, main / beginning part, route writing, general editing / proofreading
★ PROGRAMMING: general Ren’Py scripting (easy to pick up), GUI, playtesting
★ MARKETING: social media (Twitter, Instagram, Discord), forums, store pages, newsletter
★ VOICE ACTING: (only if we get enough people for all the roles)
Not every role requires you to have a lot of experience in them. We’ll also be accepting a lot of promo artists to do artwork of the character for social media that will be in the in-game gallery.
This project should be viewed as a project for fun for people to gain experience as well as a published game to their portfolio!
★ If you need to drop out, please notify Miko#9009 as soon as possible! No hard feelings, solving things quickly is much better than leaving us with no time to work around it.
★ If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Miko, foleso (writing/marketing), or Violora (art). We will try our best to deal with any concerns, but we only can if they’re brought up to us!
★ If you’re afraid you won’t be able to finish your part / have too much to work on, please contact Miko, foleso (writing/marketing), or Violora (art)! We don’t want anyone to overwork themselves so please let us know.
★ If you are inactive for a week or don’t respond to multiple pings/DMs for several days we will assume you’ve dropped the project. Please do not leave without warning and assume you’ll be able to pick up right where you left off.
If you’re worried you’ll be too busy to contribute a lot to the project but still want to contribute some, just write that in your application and we’ll try to make sure you aren’t given too much.
If all of these sounds good, you can apply here!
