Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

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GeneDNC
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Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#1 Post by GeneDNC »

Image
James Rutherford is a run-of-the-mill employee at a large insurance company called iSure (he thinks it’s lame too). He hates being cold and on this particular winter morning the temperature at work is dangerously freezing. All he wants is a working office heater but a short series of decisions lead his life along strange new paths and nothing turns out as expected.

Download All: http://www.mediafire.com/file/fm4rlu36m ... .0-all.zip

Features:
~4000 words
5 endings (although 2 are quite similar)
Random chibi “CGs” *
One “animated” quit screen because I wanted to test it
Very mild language
Ren'Py 6.12.1.1501 lint report, generated at: Sun Apr 01 12:36:49 2012
Statistics: The game contains 323 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 4,152 words,
for an average of 12.9 words per screen.
The game contains 3 menus.
Credits:
Story, programming, GUI and CGs by GeneDNC
Original soundtrack by the fantastic Retribute
Backgrounds by the amazing Luminarious
Character art by Tokudaya
Proofreading by Uncreative Pseudonym
Additional images from DeviantArt by tsugitsugi, ~shuallyo, hawksmont, Princess-of-Shadows, MapleRose_stock and VectorLady.com
Sound effects from freesound.org by percy-duke, pagancow, someonesilly, partymix and geoffbarkman.
Ren'Py Engine by the magnificent PyTom

Screenshots: Click for larger
Image Image Image

Due to time constraints and being ill in the last week, I didn’t get to finish everything I wanted to. Therefore I am working on version 2.0 (although with all the other NaNoRenO projects out, who knows where I’ll find the time).
For those interested, the proposed extra, mostly unlockable, content planned for 2.0:

Epilogue for one ending – I actually completed this already, but decided to withhold it so that there will be at least some story content in 2.0
Possible additional epilogues
Music Room
Gallery
Other coding tweaks and animation

Please let me know of any typos/bugs you might find.

Specific feedback request: Would you like to see a bit more descriptions added? Like 1st person observations, for example of someone's expression, from James' point of view? Is there a specific style which you think would work best?




*Seriously, they don’t count as CGs, more like “random bad-art images when you’ve reached the end of the path.”
Last edited by GeneDNC on Thu Apr 05, 2012 7:08 am, edited 5 times in total.

luminarious
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#2 Post by luminarious »

Yay, you finished it.. :D
(Downloading it right now!)

retribute
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#3 Post by retribute »

Retribute here, the songs can be downloaded from here http://retribute.bandcamp.com/album/freezing-soundtrack
Anyway enjoy the VN :D
Last edited by retribute on Sun Jun 24, 2012 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Funnyguts
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#4 Post by Funnyguts »

I played it, and got the
free cookie
ending. I think the game definitely needs a bit more to it, it felt like it wanted to be dramatic, but didn't get past office banter.

icecheetah
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#5 Post by icecheetah »

Finished, got all endings. And something's bothering me:
When I lied to Francis James SAID he had a fiver! Unless I'm wrong and this isn't set in the UK proper, a fiver should be enough for even a rip-off office coffee! I mean, I can go to a posh cafe and get a chai tea latte with a slice of cake for that! Normally I'd let this slide, but... the fact that the stalker just forgets that fiver bit and it leads to death kinda irks me.
Of course, I can only speak for Scotland...
Otherwise, interesting little thing. Liked the little twist with
the one romancable person being a stalker.
I'd personally like to see more, especially in the character development. I actually liked Francis the most, I think, and his introduction is him getting slagged off.
Didn't notice any bugs. Art was pretty (even though Francis' moustache seems like it was pasted on. Though I can kinda think of him as the sort that would stick a moustache on his face, thinking it made him look respectable), music was fitting, and I liked the interface.

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SusanTheCat
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#6 Post by SusanTheCat »

The story has interesting plot twists.

I like the artwork and the backgrounds. The interface is absolutely beautiful.

Like @Funnyguts, I kept getting the feeling that the story wanted to be so much more. I am hoping that the fact it is called chapter 1 implies that there is more story on the way. :)

I think you have a good foundation to build on here.

Susan
" It's not at all important to get it right the first time. It's vitally important to get it right the last time. "
— Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

GeneDNC
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#7 Post by GeneDNC »

Is it kinda sad that I got positively rediculously excited when I saw I had 5 replies? Thanks to you who played the game and commented, you warmed my creator heart and seriously made my day!
Funnyguts wrote:I played it, and got the
free cookie
ending. I think the game definitely needs a bit more to it, it felt like it wanted to be dramatic, but didn't get past office banter.
That particular ending is one of the 2 shortest routes, so I'd like to see what you think about the others, but it's a good point which I'll take it into consideration when going over the 2.0 release. Thanks.
icecheetah wrote:Finished, got all endings. And something's bothering me:
When I lied to Francis James SAID he had a fiver! Unless I'm wrong and this isn't set in the UK proper, a fiver should be enough for even a rip-off office coffee! I mean, I can go to a posh cafe and get a chai tea latte with a slice of cake for that! Normally I'd let this slide, but... the fact that the stalker just forgets that fiver bit and it leads to death kinda irks me.
Of course, I can only speak for Scotland...
Hmmm. I didn't really set the story anywhere in particular, apart from the Northern Hemisphere. The problem is that I hale from the Southern Hemisphere and so I don't really have accurate info on the value of money in any of the relevant countries. My (American) proofreader actually picked up some things in the script that confused him, whereas here it would be a perfectly normal thing to say. Which is another reason I tried to specify location as little as possible.

Anyway, after that long winded ramble... This:
"Normally I'd let this slide, but... the fact that the stalker just forgets that fiver bit and it leads to death kinda irks me."
is still a valid point though, so I'll just go and edit the "fiver line" so that James really says he has zero money, which should fix it (I have to go over the script again, I don't have access to it at the time of this writing - if you could, I'd appreciate if you specify exactly which part you are talking about). I'll probably only correct it in version 2.0 though, but thanks for catching that.
icecheetah wrote:Otherwise, interesting little thing. Liked the little twist with
the one romancable person being a stalker.
I'd personally like to see more, especially in the character development. I actually liked Francis the most, I think, and his introduction is him getting slagged off.
Didn't notice any bugs. Art was pretty (even though Francis' moustache seems like it was pasted on. Though I can kinda think of him as the sort that would stick a moustache on his face, thinking it made him look respectable), music was fitting, and I liked the interface.
Thank you and I am glad you liked it. Love that you think Francis would paste on his own moustache and I think you might be right. ^__^
SusanTheCat wrote:The story has interesting plot twists.

I like the artwork and the backgrounds. The interface is absolutely beautiful.

Like @Funnyguts, I kept getting the feeling that the story wanted to be so much more. I am hoping that the fact it is called chapter 1 implies that there is more story on the way. :)

I think you have a good foundation to build on here.

Susan
Thanks for the lovely comment. I was going to make the following chapters more stand alone stories, but since all of you've said you'd like to see more, I will rather build on what I have. Which will probably also be a bit less work. Now I just have to come up with more story *coughcough*. Does anyone have a preference for which path/s they'd like to see carried forward?

Lastly, I thought of something specific I'd like comments on. Would you like to see a bit more descriptions added? Like 1st person observations, for example of someone's expression, from James' point of view? Even in normal novel writing I tend to do pages and pages of dialog and forget to add descriptions.

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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#8 Post by SusanTheCat »

I'm not a fan of too much description in Visual Novels. I like when you let the visuals do their job.

I think you had enough description so I knew what was going on and you also had good graphics and effects that filled you in on the details and atmosphere.

Susan
" It's not at all important to get it right the first time. It's vitally important to get it right the last time. "
— Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

icecheetah
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#9 Post by icecheetah »

GeneDNC wrote:Is it kinda sad that I got positively rediculously excited when I saw I had 5 replies? Thanks to you who played the game and commented, you warmed my creator heart and seriously made my day!
*snip*

Anyway, after that long winded ramble... This:
"Normally I'd let this slide, but... the fact that the stalker just forgets that fiver bit and it leads to death kinda irks me."
is still a valid point though, so I'll just go and edit the "fiver line" so that James really says he has zero money, which should fix it (I have to go over the script again, I don't have access to it at the time of this writing - if you could, I'd appreciate if you specify exactly which part you are talking about). I'll probably only correct it in version 2.0 though, but thanks for catching that.

Thank you and I am glad you liked it. Love that you think Francis would paste on his own moustache and I think you might be right. ^__^
Of course it's not sad to be excited! It's people talking about your work!


Ah, I just thought UK because you had a couple of terms in there that I thought were UK specific, fiver being among them. I actually know a few americans who found the term 'fiver' weird, and I've never heard people from other countries say anything like it. And not specifying location is a valid thing, just don't be surprised to hear from people like me picking up on things they think are peculiar to their place and assuming "this is set where I am!"

The best I can say is
It's immediatly after you choose "lie". The line is "Gee Francis I'd love to help, but all I have is a fiver."
And from now on that bit about the moustache will be my headcanon. Whether he does it because he thinks it's cool or he's testing to see if anyone's brave enough to point it out remains to be seen/decided.

Edit: On the additional description, this is a 'Visual' medium. Where you can, it's usually best to make the images and sounds take the brunt of the descriptions and put in descriptions where it isn't possible to put it in images (even if it's more to do with time constraints) , or it adds some flavor to the whole thing. And it did here! The way you described stuff did add some depth to the character, and I think it did it's job without throwing me out of the story.
The balance you will need between visual stuff and description will vary with the story though.

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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#10 Post by silenteve »

I finally got around to playing the game :) (Even though I downloaded it the minute it was released :p)
I finished all the endings. The writing was decent, the art was good (I love the mustache on Francis).
My favorite ending was
either the Blackmail date or the Stalker Girlfriend one :0
They were the longest I believe.
Though I enjoyed the ending where he dies also. P.S. If you do decide to make V2, can you give the Keeper a bigger role. He's my favorite character.
All in all, a quick and fun game. It was a good way to kill some time (and also help me procrastinate on my homework :P)

The only thing I really want from this game, I suppose, is for it to be longer. I didn't expect it to end so quickly.
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#11 Post by psyduck »

finally, get all ending. the story is good. love the CGs. :)
"animated” quit is amazing, but it took me a while to figure it out. at first impresion, I thought the game is crashed.

GeneDNC
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Re: Freezing v1.0 [NaNoRenO 2012]

#12 Post by GeneDNC »

silenteve wrote:I finally got around to playing the game :) (Even though I downloaded it the minute it was released :p)
I finished all the endings. The writing was decent, the art was good (I love the mustache on Francis).
My favorite ending was
either the Blackmail date or the Stalker Girlfriend one :0
They were the longest I believe.
Though I enjoyed the ending where he dies also. P.S. If you do decide to make V2, can you give the Keeper a bigger role. He's my favorite character.
All in all, a quick and fun game. It was a good way to kill some time (and also help me procrastinate on my homework :P)

The only thing I really want from this game, I suppose, is for it to be longer. I didn't expect it to end so quickly.
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I don't have any more Keeper scenes planned but I'll see what I can do. Yay procrastination! ^__^
psyduck wrote:finally, get all ending. the story is good. love the CGs. :)
"animated” quit is amazing, but it took me a while to figure it out. at first impresion, I thought the game is crashed.
I'm so glad you like the CGs and "animated" quit! Yeah, it's a bit "hidden" but ah well, at least it didn't stump you for long. ^__^ Thanks for playing!

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