algormortis [Fantasy][BxG?] v2.0!!

[Cafechan]

UPDATED VERSION!
Download from itch.io for free!

algormortis v2.0 | 20,000+ words | 7-8 decision points | four endings | E10+ (violence)
a fantasy visual novel made in (roughly) one week

Hello! This is my first time posting here, although I've lurked for a while... The algormortis story centers around Lamira, a faun living alone in a small village. Tired of his own monotonous life, Lamira wishes for something to change, and his wish is granted in the form of Mortrini—a monstrous, zombie-like creature who maims others and uses their remains to repair her constantly decomposing body.

algormortis was completed over the period of a single week (5/5/14 - 5/13/14) and it was my first completed Ren'Py game!! As it was made with speed in mind, it's not particularly polished or long. The story plays out from a past tense, third person perspective, but you are able make choices as Lamira.

There are four different endings you can get! A good end, two normal ends, and a "bad" end. Make difficult moral choices and collect them all!

Featuring around nine illustrations by me (some really old, some scribbly, some newer...)!! Woohoo!

Credits
Art, writing, programming, egregious mistakes - me!
Music - ClefferNotes, Kevin MacLeod (I know, I know...), tryad
Backgrounds - StockVault
SFX - FreeSound

IN V2.0...
Fixed some branching issues, weeded out typos, customized the dialogue/say boxes, added a basic CG gallery, added a hints menu that can be unlocked that helps you achieve all the endings!

Content Warnings
algormortis contains frank descriptions of violence, though I don't think they're all that big or detailed. And most of them are obvious when they're about to arrive/easily avoided. I think there's also, like, one instance of the d-word. Just don't let your six year old kid sibling play this, y'know? I think it'll be okay.

———

Feedback would be absolutely HEAVENLY, and if you play it through to the ending, I really want to know what ending you get. If you play through multiple endings, I wanna know your favorite...!!!!! This was all kind of a "test drive" since I wanted to make sure I understood certain things about the visual novel-making process from start to finish before I went back to working on my HUGE 200,000+ word monster of a VN and then realized, "whoops, I should have done ________", heh. Thank you for taking the time to look at this!!

Also, here are some of the RAVING REVIEWS the critics (aka friends who I forced to play) have provided....

• "I couldn’t stop thinkin about mortrini’s sass"
  "i grimaced […]"
  "how the hell do you pronounce ‘pukcevw’"
  "these two officers are definitely […] steve buscemi"
  "NO no no noNO!!! I WANT THE GOOD END!!! GIVE ME THE GOOD.. END!!!! [the rest of this review has been omitted for vulgar language.]"

[Broodelin]

I really like the art style and the idea of the story.

If you need help polishing the code, I'm always available!

The only thing I'm a little iffy about is what tone you're going for - comedic, serious, or somewhere in between?

[Cafechan]

Thank you very much!! I would absolutely appreciate a code assistant, I'm really not a technically-minded person. I'll be sure to let you know once I start delving into those things =) I actually downloaded your recent completed project and intended to try it out this week!

Tone kind of varied depending on what ending you got. Overall, it's serious, but I wanted there to be fun, lighthearted bonding moments with the characters as well. I originally envisioned this story as a long comic, so a lot got compressed into a shorter amount, heh!

[Amiralo]

Feed back time.
Personally, i　liked it. the characters were well fleshed out and had their distinct personalities. At first, the nvl format and the wordiness of some of the passages bothered me, if the descriptions and narration were less convoluted, it would have been easier to get into it.
But that was the only criticism. I liked your choice of music, your unique art style, the world building and the character concepts. Now, if you can tell me how to get the good ending, I would be forever grateful......(It's ending A, is it? I keep getting B and D no matter how I try.....)
Anyways, it was great for your first time and I　look forward from seeing more from you. Mortrini was very refreshing and Lamira was likable despite being a pushover.

[Cafechan]

Thank you so much for playing!!! I apologize for the overly heavy descriptions. I agree; replaying it, I kept thinking, "yikes, this is going on too long, people are gonna get tired of the nvl mode..." I wrote it with more of a traditional novel writing style in mind, so I think I went overboard. But I'm happy you liked the characters!! It's surprisingly hard to develop three characters in a short story!

For ending A:

-got the harpoon
-if they seem bad to me
-tell the police she’s here*
(this is probably the one that tripped you up — this is the right choice because earlier he only said “if they seem bad” and the police don’t seem bad to him!)
-tried to stop her*
-stopping her*
-he believed her
-he couldn’t hurt anyone*

And if you want Ending C, do all the ones I marked with an asterisk and mess up any one of the other ones (one, some, or all). Ending B is achieved by

getting all the "Mortrini's affection raising" answers right but messing up a moral answer. C is the moral ending, and D is the bad ending!

[Amiralo]

I　just got ending A. I am now thoroughly satisfied with this game.
DAT CHIBI ART IS SO CUTE!
Finally...A GE after watching Lamira kick the bucket again and again and again.
You are awesome. I will definetly play your new game once it comes out.

[Cafechan]

oh noo! i've only played ending B and D so far, but

does fen die in every one? that's so terrible!! i adored him!!

He doesn't actually!! If I recall correctly, it's possible for him to

be okay in all the endings, but you have to have made the correct moral choices up until that point. He does leave in all the endings though, but comes back in ending A!

I'm really happy you liked him! I got sort of alarmed because I heard someone say they really hated him and I was worried I didn't make him likable, eeeek!

emotional babbling aside, this was a really nice, compelling story. i was a bit put off by the descriptive text at first but it gives the vn a certain depth. i find it hard to connect with characters in vns where all of the communication is done through talking, so the underlying text in this one gave them a cohesive background that made them seem much more personable!

also, you're a great writer. :-0

Thank you very much!!! Yeah, ack, it's hard to balance all the descriptive text in a visual novel setting, I've come to realize. I'm going to try harder to balance it more in my next game! Thank you for playing!!!

I　just got ending A. I am now thoroughly satisfied with this game.
DAT CHIBI ART IS SO CUTE!
Finally...A GE after watching Lamira kick the bucket again and again and again.
You are awesome. I will definetly play your new game once it comes out.

AH, I'm so glad you liked ending A!!! =D Hahaha, I should have made it a little easier to obtain... Thank you, I really appreciate it!!!!!

[Cafechan]

Sorry to bump it, but I just wanted to let you all know I fixed some things and re-released on itch.io ♥

[Bouki]

Thanks for bumping it actually, i think this was an outstanding game and wanted to write a comment but totally forgot about it My favorite thing about the game was art style, sudden violent incidents kinda surprised me at first though, i mean

i sure wasn't expecting some girl to kill an ogre and steal it's arm while i was playing a cute GxB otome. But no complaints, story had it's unique charm to it My favorite character was Fen i guess. His ears were sooo cute. The sad story part made him even more likeable as a character. I did a little victory dance in my room when i managed to keep Fen alive (he died the first 2-3 times i played though. so yeah... the feels man, the feels.) Mortrini was really cool too, especially the way she talks. Lamira was... nice. Like really, really nice. And sweet.

And seems like i am the only who actually enjoyed the writing It really deserved the visual novel name, writing was really novel-class. Well, i dunno what else i can say, i really suck at saying encouraging nice things. But it was nice to play a game with such extraordinary characters and writing. I have seen the topic for your next project too, and damn, you can date a tiger? I'm sold.

P.S: When i was reading the ''RAVING REVIEW'' part (your friends are awesome btw), the first one says "I couldn’t stop thinkin about mortrini’s sass". I read it as ''I couldn't stop thinking about mortrini's ass.'' and laughed for a good 5 minutes. I just wanted to say it cause now everyone who reads that will have to think about mortrini's ass... LOLOLOL But really, how do hell do you pronounce ‘pukcevw'?!?

[Cafechan]

You are so kind!!! Thank you for the in-depth comment, it just made my day!!! =D

LOL, many people were surprised by the violence. They didn't expect it from me. There were a lot of darker things I'd planned for this story, but I decided it wasn't a good idea to jump into that in such a short story.

I'm happy you liked Fen too!! A couple of people told me he was annoying and should have stayed dead in the good ending. I was so surprised.... LOL

And wow, thank you so much for saying that about my writing! Looking back, I think the large blocks of text are a little intimidating, but I tried hard to make it well-written, so if you were able to enjoy it, I'm very glad. And thank you for looking at my other project too =)

LOL!! Now you have to think about Mortrini's bony ass.
Pukcevw is pronounced "puck-seh-viw"! =)

[Ivlivs]

As promised, I played the game. The ending I got was

Ending B: Love's Sake.

The story had a warm mood to it, and the terror it brought was not from some creature killing you, but from you being discovered and ratted out to the cops. I also like the original twist on the magical girlfriend idea, with a truly hideous creature in place of a hot young cutie. Even so, you feel genuine sympathy, genuine love, for her as you guide her away from the path that she was forced to choose -- but then, had she not consumed all of those people, she never would have met you. This game took on the challenge of replacing the eros typical of the genre with agape, and it succeeded.

Criticisms? Apart from some reactions I thought were a little unrealistic, I have few.

Though it's short, it's quite good.

[Cafechan]

I'm so glad you liked my strange twist on the magical girlfriend trope, hehe!! I wanted Mortrini to be a little gross, a little frightening, but still ultimately an empathetic character. Thank you very much for playing it!! =)

[kitsubasa]

Ooh, I just played through all four endings in succession-- I really enjoyed it, Mortrini was a fun character and I liked hearing about her backstory a lot.

I think my favourite ending was ending B, partly for getting to see living!Mortrini (at least, her face-- and wow, did she replace her ears at some point? I thought it was interesting how humanoid she looked with all the decomposition gone! I didn't expect her to have a human skin tone, scaly bits aside. Was she some kind of snake/reptile person in life? Just based off the tail + skin) and also for the fact it didn't feel like an easy out. It was a satisfying sort of conclusion-- things weren't peachy for them, but they weren't outright grim either, and it matched the tone of the story in a nice way.

My second favourite ending was ending D, because I liked the idea of Lamira ending up as some kind of crazy dark wizard/necromancer faun; which is an unusual combo since fauns are usually depicted as being such a nice fantasy race. Hopefully he doesn't starve, and he ends up megalomaniacal and going on some kind of curse-based power trip. That would be an entertaining conclusion for him. >: O

Ending A I wasn't fussed about, but I thought it was good to have some kind of happy ending in there-- not my cup of tea but the fun, happy atmosphere of it provided a bit of levity after I got C and B. Ending C, on that note, was also nice, though not as interesting as ending B, hence my preference.

My only complaint-- and it isn't even a big one, since I get the sense this was an intentional, authorial decision-- is the fact we never get to see Lamira properly! I'm under the impression you did this to try and make him more of an everyman for us to relate to, or something to that effect, but since he had a pretty well-defined personality and we can see sketchy glimpses of parts of him in some endings and in your picture in the start of this thread, I sort of thought 'aww' when I never got to see a clear view. He looks, from one of the CGs, like he's got quite a strong face, and if that's the case then it would've been interesting to see the sturdy features contrasted against the milquetoast personality.

Actually, just working through the thoughts on that-- did you choose not to show him because Mortrini couldn't see him, and since he as a POV char wouldn't see himself and she as a POV character is blind, no-one with narrative perspective would get a real view of his face? Or am I reading into this too deeply, haha.

All up, very enjoyable and I didn't get bored for a second of it, but I'm a sucker for stories about undead people, especially ones that have to try and cope with rotting, so I'm a bit biaaased.

[Cafechan]

Spoilers below because the whited out text hurts my eyes! You've been warned. LOL

I think my favourite ending was ending B, partly for getting to see living!Mortrini (at least, her face-- and wow, did she replace her ears at some point? I thought it was interesting how humanoid she looked with all the decomposition gone! I didn't expect her to have a human skin tone, scaly bits aside. Was she some kind of snake/reptile person in life? Just based off the tail + skin)

Thank you!! B was the ending I was happiest with. It was the first one I finished. I never actually decided what Mortrini was in her past life. Something reptile-y... The scales and tail were there with her originally. The long ears were stolen from an elf at some point to aid her loss of eyesight (laughs) Poor anonymous elf...

Hopefully he doesn't starve, and he ends up megalomaniacal and going on some kind of curse-based power trip. That would be an entertaining conclusion for him. >: O

I reeeeeally wanted to go into greater depth with this ending and show more of Lamira's decline, but I was running short on time and had to finish it in a hurry. He definitely kind of loses it and goes crazy with power, though.

My only complaint-- and it isn't even a big one, since I get the sense this was an intentional, authorial decision-- is the fact we never get to see Lamira properly!

The explanation for this one is a really dumb one: I ran out of time and skipped out on drawing a portrait for him. LOL! Lamira has a fleshed out design, but it just didn't really make it into the game. Eeeeeek.

did you choose not to show him because Mortrini couldn't see him, and since he as a POV char wouldn't see himself and she as a POV character is blind, no-one with narrative perspective would get a real view of his face? Or am I reading into this too deeply, haha.

This explanation is a million times cooler than the actual one. Let's go with this instead.

All up, very enjoyable and I didn't get bored for a second of it, but I'm a sucker for stories about undead people, especially ones that have to try and cope with rotting, so I'm a bit biaaased.

I'm really happy to hear this!!! Thank you so much for playing it. All four endings, no less!!!! I'm glad you enjoyed it!! =)