⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaNo16]

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PeroxidePrince
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⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaNo16]

#1 Post by PeroxidePrince »

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Once upon a time, in the far away kingdom of Nantu, a desperate King and Queen sought the help of a Witch. Although the Witch claimed no reward at the time, good fortune comes at a hefty price.
As the kingdom grew prosperous, so did the Witch’s greed. Thrice did the Witch demand unreasonable recompense, but thrice was the Witch rejected. The visits stopped and for a short while, the kingdom knew peace.
Until one day the Witch returned, demanding the kingdom’s most prized jewel, lest tragedy befalls the land.
Who will get their happily ever after in this fairy-tale?

Reflections on the River is a visual novel about fairy-tale promises, friendship, and filial piety.
Players will take on the role of Zheng, the Witch, and navigate their way through this fairy-tale, where seemingly everyone has a secret.

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- 1280x720 resolution
- ~30,000 words
- 30 minutes playtime
- 2 routes, 7 endings

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PeroxidePrince
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The game is available for Windows/Mac/Linux over at itch.io!
Last edited by PeroxidePrince on Wed Mar 14, 2018 4:51 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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Amiralo
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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#2 Post by Amiralo »

I really liked how natural each route's relationship felt. For once, there was no forced confession or out of blue declarations of love. It was a nice change of scenery. loved the heroine's personality too! I really liked her dynamic with the prince haha.
Expect fan art sometimes next week after finals lol.
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PeroxidePrince
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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#3 Post by PeroxidePrince »

Amiralo wrote:I really liked how natural each route's relationship felt. For once, there was no forced confession or out of blue declarations of love. It was a nice change of scenery. loved the heroine's personality too! I really liked her dynamic with the prince haha.
Expect fan art sometimes next week after finals lol.
Thanks very much for playing our game and sharing your thoughts!
Zheng was definitely a laugh to write, so I'm glad to hear that you liked their personality haha.
I'm so happy that you enjoyed the game enough to want to draw fanart!! I'll definitely be looking forward to it!

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#4 Post by Pick_One »

So I saw the complete game was released on the same day you posted the news, but I couldn't play it that day. Yesterday I was too excited to not play it, so I went ahead and played it for a bit. I really wanted to continue on and finish it but I had to set it aside. Then today I was like, nope, don't think I can play it today... but what do you know....I just played it right before I logged in. lol. And it didn't take long at all to get all the endings. I really want to type out what I think about the game right now, when the whole experience feels fresh, but I would need to set aside some time for typing out all that I want to really say, that's how it usually is. ;; And I guess maybe I should let my feelings and thoughts settle down a bit, then type them out in a coherent manner. lol. But I'm just logging in to say that I thought the game was pretty solid and great! It's impressive for a NaNoRenO!

So congrats to you guys on releasing such a great game! I enjoyed it very much. ^^ That's all I want to say for now. Got to go now. :)

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PeroxidePrince
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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#5 Post by PeroxidePrince »

Pick_One wrote:So I saw the complete game was released on the same day you posted the news, but I couldn't play it that day. Yesterday I was too excited to not play it, so I went ahead and played it for a bit. I really wanted to continue on and finish it but I had to set it aside. Then today I was like, nope, don't think I can play it today... but what do you know....I just played it right before I logged in. lol. And it didn't take long at all to get all the endings. I really want to type out what I think about the game right now, when the whole experience feels fresh, but I would need to set aside some time for typing out all that I want to really say, that's how it usually is. ;; And I guess maybe I should let my feelings and thoughts settle down a bit, then type them out in a coherent manner. lol. But I'm just logging in to say that I thought the game was pretty solid and great! It's impressive for a NaNoRenO!

So congrats to you guys on releasing such a great game! I enjoyed it very much. ^^ That's all I want to say for now. Got to go now. :)
Thank you for playing our game! I'm glad that you managed to find the time to play it, and that you enjoyed it.
I'll be looking forward to hearing more on what you thought of the game later!
(I'm super curious if anything played out like you thought it would when you were posting on our WIP thread, haha.)

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#6 Post by lo6otia »

I've played your game and reached every ending and I really liked it. The story is great, I liked the MC and I liked how every path showed another part of the story, so at the end you get the whole picture :) My favorite ending is the last and I preferred Shun's path, but that doesn't mean I didn't like the other. Thank you for creating this game!

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#7 Post by PeroxidePrince »

lo6otia wrote:I've played your game and reached every ending and I really liked it. The story is great, I liked the MC and I liked how every path showed another part of the story, so at the end you get the whole picture :) My favorite ending is the last and I preferred Shun's path, but that doesn't mean I didn't like the other. Thank you for creating this game!
Thanks a bunch for playing!
I'm really glad that you enjoyed seeing all the endings and experiencing the full story of the game! (Hopefully you didn't find it too tedious, haha.)
Shun and Yanyu's routes are quite different, so I'm always interested in hearing what people enjoyed. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#8 Post by doktorcrimson »

This is a beautiful game and I want to say the relationship between each character is really well-written. The music choice was also very appropriate, a very traditional Chinese style and it suits the story background. I thought both routes were really interesting and the interaction between Zheng and each of them were very natural, however on Shun's route,
I feel bad that the real princess Yanyu was never cured and Huineng still had to live as her replacement.
Zheng was also a bit more tsudere with Shun and I thought that was pretty cute :3

I like how there were two sides of the story and each reveals something a little different. I personally would like to know more about
what happened to Wen, even though it's kind of implied that the king contributed to her disappearance. I think it'd be pretty cool to have some flashback between her and Zheng's childhood
But the game play still feels awesome without that! My favorite ending was
when princess Yanyu became queen and Huineng lived happily together with Zheng.
I thought that was cool~

Here's a prince Shun~ Congrats on finishing NaNo'16!

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#9 Post by PeroxidePrince »

@doktorcrimson: Thank you so much for playing our game, and for the lovely drawing of Shun!! Aaaa I'm so thrilled to see someone draw our characters... ヽ(;▽;)ノ
I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the story. I completely agree on the things that you would've liked to have seen. There's a lot that we had to cut due to the limitations of NaNoRenO, so we've been toying with the idea of expanding the game and including more endings and scenes when we have more time.
Originally, Wen was supposed to get a sprite, and there were going to be flashback scenes featuring her. It was cut in the end because of time constraints, which is a shame, as all the "parent" characters in the game got much smaller roles than we intended. All the "kids" were actually designed to mirror one of the "parents" -- Zheng is their mother's kid through and through, while Shun and Huineng are slightly more subtle reflections of Lihuan and Jianyu respectively. The "parent" characters are something I'd definitely want to flesh out more if we were to expand the game.
The ending where the real Princess Yanyu takes the throne is one of my favourites too! It wasn't planned for the game originally, so I'm really glad we managed to fit it in. Since Shun's route took longer to write than Huineng's, we were cutting pretty close on time and didn't manage to work out an ending where they could save Yanyu. We can only hope that if they don't take the jewel, Huineng manages to fix everything on her own...

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#10 Post by Amiralo »

The promised fanart. I love shun's personality haha.
Here's a link in case the picture doesn't shows up.

Good job. I look forward to whatever you make after this.

http://amiralo.deviantart.com/art/fanar ... 1460607744
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viewtopic.php?f=50&t=54150

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#11 Post by PeroxidePrince »

Amiralo wrote:The promised fanart. I love shun's personality haha.
Here's a link in case the picture doesn't shows up.

Good job. I look forward to whatever you make after this.
Thank you so much for the fanart!! Shun looks so regal in your drawing. (人´∀`*)
I'm pleased to hear that you liked Shun's character. We put extra care in making sure we got his uncomfortably formal (but secretly just a big nerd) kind of personality right haha.

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#12 Post by Batensan »

Congratulations on finishing this game!
I just finished my first playthrough and quite enjoyed the game! Prince Shun is a total babe. I loved how serious but sometimes awkward and low-key witty and sarcastic he could be! I really liked his level-headedness, support, and desire to find something for himself to do with his own strength. The friendship felt satisfying, too!

Thanks for all the work on this game!

Oh, and could I ask what's the very first song that plays when you start the story, the song that plays during the history section of the witch and the King and Queen? Great job finding really well-fitting music, by the way!
Developer of Moon Observatory.

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#13 Post by PeroxidePrince »

Batensan wrote:Congratulations on finishing this game!
I just finished my first playthrough and quite enjoyed the game! Prince Shun is a total babe. I loved how serious but sometimes awkward and low-key witty and sarcastic he could be! I really liked his level-headedness, support, and desire to find something for himself to do with his own strength. The friendship felt satisfying, too!

Thanks for all the work on this game!

Oh, and could I ask what's the very first song that plays when you start the story, the song that plays during the history section of the witch and the King and Queen? Great job finding really well-fitting music, by the way!
Thanks very much for playing our game!
I'm happy that you enjoyed it! Our original idea for Prince Shun's personality was "he's one of those people that seem really polite, but they're actually insulting everyone and being snarky in a roundabout way," coupled with "he's a massive nerd, but tries really hard to hide it and seem cool". I'm glad that you liked him, he was a lot of fun to write haha.

The first song in the story is this song from Otowabi. I'm relieved to hear that you found the music fitting. We'd originally planned for original music, but within the limitations of the month, we had to source CC music kind of last minute... Whoops.

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#14 Post by ludeshka »

This game was wonderful.

I mean, I cut a bit of slack for games done during NanoReno, but this game is just good,not by nanoreno standards but by any standards, it's good, it would stand out anytime.
The art is gorgeous, there's a lot of story veering off to unexpected places (People, play both routes, the stories are not alike at all! Lots of plot twists!)

It was really impressive.
I hadn't heard of your work before, but it made me want to look you up, and wait for future projects too.
Thanks a lot for sharing this with us. :)
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I drew you some fanart ^^
I drew you some fanart ^^

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Re: ⋘ Reflections on the River ⋙ • [Fantasy][Friendship][NaN

#15 Post by PeroxidePrince »

ludeshka wrote:This game was wonderful.

I mean, I cut a bit of slack for games done during NanoReno, but this game is just good,not by nanoreno standards but by any standards, it's good, it would stand out anytime.
The art is gorgeous, there's a lot of story veering off to unexpected places (People, play both routes, the stories are not alike at all! Lots of plot twists!)

It was really impressive.
I hadn't heard of your work before, but it made me want to look you up, and wait for future projects too.
Thanks a lot for sharing this with us. :)
Thank you so much for your kind words! ★
I'm very pleased to hear that you enjoyed it, and had time to play through both routes!
Ahhh I'm so happy that you thought it was good by any standards haha... We were pretty worried and nervous on release as we felt like some things were rushed due to the short development time.

Thanks a bunch for the lovely fanart!! (●´∀`)ノ♡ The royal siblings look so nice in your style!

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