Visual Novel Ideas looking for feedback

Ideas and games that are not yet publicly in production. This forum also contains the pre-2012 archives of the Works in Progress forum.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
ghostpel
Newbie
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:10 pm
Contact:

Visual Novel Ideas looking for feedback

#1 Post by ghostpel »

After lurking around this site and interacting with creative person for awhile (still 3 times more than I did in my whole life). I'm starting to feel that getting so much help without putting any idea out there is a bit...selfish.
So, I will put it here! (<- awkward resolve)

Edited : spot a lot of mistake and missing sentence. Embarrassing indeed. ; _ ;

On topic, There are two story.

1. The Loner's sky
Premise: Protagonist trapped in the world where other human, animal, animated livings have disappeared.
He then found other 3 person, each one problematic on their own. Ranging from bullies victim girl, social rejected teenager, and woman who has her heart closed.
Turns out he is the only one who got cut out from the world, and he can interact with only the three at their specific place and time.
All of them has a hint on what brought him to this isolated world, which he hope finding that out will return him to 'the normal world'.

Longer summary can be found below:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-5y ... sp=sharing.

- Main project that I am aiming at finishing it first.
- This story contains suicide (being the main theme) , violent and heavy issue.
- An idea of happy ending here is questionable. (the reason tagged spoiler at the end of section)
- If there's no destructive ending where murder and violent occurs, it's because I'm gutless ; _ ;
- The core premise was built from my scrapped theory I had when played Cross+Channel. Used to have more character (5:5 male to female ratio) before got scale down into this.

The ending can't be explained without being spoiler. I'll put it short in spoiler tag below.
- Character's end is suicide ending, where the one you witness her suicide will stay with you. Convincing them out of suicide will result in they getting 'disconnected' from your world.
- Story ending (True ending?) is when you successfully disconnected all of them.
- Violent ending is what you get when choosing 'impulsive choice' enough time. Basically bad ending to clarify what protagonist's 'monster' looks like.
- There is fallback ending when you fulfill the condition. (Still have to sort through all possibilities.)
2. The Rules project (Temporary name)
Premise: Story of inevitable. A girl with trap-manipulating power forced into fighting for survival against the magic users in an underground basement she used to play with her deceased twin brother.
Unknown to her are the vengeful force plotting a revenge with her as a pawn, and her inability to seeks a help will result in the large-scale tragedy once the town's dark secrets come into play.

About story:
- Largely influenced by Tecmo's deception. This story wouldn't be written if only Tecmo didn't went Erotic route....but ends up borrow nothing from it aside from trap-triggering protagonist.
- Linear story with bad ending now and then. (The more of showing 'what could've been (worse)' than 'Choices and Consequences')
- Reward after each fight, is 'temporary peace' where she'll get a chance to make friend, finds an information or improves her skill.

- Overall plot can be simplified as Tragedy -> Rebirth -> Overcoming the monster
- This too has story planned from the beginning to the end.

On more personal notes:
- It has larger casts and longer story, intended to be 'Escape project' for be to run away from The Loner's sky depressing tone and went back.
- The point is having what I can keep writing a bit by bit.
- Being fantasy , it's great excuse for experimenting visual effect and all narrative gimmicks.
- .......Only reason I felt this is still brighter than the first is I accustomed to the cast to the point of stopped being hurt when writing depressing scene with them.
- At the cost of escape from depressing story, the amounts of research about ranged from tabletop game to 80~90s western culture and its history really challenges my Asian-mentality o _ o''. My JRPG-based knowledge turned into a pile of dust now.


The largest neck bottle is my writing... being half-fluent in my own native language, Japanese and somewhat below average in English. My rough draft contains all of them.
Hope I can choose one single language when I do rewriting. T _ T

Recently stepped into English-language community, I really have no idea what other person will think with this premise.
My attempts to pin down the genre returns nothing but completely different story, if you saw any story that resemble these...or even merely speak what you think while reading the premise, or commenting on my grammar and my gratitude will be with you.
Last edited by ghostpel on Sun Jul 03, 2016 1:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
DarkForestCrow
Newbie
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2016 6:28 am
Organization: Dark Forest
Tumblr: darkforestgame
Location: Moscow
Contact:

Re: Visual Novel Ideas looking for feedback

#2 Post by DarkForestCrow »

still 3 times more than I did in my whole life
Nice one!

Ideas listed above and in your disdock (which is actually good too) are promising, just keep working and polishing it.

I noticed one thing in your writings. I always notice it when review works of creators of jRPGs/novels, especially asians. There are a lof of details in characters descriptions that are not that important. Emotions, feelings, blah-blah.

The simplest example of problem (in my opinion) is: you say 'she is kind/angry/strong' instead of 'she once helped X/she kills pigeons on the street/she lifts 100 kg'. So, you say the same thing, but in a different, a bit more interesting manner, adding short stories about character, not just characteristics.

But it's up to you.

English is a problem, yeah, I know it since I am not a native speaker. I suggest you to polish your work a bit and then show it in some writings-oriented communities 'whazzup I am X I'm creating a game right now, if you want to patricipate - find me on Y, you help me polish my text, I put you in the credits...' and so on.

Forgot to say: nice arts!

gekiganwing
Lemma-Class Veteran
Posts: 2473
Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2004 1:38 pm
Contact:

Re: Visual Novel Ideas looking for feedback

#3 Post by gekiganwing »

ghostpel wrote: 1. The Loner's sky
Premise: Protagonist trapped in the world where other human, animal have disappeared.
He then found other 3 person, each one problematic on their own. Ranging from bullies victim girl, social rejected teenager, and woman who has her heart closed.
All of them has a hint on what brought him to this isolated world which he hoping finding that out will return him to 'the normal world'.
...
- If there's no destructive ending where murder and violent occurs, it's because I'm gutless ; _ ;
Your story involves putting four characters into an unknown place. They want to leave, but they don't know how. That said, here are a couple things to think about:

* How did the characters get trapped in another world? If you're not sure how this happened, then write down a few possibilities before settling on one.
* What is the other world like? Is there anything which the characters can see or do there?
* How much characterization will the main character get? Does this person have a defined personality? Is this person a blank slate? Or somewhere in between?
* What choices can the reader select to keep the characters from fighting? If the reader wants a negative ending, then what choices can they select to get one?
* Think carefully about choices. Which ones should be make it easy for the reader to understand what will happen? Which ones should be vague or difficult to understand? What other choices do you want to write?
* Finally, if it helps, write in your native language. After finishing the story, find (or pay) someone to create a translation.

User avatar
ghostpel
Newbie
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:10 pm
Contact:

Re: Visual Novel Ideas looking for feedback

#4 Post by ghostpel »

DarkForestCrow wrote: English is a problem, yeah, I know it since I am not a native speaker. I suggest you to polish your work a bit and then show it in some writings-oriented communities 'whazzup I am X I'm creating a game right now, if you want to patricipate - find me on Y, you help me polish my text, I put you in the credits...' and so on.
That will...take a lot of gut for me. I hope to be better equipped for socializing when my works are ready to be shown.
Also, thanks for comment on my writings! It's nice to read comment from different perspective!
From my side, I always feel that Western game tends to dive into character history to the point of 'shouldn't I learn that in the main story!?!'...your comment is enlightening ^^''
gekiganwing wrote: Your story involves putting four characters into an unknown place. They want to leave, but they don't know how. That said, here are a couple things to think about:

* How did the characters get trapped in another world? If you're not sure how this happened, then write down a few possibilities before settling on one.
* What is the other world like? Is there anything which the characters can see or do there?
* How much characterization will the main character get? Does this person have a defined personality? Is this person a blank slate? Or somewhere in between?
* What choices can the reader select to keep the characters from fighting? If the reader wants a negative ending, then what choices can they select to get one?
* Think carefully about choices. Which ones should be make it easy for the reader to understand what will happen? Which ones should be vague or difficult to understand? What other choices do you want to write?
* Finally, if it helps, write in your native language. After finishing the story, find (or pay) someone to create a translation.
Throughout comment as always! I'm still have a lot to learn at being objective when I'm writing.

There's description lose while editing and it was important one. I'll put it here to show what I missed. (before editing my document and first post orz)

- Other 3 perceive the world as it used to be, only protagonist unable to see or interact with the others. (Three person is not visible outside their specific place too.)
- Main character personality will starts off as 'a bit anti-social but nothing out of ordinary' , his true color will become clear as the story process. (The point of story is to learn about him.)
- It has been planned to the end so, there's a reason why he ends up here. (I tempted to put spoiler outline at first, but writing there is even messier)
At this point, I'm still unsure what I should put up front. Talking about the main theme require spoiler. My best attempt to put it shortly is in spoiler tag below,
Protagonist committed suicide. Angel (has her story too) found him and grant him the world he wished for.
But when he wish for somebody to exists, she goes out of her way to give him 'the others', ends up involving other main cast.
Other three are those who're somehow influenced by him and going to commit suicide next.
As protagonist you have choices to talks them out of suicide (cut them off from his world) or witness a suicide (and be together).
So, the character ending here reads 'Suicide Ending'.

Protagonist himself has violent tendency, to the point of nearly murdered someone, where he regained his conscious and committed suicide to prevent himself.
While interactive with 3 person in this world, there're choices that hinted toward hostility. (such as, 'annoying brat like you deserve everything' when commenting on girl's issue.)
If player select those choice enough time, he starts killing spree.
(In non-violent route, he did fights for best possible outcome, which is easy for player downplay his issue where in reality, he could've lose to an impulse anytime.)

Failed to fulfill any condition result in protagonist ignore his quest and locked himself up.
Story ending, best possible (depend on how you think), is where other three get talked out of their self-destruction and freed from him.
- My own langauge isn't popular one and expressions are limited despite their complexity.
But yes, it still good to write without thinking about grammar and tense, mainly when for narrating a scene.

psy_wombats
Regular
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:02 pm
Location: San Francisco
Contact:

Re: Visual Novel Ideas looking for feedback

#5 Post by psy_wombats »

Hi! Read through the doc and things looks decent. What sort of feedback are looking for in particular? Would you consider yourself still in a planning phase? When people start writing the first draft I feel like it's 50/50 whether they consider things planned out or not -- if your draft's multilingual maybe the answer is still planning haha. (drafting's pretty effective planning but anyway). Some stuff that jumped out, mostly for Loner's Sky:

- I definitely spotted the Cross Channel influence haha, although that's not a bad thing as I did enjoy the original (despite its pretty big flaws). Angel in particular I don't understand her role except as a story element that appeared in CC
- What context do the characters interact in? It seems from the way you describe them all in their own areas, N is just bouncing around between them. What would encourage the characters to interact with each other? In CC, the cast all had complicated existing relationships with each other that served as their framework for interaction, but your cast seem like strangers. Does this change? It also sounds difficult to write.
- Have you thought about the mechanics that control this other world? Are they just part of the premise (which I'd say in CC was the case) or something that N and the reader will come to understand over time and have an impact on the plot?
- Actually speaking of plot, I'm not sure I understand the conflict for anyone but A anyway -- N seems to want to return to the normal world. Does anyone else?

Other junk

- Don't worry about language/grammar/whatever for a first draft, just get ideas out so that you can evaluate what's working and what isn't. You'll end up rewriting most of it anyway probably.
- And getting stuff polished in English isn't so bad -- there are a bunch of people floating around that purport to be editors/proofreaders in the recruitment forum, and your art is definitely fun enough that there will be interest (hell, I would)
@psy_wombats - Hobby dev of VNs, RPGs, roguelikes, and other junk... professional phone game dev :/

User avatar
ghostpel
Newbie
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:10 pm
Contact:

Re: Visual Novel Ideas looking for feedback

#6 Post by ghostpel »

Reading this threat again have me embarrassed, I could've have use more specific question such as "If protagonist is trapped in the other world, what kind of explanation do you want? brief monologue or full story of 'the first day'?", Will you hate it if in the end, there's no love involved at all., Will it distract you to have character nationality and country setting untold? etc. ...editing now should be too late. Lesson learned. Still grateful with every single comment I've got. T w T
psy_wombats wrote:What sort of feedback are looking for in particular? Would you consider yourself still in a planning phase? When people start writing the first draft I feel like it's 50/50 whether they consider things planned out or not -- if your draft's multilingual maybe the answer is still planning haha. (drafting's pretty effective planning but anyway).
This paragraph sent me to deep thinking mode for almost week.
I am naive when it comes to planning. It's like...while writing is true = write, elif = draw, else = random between looking for music, tweaking UI, learning Ren'py, doing research.
It's personal project so there's nothing prevent me from switching when I ran out of word.
(My native language has awkward pronoun, non-standardized mess and etc. , I keep using Japanese and switch back to native when the word I want isn't there.
But since English is my main socialize language, it's tempting to write in English too.)

After literally forced myself to fix on my native language (can't thanks gekiganwing enough), I have to admit it's a lot more readable, and easier to spot inconsistency along with larger problems. If I were to do crude translation...it would be as fast as my typing speed in English (not that fast). ^^'
What context do the characters interact in? It seems from the way you describe them all in their own areas, N is just bouncing around between them. What would encourage the characters to interact with each other? In CC, the cast all had complicated existing relationships with each other that served as their framework for interaction, but your cast seem like strangers. Does this change? It also sounds difficult to write.
- Have you thought about the mechanics that control this other world? Are they just part of the premise (which I'd say in CC was the case) or something that N and the reader will come to understand over time and have an impact on the plot?
- Actually speaking of plot, I'm not sure I understand the conflict for anyone but A anyway -- N seems to want to return to the normal world. Does anyone else?
The casts used to have more in common with CC.
It has troubled individuals gathered at rooftop but no one talk to each other until one girl brought a box of Tabletop-RPG in and established 'make-belief club activity'...until protagonist broke them apart, got into coma, and keep imagining 'what could've been' it in his own head. But even the best effort will get them suddenly murdered while having a party by the girl who started the club.
....It's long, and more prone to got pointed out as CC (+ Saihate no Ima)'s blatant rip-off. ^^''

But after reading your comment. I noticed that N is really jumping between them.
For the sake of slimming things down, time-frames are limited. You have day, evening, night where you can either go to meet them (If player is sufficient, it would be E for noon, V for evening, A for Night. Since they won't be there outside their specific time-frame. For example, going to the rooftop at night will result in N spending his time alone.)
What you do once you met them is to talk, until you get 'the core information' where 'force reset' will occur and N will be back in his room, with some change to an environment. (There's only 1~2 core information per character. If player are not care about finding out their problem, it would be ridiculously short) When all core information gathered, player will get to the next chapter where all three are doing what they were set out to do and flags you triggered will determine how much you (N) can influence the outcome.

Talking about this reminds me how much time I spent on drawing more than writing. orz

Thanks for word of encouragement! I'll definitely keep it up! as well as study English..at least for better communication. :D

ps. I stopped posting my art anywhere except from really niche community so I have no idea how it stacked up in public, glad to see positive feedback on that too. T w T

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users