http://kck.st/2DYrfVL
Hey all!
My name is Brett and I'm working on an EVN titled "The Anomaly" with a few friends. We've been working collaboratively under the name Annexe Interactive from both Scranton, Pennsylvania and Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Before I get into any serious details, here's a link to the demo:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/9380 ... maly_Demo/
About
The Anomaly is a deep, character focused visual novel set in modern times, combining a healthy mix of story, player choice, and mini-game elements. Your choices, victories, and failures all play a part as you build bonds with the characters around you and unlock the mystery behind Colorado Springs.
Striking character art, illustrated CGs, and gorgeous backdrops bring life to a story both deep and intriguing as well as sharp and funny with its laid back, Western sense of audacious humor. Whether you’re looking for a worthwhile, intelligent visual novel experience with strong character development and an engaging story, or an easy to pick up time waster good for a few laughs, The Anomaly is just what you’ve been looking for!
Story
Life in Colorado Springs is a drag for 18-year-old high school student Tucker. There’s nothing to do, the people are boring, and the only thing keeping Tucker from losing his mind is his small group of friends who share a similar sentiment and similar interests. While the young man and his companions don’t hold much compassion for the physical world around them, their skills in the digital one tell a different story.
Tucker is a hacker, and along with his friends Ross and Valerie, he finds every opportunity he can to leave the doldrums of the real world behind and lose himself in cyberspace. Whether it’s something as silly as vandalizing the Shyanne Mountain High School website, or as serious as tapping into secret government archives, no task is too great or small for Tucker and his merry little band of tech-savvy misfits.
When Tucker meets a new girl at school named Kiera, things quickly become more complicated, and he and his friends’ carefree lives soon take an even more dramatic turn when the mysterious local phenomenon of “The Hum” begins to cause strange and confusing effects to the people of Colorado Springs. Taking it upon themselves to get to the bottom of things, the group soon find themselves knee deep in a complex and treacherous world of secrets, conspiracy, and very real danger.
Will they be able to unlock the mystery of the Hum? Some truths are kept hidden for a reason.
Notes regarding the minigame
Since the beginning of development, we wanted to incorporate some kind of hacking simulation, so you'll see several minigame sequences within the game that are more catered towards people who have at least a basic understanding of UNIX. As someone who has worked as a system administrator and participated on cyber competition teams, I thought I had a great understanding of how I wanted this to be built. The first build to include the minigame sequences, however, proved too difficult for most of the people that had initially volunteered to test it because it required a much more intermediate knowledge of UNIX and exploitation techniques in order to complete. Since then, it's changed so much that it hardly feels like an actual linux terminal, but still gives off the vibe of an exploitation environment. Additionally, we decided to add a feature that will allow the player to disable the minigame sequences at the start of the game as well as a short tutorial to help ease in new players who are interested in learning UNIX basics. This is something that we plan on building up extensively before the final release.
Annexe Interactive is:
Brett Martin
Yanni Visci
Michael Visci
We've also received an enormous amount of support thus far from many Lemmasoft users, too! We've had the distinct pleasure of working with:
Ideoteque (Writing)
PenDragon (Writing)
Benya Barshai (Soundtrack)
Mario Luengo (Soundtrack)
Nadia Nova (For letting us use their text messaging code for our demo)
Skirmisher (For letting us use their terminal code as a baseline for the minigame used in the demo)
Izzy (Concepts)
Bunbunz (Pre-alpha sprites and CGs)
Julioalqae (Sprites)
Achrocide (CGs and promotional artwork)
Alexis Rillera (Backgrounds)
Selavi (Backgrounds)
ds-sans (Pre-alpha and mobile minigame assets)
Luna Li (Miscellaneous graphics)
Sitraxis (For designing the logo of a fictitious program used in-game)
Chris Ventura @ This Is Danger Design (Logo and some GUI assets)
potouto (GUI assets)
WhiteCharisma (video animation)
Moral Code (a hometown band from Scranton, PA, who let us use their track "Saving S. Connor" for the intro animation)
Cristian Enciso and Ethan Compton (for providing feedback and inspiration during early development)
And tons of support from other users/friends like Sal Serrano, Garrett Ludwig, Ken Tucker, and Matias Schwartz.
Anyway
Yanni, Michael, and I have been working very hard to produce this demo. Any feedback at all would be genuinely appreciated. I'm also open to answering any questions that anyone might have regarding the game.
Looking forward to hearing from you all!