Noonday Descent [Epistolary VN][Christian Theology][Satire][Free]

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novus_rue
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Noonday Descent [Epistolary VN][Christian Theology][Satire][Free]

#1 Post by novus_rue »

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Noonday Descent: The Path of Listlessness and Torpor

A satiric epistolary visual novel about three Noonday Demons giving advice to a new member of their ministry. They work together to teach her the only thing they know: how to tempt humans and damn souls efficiently.

This experimental work explores issues centered around Christian theology, exploring a broad range of topics related to themes of temptation, negligence, and madness. It is filled to the brim with dark and cold-blooded humour accompanied with excessive amounts of irony and sarcasm. Despite its seemingly serious subject matter, it is lighthearted in nature, and intended to entertain the reader in an uncomfortable way.

Contents:
  • 90,000 words
  • 45 messages
  • 3 ways to read
  • 1 ending
  • 0 chronology

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Modes
This visual novel contains three modes of reading: Original, Message, and Kinetic.

Original Mode (The mode this VN is meant to be approached)
A menu featuring a character and a number of nodes.
Each node will open a message corresponding to a character symbol.
Random message will open a random message. Supposedly.
Switch node changes the character screen.
One tester stayed on Fortunia's screen for upwards of an hour. Please do not imitate him.

Message Mode
A menu featuring all of the messages with titles and numbers.
Each node opens the messages for the corresponding character symbol.
Coded as replays, you cannot save or load in this mode.
Some messages have been omitted from this mode.

Kinetic Mode
A mode that plays all of the messages back-to-back in an arranged order.
For people who would rather not make any decisions and instead just read something.


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Characters
The characters in this visual novel play specific roles and their messages center around general theme.

Astucia
Astucia's messages make the bulk of the visual novel. She has no idea what she's talking about most of the time, but does an excellent job at pretending she does. Has a business-like approach to souls, tenuously related to supply and demand. Most of the time she's just rambling though.

Fortunia
Despite having the fewest messages, Fortunia takes up nearly half the visual novel's word count. She covers the psychosomatic effects of spiritual neglect with a message format akin to research papers. Perpetually pouting.

Novostia
The supplementary character, Novostia's messages requires and provides vague context. Having a mostly apathetic personality, her messages are short and concise with little regard to clear communication.

Lyra
A fairly incompetent new recruit who asks a lot of questions. All messages are directed towards her.


Download Link
https://levity.itch.io/noonday-descent

Since the author vanished in the Serbian taiga late 2018, I have been tasked to take responsibility for this work.
If there are any bugs or concerns, you can PM me or send me a tweet at @novus_rue. Have a good one.

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novus_rue
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Re: Noonday Descent [Epistolary VN][Christian Theology][Satire][Free]

#2 Post by novus_rue »

Version 1.02 released.

-Page updated to be a little more appealing and informative.
-Fixed a number of grammatical and spelling errors since I edited the wrong script. Should be 99% clean now.
-Introduced FORMAT A and FORMAT B

The VN can now be downloaded in either FORMAT A or FORMAT B.

-FORMAT A has smaller text with significantly less pauses and waits. It is designed so that the reader can fill the page extremely quickly and read at a more comfortable pace. This is also the intended reading format, as the pages often self-contain information related to each other. Certain details and subtle humour is easier to catch in this format.

-FORMAT B has larger text with a pause and wait at every sentence. The text clearer, less straining on the eyes, easier to consume, and is intended for those who would rather read things more thoroughly. Some text has been edited to better fit the box, but overall nothing too drastic. Since some paragraphs are constrained into their own page, the smaller details and some odd jokes might be missed.

The saves should be able to work across both formats, so if you dislike one format you can always switch to the either. You may have to roll back once or twice so that it re-formats itself.

Happy reading.

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Re: Noonday Descent [Epistolary VN][Christian Theology][Satire][Free]

#3 Post by Dovahkitteh »

So uh, there's going to be a lot of happy raving and praise here. I don't typically write up comments on games unless they've really, really struck me.

I clicked this thread in the first place mostly because of the tags. Epistolary, theology, satire? All very fun things, sounds like a good time! Expecting something dark or super stylized, I popped in only to see...cute anime girls? And to be honest, I almost closed the tab. I'm normally not much of an anime girl fan, and there's a trend of "anime girls go with everything" hanging on these days. But when I scanned through the thread, a few things caught my eye: cold-blooded humor, no chronology, different modes (I chuckled at the "please do not imitate the tester" comment, too). So for the hell of it, I decided to click and give it a download--format A, since I'm a fast reader--and plunged in, expecting my gnat-like attention span to flicker away soon enough.

Boy, was I wrong.

General Thoughts

I haven't fully completed the game as of writing this review--I'm about 80-85% done I think--so I'll be going off everything I've seen, which is amazing.

The satire is presented in an absolutely perfect tone. Obviously, a lot of the material is comical or sarcastic, but many other elements are very real, very blunt depictions of human nature. To me, it feels like most of the game straddles this line. I often found myself wondering, "Is this part meant to be taken seriously or as the opposite of what it says?" And I think that's exactly what good satire does: rather than shoving an overblown parody or mockery down the viewer's throat, it compels them to examine blunt/extreme/metaphorical statements and draw their own conclusions (and truths) from it. You pulled this off amazingly well.

Maybe it's not that strange or rare for epistolary works (I've only seen a few), but something about the game gave me a strangely...cozy feeling. It could've been for a number of reasons; the pleasant ambient music, the static pictures in the background, the lack of "normal" VN elements (a linear plot, expression/bg changes, sfx, etc), the conversational (or in Fortunia's case, intellectual like a dry-but-fascinating professor) tone of the messages, the unhurried timeless flow of the letters, or something else entirely. Whatever it is/was, it produced a really immersive, yet comforting atmosphere. Of course, the game still felt unsettling at times--mostly in the menu screens, or in Novostia's scenes, which felt the most bleak and had an anxiety-inducing subtext.

If I'd played even a short demo of this (a couple messages from each girl, maybe), I would've happily put down money for it.

Music

I absolutely adore the soundtrack. Everything about it fits so, so well. Astucia's jazzy/tango-y/carefree themes, Fortunia's atmospheric clockwork tracks (<3), and Novostia's coldly isolated ambience are all equally perfect. Most of the loops didn't seem too long, but I never minded the repetition because of how pleasant they were. Nothing about them distracts from the reading experience, and they fit seamlessly into the background while also supporting the relevant character's "mood." I would've liked some seamless loops (without the endings and pauses of silence), but that's really only minor nit-picking.

Writing/Characters

As I mentioned before, I'm not easily affected by cute anime girls; I usually find most of them not to my taste. But I fell in love with all three of ND's girls just through their quotes, letters, art, and music--almost instantly, actually. They have very distinct personalities, and beyond being ridiculously adorable, their letters express such strong characters that I couldn't help but get attached to them. I'm not even sure I can pick a favorite, although I think Astucia probably wins just for her adorable hilarity. Where can I get my plushies/keychains/Astucia-autographed damnation guidebook? D:

Art

The art, in all respects, is just plain gorgeous. I can't express the love I have for the CGs, both their character designs and the wonderfully thematic, beautifully colored backgrounds on which they appear. The color themes and harmony are so strong, helping each girl (and her letters) have a very unique/individual tone,

GUI

As someone who was more or less forced to learn graphic design for my own games, I've developed a large appreciation for GUI. And ND's GUI is, I have to say, downright superb.

I was pretty impressed from the main menu screen--clean and simple, with a slight flicker to add some interest. The options/load/save feel like a basic computer interface, which fits just fine; anything more detailed would probably seem a little forced. The menu

The NVL screen/letters are ideal, too. Text on a black overlay with a simple quickmenu is all you really need, and it looks wonderfully clean. I really like the font, the stylistic choice to often use numbered/lettered lists, and the nice touch of using a monotype font for dictionary definitions, etc. If I were to gripe about anything, it'd probably just be that the text occasionally gets a little difficult to read--mostly when it's in huge paragraphs, where I sometimes lose my place.

============

Overall, I think you've really done something amazing here, and I congratulate you for creating a really extraordinary VN. ^^ I actually wrote most of this review, and intended to post it, almost a full year ago, but life's been crazy. But Noonday Descent has stuck with me all this time, so I had to finally come back to it and post here.

Some questions/random notes:
-As I mentioned before, the soundtrack is amazing. Is it an OST or comprised of royalty-free tracks?
-If I'm not wrong, Fortunia calls the Devil "Papa," which--taking her scholarly letters and personality into account--is somehow the cutest thing I've ever read.
-"Dam-nation" was one of my favorite lines, along with moist
-The Pedobear-Slenderman hybrid popping up when I switched screens was both alarming and amazing.
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