Magical Schoolgirl Love Tale [BxG][VN]

[Barnox]

MAGICAL SCHOOLGIRL LOVE TALE



What is MSLT?

MSLT is a project that started out as a joke between Roast, me and a few other people in an online community we frequent, poking fun at stereotypes in Japanese entertainment media. We created a parody plot before realising that we wanted to make a VN as a serious project.
MSLT was the result of this.

It is a slice-of-life story, exploring the interactions between different personalities and characters.
The premise is that, in a world where magic is rare and prized, the protagonist has been found to have magical powers and is sent off to a high school for other magical youths. A loner type, he does not relish the thought. There is a whole new world ahead of him: What will he find there?


Who are we?

I suppose you want to know about who it is creating this project.
I'm Barnox, and my main role in this project is as writer and ideas. I've not released any work, nor have I had any real experience in working on a collaborative project. I'm looking forward to learning about project management and collaboration, as well as shipping out a finished product made of blood, sweat and tears.

Roast Veg is the other person working on this. He's taking up the coding and music (which you can find on the blog). He's also transcribing the prose that I create, which we then go through together to polish.

This is our first real project together, as well our first real team project.

Screenshots
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3


We're keeping a blog at Magical Schoolgirl Love Tale. Updates come with progress.
A demo (v0.06) is available here: Mediafire

The current sprites are from Deji, recoloured by Roast.
The current backgrounds are from http://mao.sub.jp/

We'll be keeping you up to date on progress being made, both on the blog and this thread.
All feedback is appreciated.

[Roast Veg]

Between Barnox and myself we have all the bases covered barring art. We've spent some considerable effort into this already (which I make reference to in the blog), and we both want to see this take off. Those questions will really help us find out what people want us to make, so hopefully it can build up a lot more steam.

[gekiganwing]

When I saw your title, I thought "magical girl harem story? Can't wait!" But it looks like you have something else in mind.

Looking at your blog, it seems your group has written down some ideas for characters. They currently seem to be descriptions rather than people. Are these the "flat characters" you talked about? If you're serious about creating a story, then you'll want to make sure to develop your cast. Read articles such as Develop Charcter Personality and Make Interesting Characters.

Let me be more specific. One of the people in your cast is described on your blog as a cold girl. As you probably know, this is a concept that's existed for hundreds if not thousands of years in all sorts of fiction. How will she be both a unique individual and an emotionally cold person? Who are her family and friends? What unique experiences has she had? What does she think of herself? Does she have goals? How will she relate to the main character (who I assume is unfamiliar to her)? How might she grow as the story goes on? If you give this person have magical powers, what will she do with them?

I don't get the impression that you're trying to write deconstruction or parody. (As you probably know, both can be written well, but both can go terribly wrong. Sturgeon's Law affects us all -- no matter what genre, format, or style, ninety percent of everything is crud.) I think your goal is to take characters common in shounen and seinen romance media, take them seriously, and reconstruct them. Is that anywhere close to what you're intending to make?

Barnox mentioned, "We aren't looking to make a harem, nor are we creating a game based around the protagonist spending his time attempting to conquer each girl." What exactly do you plan to create? Is this a "gen" story with no pairings or romantic endings? Will everyone remain friends? Do you intend to focus on a larger plot? Is your story's overall tone going to be upbeat, downbeat, or somewhere in between?

Thanks for reading this. Hopefully your writing and coding will go well.

[Barnox]

Thanks for taking the time to have a read of what we've written here/on the blog.

What we currently have on the blog are the base descriptions of the characters. We've developed them much more than that, but what is featured on the blog is the basic aspects of them. It's what you'll see during the first act, to an extent.
We're unsure of how far to release information about the characters: Much of the information on backstory, experiences and family are currently in the plan we have for her path. It seems like there is an unclear line between "Letting people know in-depth about your characters" and "Spoiling the plot you currently have laid out".

While the project did start out as a joke, then a parody, we quickly turned it into something serious. We have taken some stereotypes from those media types (loner protagonist, for instance), and we are attempting to construct genuine characters from it. I'd say you're pretty much on the mark on that point.

When I said that it wouldn't be harem or girl-conquering, I meant that the goal of this story isn't for the protagonist to get laid, kissed or get a girlfriend. In some cases it may be harmful to the pairing to get romantically involved. Each character has their own route, but the goal isn't entirely romance (although that may happen), it is more about how friendship can grow between these two or more character types.
If I'm using the phrase correctly, it is akin to slice-of-life: Following and guiding the protagonist through this new school, interacting with characters that you may or may not have seen before.
I'd say the desire to do this comes from me playing and thinking, upon meeting and interacting with some characters, "What is her story? What is she like?". Games where the route is exploring the personality, past and goals of another character, even if you aren't the least bit romantically drawn to them. We placed in the [BxG] as you are controlling a male protagonist, and the routes are all female-dominated.

The tone I believe we are aiming for is, in the end, likely upbeat. Final themes are self-discovery and appreciation. Each of the routes may be vastly different, however. One may be a constant string of successes, whereas another will be the protagonist nearly reaching the point he desires before, for one reason or another, near-defeat rears its head.

[lemuel]

Sweet tushita heaven, but I have rarely read such good writing before! Clean, concise, humourous/serious at once. Truly, I wish that I could write in this way.

[Roast Veg]

So, whether you've been paying attention or not, we made some great progress! Still no art, but a first draft of a fair chunk of act 1 is complete, along with quite a few pieces of music (you can check those out on the blog - the link is still in the OP) and some coding to hold it together. We've got a LOT more planned, and we hope to have the whole of act 1 coded up so we can beg you guys for art.

Watch this space, folks!

[lemuel]

Congratulations!

[Roast Veg]

Thanks to this thread, we have some placeholder character sprites now!

[Barnox]

Updated the OP with assets and more information.
As is said on the blog, we should be able to get a first demo out some time next week.

[Roast Veg]

We now have a public demo! Version 0.05a can be found here, and will be in the OP very soon.

This is approximately half of the first act, and what we have here is still up for heavy revision. All sprites are placeholders and programmer art, and it should be expected that there may be bugs and/or typing errors. Please report anything you find and give us as much feedback as possible - we need it!

[Roast Veg]

I don't know how many people around here are interested, but we released a new version of this on our blog not long ago, so feel free to check it out.

[lemuel]

I love this game, but note some errors in the text. I have spare time over the next week, so if you want, PM me for contact info and I will edit the script. If you do not, I will still post corrections here.

Do not be sad; your writing is excellent, your characters and story gripping, and your errors common.

[Roast Veg]

Feel free to post typos and grammatical mistakes here. We know they're there and are working through them, I already have quite a few corrected for the next release.

[Nuxill]

I feel like the writing is a bit awkward at times in the demo. Especially the very beginning. It's repetitive and the phrasing feels off. I know you're working on grammatical errors but since this is the first glimpse of writing your readers will see I think it might be good to polish it and make sure everything flows in a way that makes it interesting and easy to understand (easier said than done I know!)

Also this is a little bit of a nitpick, but I don't see the point of explaining to the viewer what the dorm rooms (and other places) look like in detail, especially since there are images that show what things look like. I know you're using placeholder artwork right now, but when you do get different artwork it might be good to cut back on descriptions a little bit. It's a visual novel after all.

Otherwise the story seems pretty interesting. I'll be keeping my eye on this project.

[Roast Veg]

Thanks very much for the support. Seems like I need to bug Banrax for the next draft of act 1, he just won't stop coming up with the new ideas!