The Evil Magician [short KN][a simple fairy tale]

[unknown5]

Title: The Evil Magician
Short KN: ~10.5k words
Art : Kohaku
Writing : unknown5
Music: Kevin MacLeod

Download
(bigger file size version ~90MB)
Win: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l79xhqspvenos ... .1-win.zip
Mac: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r1vk7hux32zhs ... .1-mac.zip
Linux: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yd850dj30mqgp ... ux.tar.bz2

(smaller file size version ~50MB)
Win: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uw1ou6wtpd476 ... .1-win.zip
Mac: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sjrfs46aiupgs ... .1-mac.zip
Linux: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zyaqzfr9kofyd ... ux.tar.bz2

Story
Children are disappearing across the land—kidnapped by an evil magician of great legend and infamy! What is his nefarious reason for snatching the children? Can anyone save them? Their best hope lies in Percy, a fledgling magician, and Millicent, his bunny companion.

Millicent: I'm not a bunny, you idiot narrator!!! I'm a girl!
Oh, my bad. Their best hope lies in Percy and M—, I mean, Millicent and Percy, two aspiring magicians.
Millicent: That's better!
Percy: Who are you talking to, Millicent? I don't see anybody. Is he invisible?
Millicent: No, he's not invisible! I'm talking to the narrator!
Percy: ...
Percy: I don't get it. Is he hiding behind these bushes?
Millicent: Argh! Stop being so stupid!

Notes
This is Kohaku's first time drawing a VN and also my attempt at writing a 'normal', light-hearted children's story (see, I'm even using proper capitalization, lolol). Good experience for both of us to improve and learn. =D

Comments, criticisms, bugs, etc. appreciated. Hope you enjoy!

Sample Sprites


Sample Art






Updates
8/12/14: grr ... ok, maybe not this week. eventually.
7/25/14: grr ... noticed a typo. QQ will fix it this week.

[Kato]

Congrats on the release. I'll be checking this one out

[Duskylli]

Great game guys! Since this is Kohaku's first vn game, I'm amazed at the amount of art assets created. Kohaku you machine! :p I like the art style and the vibrant colors definitely added to the whimsical story book feel of the game.

The story is well paced and entertaining, I wasn't bored for a moment. Percy is really endearing. I also enjoyed all of the animations especially the bit where its like you're flying through the clouds and different sections light up from the lightning.

I also like the bit when

you game over early xD

[unknown5]

kohaku pretty much had control of the storyboard, design, art, gui, etc. i expected something simple for a first vn, but his vision was really ambitious, and i was shocked when all these bgs and cgs started coming in. it was insane, heheh.

[Duskylli]

kohaku pretty much had control of the storyboard, design, art, gui, etc. i expected something simple for a first vn, but his vision was really ambitious, and i was shocked when all these bgs and cgs started coming in. it was insane, heheh.

Haha I was expecting a simple first vn aswell but then it was like this crazy incredible beautiful art explosion xD He's improved bucket loads too, its very inspiring :3

[Kohaku]

Hey Duskylli, thank you for the kind words they mean a lot to me, and i'm glad you liked the game

lol, yeah i did go a tad overboard with the way i did things, you should have seen the quick storyboard i did, i had pretty much done a scene for literally every little thing, definitely think smaller next time

I can't take all the credit as unknown5 saved me a lot of time by doing the animations and adjusted the sprites, otherwise we probably wouldn't even of got it released as early as we did.

[qirien]

What a fun little story! I was really impressed with the art and visual effects, especially the flying through the storm scene. Also, the frog with the top hat was so cute, I was hoping

the Evil Magician would stay that way and be a pet. >:D

I played it with my three kids, ages 5, 8, and 10, and they were all very interested in the story. Their favorite parts where

you meet the bunny, and also when Percy traps the magician

. They wished there would have been parts where you got to make choices (but part of that's my fault, I couldn't remember if it was a KN or VN so I couldn't tell them if there were choices or not).

I thought the dialogue was mostly funny and cute, though the Millicent-calling-Percy-stupid thing was starting to get repetitive. I really liked the parents - they seemed pretty normal while still having their own quirks, and kind of refreshing from the usual "I'm an orphan" or "My parents are evil" tropes.

I did find a few minor typos:
"The boy grabbed onto his older sister's arm" is missing a period at the end.
"Millicent was scared but tried to stay brave for his little brother.": "his" should be "her"
"Percy kick them off" should be "Percy kicked them off"
"I should have. Let me check. He opened up his pouch": since it is not Percy saying the second part, it should probably be a narrator line.

Thank you so much for making a fun KN that I could enjoy with my kids! I would love to see more of those. I'm going to check out your other KNs now!

[unknown5]

thank you for your comments!

- argh! typos! QQ thank you for finding them! (ok, i really, really will fix those when i have the time. QQ)

- yeah, millicent did abuse poor percy a bit too much, lol. i told her to lay off of him, but then she yelled at me. she's scary! O_O

- frogs are cool. top hats are cool. frogs with top hats are waaay uber-mega-cool.

- most of my other stuff aren't really for kids. some are a bit twisted and evil. wrote this story to get that icky stuff out of my system, lol. i'll try to write some kid-friendly stories with choices so it's more fun for them too. and to keep me sane.

unfortunately, what i'm currently working on is horror. Steely Steambolt isn't finished yet, but is mostly okay (if my memory is working correctly) except for one particular scene which would be rather embarrassing to explain to a child. however, i suppose i could make a simple edit and make two versions. (duh. how simple. i'll have to remember to do that.)

just make sure to download the right one, heheh.

[qirien]

Ha ha, well, I was thinking of playing the horror ones myself, not with the kids (my 5 year old already had trouble getting to sleep with just the Evil Magician!). But more VNs for kids are cool, too.

[philip]

I check the "Completed Games" in LSF almost every day, and when I saw this one, I almost didn't click on it. I thought that it probably wasn't that great, anyway. WOW!!! Was I ever wrong!

The art is wonderful, the colors striking. The characters are excellent, and the story is great! I really enjoyed this. Congratulations on a wonderful job! I'm gonna go back and go through it again.

philip

[unknown5]

Ha ha, well, I was thinking of playing the horror ones myself, not with the kids (my 5 year old already had trouble getting to sleep with just the Evil Magician!). But more VNs for kids are cool, too.

ah, i'm sorry! the evil magician is kinda creepy. i should have given him a hidden weakness to a common item, like salt or pencil lead or something. that way kids know they can scare away the monster. dang. i'll have to remember that in the future.

I check the "Completed Games" in LSF almost every day, and when I saw this one, I almost didn't click on it. I thought that it probably wasn't that great, anyway. WOW!!! Was I ever wrong!

glad you liked it! =) (hmm, i need to come up with better titles, lol.)

[Lesleigh63]

I've seen this in the completed games section for a while, and found the art interesting and wanted to come back and try it.
I'm glad I did.
The art is wonderful - fully customized GUI, the very bright colours, like the other commentors I enjoyed flying through the storm, and I remember a horizontally scrolling background in there somewhere to.
The writing suited the theme of a children's story (as did those bright colours).
I hope a lot more drop by and give this a try.

[princessgardinia]

So, Google Chrome is telling me that your file is malicious. How frustrating.

[princessgardinia]

Just to clarify, I don't think it's your fault, each new Chrome updates fixes some things and messes with others.

[unknown5]

@princessgardinia: yeah, chrome users have told me that. it might be the .exe file. not sure.

firefox will let you download fine.

@Lesleigh63: the animations were a hoot to work on. =)