Within a Lifetime - High School VN about Mental Disabilities

[Weresdrim]

Hi, I'm Weresdrim and I've been working on a Visual Novels in one way or another for about a year now.
I've been working on this one for around 6 months and I'm ready now to share the concept with others to see if anyone's interested.

Genre
ADV Style
Dating Sim
Romance
Slice of Life
Supernatural
Time Travel
No adult material, Ecchi possibly

Concept/About
Within a Lifetime is a visual novel set in a fictional school of Japan known as Mirako High School, a school that specialises in helping those with mental disabilities.
After being diagnosed with schizophrenia during a period of time in a mental hospital the main character, Takeru, has the opportunity to attend Mirako in an attempt to forge a new future for himself. Despite difficulties with his illness, through his choices Takeru still has a chance at making new friends, and perhaps love as he discovers the true nature of those around him. There are 3 main routes corresponding to the 3 main female characters, each route is intertwined, however the ends all depend on the various choices the player can make throughout the game.

The objective of the game is to try to deal with your mental illness while helping others with their own. Each route if successful will help Takeru deal with his own problems and help the girl too. There will be several bad ends as there are for many people dealing with depression, schizophrenia etc. in real life. However these bad ends will make the few good ends all the more sweet as the mental illness's will finally be overcome.

With the right decisions, as he gets to know a girl during a route he will delve deeper and deeper into their personal pasts, eventually understanding why they are the way they are, whether the reason be abuse, trauma, death of someone close etc. Eventually in each route Takeru will begin to hallucinate and find himself back in time, in the event that caused each girl's mental illness. In each of these he must make choices to either save the girl from trauma, or leave things be.
Depending on the route, changing what happened could have disastrous effects.

Eg. They might be erased from the school as they'd never have a reason to be their in the first place, causing Takeru to fall deeper into depression
They might have their entire personalities rewritten, effectively killing the previous versions of themselves.
Or something much, much worse...

Help Needed
We are currently working on the Common Route, being the section of the game that comes before any specific route. The plan is to release a demo version of the game containing the Common Route before creating the rest of it.

Currently most of the work is done by myself and a few others. I'm looking to recruit anyone who's interested in the following roles.
Some of these positions have already been filled but, the more the merrier.

- Writers This also includes ideabouncers and editors.
- Character Artists Anyone who can produce sprites with a few poses or CG.
- Music Artists Composers, musicians, anyone who can write music for background tracks.
- BG Artists Anyone who can produce background designs/art.
- Anyone else interested It doesn't matter if you don't have any special skills, everyone has their own thoughts and opinions to share.

Communication
Go ahead and send me a PM if you're interested in the project in any way. An e-mail address will be required in order to easily communicate and if you're comfortable with other forms like Skype we can organise that later.

Working Schedules
This is a FREE project, I'm very sorry but I'm doing this project out of fun and with the aim of completing it to a high standard; however I just don't have the resources to pay anyone to work on it. If you're not having fun making the story come to life I won't be able to offer you anymore than that.

Progress
Concept art for all characters is completed and sprites are also being made and remade.
Several backgrounds 10 are already done, though more are always welcome.
Word count thus far is over 30,000. With planners far exceeding this number.
Original music is also in progress at an unknown rate.

You can find more progress info in the progress updates in the replies.

Closing Statement
Please, don't hesitate to send me a PM if you're interested in joining at all.
If you need something clarified or if you've got any questions/suggestions just send me a PM.
All information on the game here is up for debate, I'd love to hear your opinions.
And of course, to anyone reading this, Thank you!

Progress Update #2 below.

[LuivenX]

How do I apply for writers? Or, do you still need another one?

[Weresdrim]

How do I apply for writers? Or, do you still need another one?

We still need more writers, go ahead and send me a PM!

[Ferdokki]

Did you have an example of the kind of BG art and/or character art style you were looking for?

[Weresdrim]

Did you have an example of the kind of BG art and/or character art style you were looking for?

I'll send you a PM of some of the stuff I was thinking of.

[Weresdrim]

[Progress Update #1]

Since we've had a lot of progress over the past 2 weeks since this thread was created, I figured now would be a good time to update anyone who's interested on what's been going on.
Many people have joined since the thread creation, currently we have:

- 2 Character Artists
- 1 BG Artist
- 1 Musician/Programmer
- 4 Writers

Since then we've now got a full team of friendly, hard working people who all want to make a visual novel together.
Already we've got a song created, a few sprites, many backgrounds and A LOT of planning.
We've decided to first work on releasing the Common route before anything else as it's own stand alone game.
This will serve as a less ambitious first model of what the game has to offer and will give an idea on what the finished product may look like.

A solid idea on what the common route will consist of has been laid out by the collaborative efforts of just about everyone, and I'll tell you know, we're all really looking forward to what's to come.
Other planner documents have given us all a strong understanding on where the story is heading and how we'll achieve it.
A Skype chat has been created for us all to collaborate and brainstorm ideas for Within a Lifetime, using this our progress in planning plot lines and characters has been going at a very steady rate, meaning true writing for the Common route is just about to begin.

Because this IS a recruitment thread I'd just like to add that we're especially looking for new artists. Musicians and writers are also definitely welcome but right now our focus is on finding new artists who want to join and contribute.

This'll do for this progress update, I'll probably make more of these as time goes along to update the thread with more and more progress, just to show we're serious about making it.

If you're interested in any of the roles, drop me a PM and we'll make sure your efforts won't be wasted.

Thanks

[Saureese]

As a person diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, this is an interesting cencept. Thank you for this and good luck with your project.

[Weresdrim]

As a person diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, this is an interesting cencept. Thank you for this and good luck with your project.

I'm glad you're interested
If you don't mind, could you share a few words over PM about your disorder and how it personally feels and affects you? For the sake of portraying schizophrenia accurately I would love to get your input on the subject as someone who personally suffers from it. Thanks.

[Weresdrim]

[Progress Update #2]

Since a month and a half ago the Visual Novel has been moving along at an alarming rate, but we'd still love more and more people to contribute!
I'll keep this post short and to the point.

Jobs Open:
Writer
A day by day plan has been created and 1st draft writing has already begun, but it's never too late to start! In fact there's no time better to start than now!
10,000's of words are already written and are currently being written, we'd love more to contribute their word counts to get this done quicker.

Artist
2nd drafts of sprites are being created, at a better quality too. As there is quite a bit to do more artists are definitely welcome. Those who specialise in CG are especially wanted.
If you are experienced and want to help create the game's art we'd love to have you.

Musician
More musicians would be great too, we still need plenty more tracks to fill the Visual Novel of all types so if you've got experience with that you're welcome.

In short the project is still going strong and we'd love to have you if you're interested.
The planning documents are designed to help anyone unfamiliar to the project so it won't take long to bring you up to speed.

As always just shoot me a PM if you're interested and I'll handle the rest.

[AnoelDreamer]

Hello! I have autism, and this looks really interesting! If you need someone who experiences that manner of thinking from the inside, please let me know. If you have an autistic girl in the cast, I'd love to help you out with that character (being one myself)!

[Weresdrim]

Hello! I have autism, and this looks really interesting! If you need someone who experiences that manner of thinking from the inside, please let me know. If you have an autistic girl in the cast, I'd love to help you out with that character (being one myself)!

Well I'm not sure about any of the main cast being autistic, we're still debating specifics, but I'm sure they'll be at least some mentioning of autism, or a similar disability throughout the story.
In any case, if you wanted to help write that would be helpful, but if you don't have the time just PM me with any info you want us to know about you. Any first hand information is quite useful in portraying the characters accurately.
Thanks!

[shinka24]

Hi there! i don't know where i can contact you but i'm interesed in the post of writer or maybe as programmer

[exuin]

Hi there! i don't know where i can contact you but i'm interesed in the post of writer or maybe as programmer

This post is from 2016 lol