oops i made a visual novel
I made a short visual novel and you can play it (for free)!
No, that’s not the title of some obscure RPG Maker 2000 project, I actually made a game. It’s a short (maybe 20 minutes?), linear visual novel and you can play it now! For free! Maybe even in your browser if I figure out how that works!
It’s called In the Palace of the Birds and it’s about a group of kids stuck in a building, playing a strange game to pass the time.
My three conscious influences were Kamaitachi no Yoru (specifically playing it with a pretty aggressive CRT shader) and Shigatsu Youka for the visuals, plus Oscar Wilde’s Salome for the writing (but to be fair that one influences everything I do down to like how I breathe, so...) if that gives you any kind of idea of things.
And as pleased as I am with myself, keep your expectations in check—this was made in a week by a guy who can’t draw, can’t make music, only vaguely understands what a layer in photoshop is, and who’s idea of complex coding is making a word italicized in HTML. You know, all the things it’d be good to know for this specifically.
Really that lack of knowledge is what made making this such a joy though. I made myself do it all in just a week because I wanted to block myself from ballooning ambition or getting too wrapped up in editing. I’m here to mess around and learn first and foremost, it doesn’t have to be perfect! And boy howdy, I’ve learned so much (just look at those italics wowee) on all sides and had a blast figuring it all out. I also ended up with something pretty cool, I think!
Also, unrelated because it isn’t in this game, but making a vn opened my eyes to the baked in poetics of dialogue and textboxes in games. I never really considered how the dev has control over what goes in the box like lines in a poem, and can so easily do stuff like enjambment whenever they want. Cool! Makes me want to pay attention to words in games more.
Anyway, will I do this again? Uh, maybe! I don’t think enough into the future to know that, but I’d definitely love to try something now that I have at least a baseline comprehension of things.
But for now, enjoy In the Palace of the Birds
