Yume no Sora

Recently I’ve been playing several visual novels, thus delaying my productivity along but oh well…
In these games, sometimes you have to make a choice that might change drastically the game storyline.
Something has been bugging me since then…
How does one guess which choice leads to the story one wants to be told ?

I mean, the very concept of visual novel is to convey stories, based on a player’s choices.
To make a choice, one generally has to bathe into the story’s atmosphere, identify to the main protagonist (which is sometimes really hard because in most cases, the anti-hero/heroine personality is quite weird) and take the right decision about what to think or say.
By comparing several visual novels, I’ve kinda sorted out most of the choice systems.

continue reading…

When you begin to create such media, there are things that you don’t necessarily care about.
You have a concept, a great idea, a unique theme, something that you want to present, the urge to throw lines of narrative content to the audience.
You imagine the joy of discovery and begin to play with what you think might become the epitome of an artist’s fantasy.
Then you immediately enter production mode, but then as you progress in the making of your little chef-d’oeuvre, you realize that everything becomes slower and finally, you wonder if you’re able to finish the whole damn project before it becomes a vaporware.
When it doesn’t come to completely halting it because of carelessness in the game design itself.

For the aspiring game makers, to prevent these states of uncertainty, there are techniques and means in order to create further beyond this point.
As artists or writers, there are little rules to follow so that you don’t lose your sight while you’re creating huge parts of universes.
They’re simple, really, but sometimes life is so that you wouldn’t always know them in advance.
continue reading…