demo can be played here
Twilight Hours
a multi-linear visual novel game
For my Narrative and New Media (IAT 313) course, I collaborated with an artist and developed a multi-linear interactive visual novel game as a coder, leader, and writer. For context, the story follows a young man who is able to see spirits in a town in which darkness deeply encompasses it's past.
Partner / Artist: Yoher Wang (portfolio)
Process
an overview of what I did for the project
Project Manager
At the start of our project, the general idea was a boy who becomes friends with the spirits. However to narrow the idea, I proposed to change the genre to a horror mystery my version of the story had better potential to be deeper and richer. As a result, my decision led me to a leadership position to oversee the consistency of the mood of the whole project. To expand, I directed her throughout the entire programming process, I kept in continuous communication with my partner, even initiating calls to work together through sharing our computer screens.
Brainstorming and Diagraming
In developing the multi-linear story-line, the process started off with messy diagrams where arrows are point everywhere. It was messy, unorganized, and unplanned.
I decided to have another brainstorming session with my partner. This time however, it was done digitally through online voice calls and screen share. My thought process continuously changed and so drawing diagrams digitally was easier with color schemes and undo buttons.
Now comparing to the polished diagram, the information is clear and better at communicating my ideas. This is done through a series of rewriting and reorganization.
User Interface
I started learning from the engine's own tutorial which contained basic examples. I then progressively experimented from a smaller to larger scale of sections of the game such as displaying and animating visuals, to designing a responsive environment such as buttons and menus.
