Hope this is in the right place - if not, let me know and I'll move it. Long time lurker coming out of his shell, so please let me know if I'm breaking forum etiquette V_V Anyways, hey all! My Name is Kevin, and I'm here to look for writers for a project me and a few others have been working on! Here's a demo video to get things rolling.
Edit 2: Demo is up!
Edit 3: We have a writer!
Many thanks for all the people who applied, and to all those who commented/gave us feedback. We'll be sure to keep you guys updated on the project as it matures in the coming months!
Download link (40mb): http://www.mediafire.com/download/y1kb4 ... .4_win.rar
Only windows build up for now, working on mac port Notes about the Demo:
Once again, I must stress the fact that we don't have a writer (which I suppose is kinda the point). As such, expect the writing to be fairly dodgy, as it was put together by a bunch of artists and a programmer. The build is intended purely as a tech demo demonstrating the capabilities of our system - I'm sure the writers out there can already envision better uses for it!
Optimization for lower-end computers is still on-going, so it might lag a bit on older laptops/desktops.
If you guys find any bugs with the build, or have any comments, please let us know!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiQ8veXLns : D pretty snazzy eh? For the more astute, you can see the influences we've drawn from studios SHAFT and Trigger in particular. Project Ven What is Project Ven? We like to call it "a visual novel on crack" (You can see that we're not very good with words - probably why we need a writer). Our goal is to make a visual novel that demonstrates the capabilities of the medium to a mainstream audience, while remaining relevant to existing fans of the genre. Examples of some of the elements we are exploring:
Player agency and its role in dictating narrative pacing and content
Usage of textual and visual assets in complementary ways
Page/link system ala Twine
Kinetic typography
Experimental rendering systems to simulate 2d "hand-drawn" animations
Exploration of space as a narrative device
While it's still too early to spill the beans on all the stuff we have planned (nCart rendering system I'm looking at you), suffice to say we have a lot of exciting stuff coming - all of which you can follow throughout the coming months on this blog. Our studio: Title pending The team behind it all. In the latter half of 2014, a group of nerds got together and asked themselves the question: why haven't visual novels grown as a medium since its 2000s heydays? Compared to other "niche" genres such as voxel games, rogue-likes and simulators, the genre hasn't seemed to have progressed as much, and still remains a budding industry in the West. While we salute the folks at Dischan Media, Freebird Games, and Sekai Project - examples of companies that have made great strides in furthering the genre - we remain deeply dissatisfied at the state of the medium, for we know that it's true potential has barely been touched. So we decided to do it ourselves, and that is how Project Ven came to be. Overtime, we have formulated the following Manifesto:
Expand and evolve Visual Novels as a medium for a universal audience.
Explore new ways in which Visual Novels can be used as a story-telling medium.
Raise the quality bar for Visual Novels not only in the West, but worldwide.
I hope it doesn't sound too presumptious - but we really want to (like Fuwas' tagline) "Make Visual Novels Popular in the West". We need a Writer! We have the technical know-how. We have the visuals down-pat. We have the programmer, the designer, the artist, the animator…but we're still missing one crucial element - the writer. This is why we have created this "tech demo": not only to show what we want to do, but to show what we can do - the capabilities of the team and the quality we are aiming for. So if you're a writer interested in creating a high-quality, "next-gen" visual novel, please apply! What we are looking for:
Fast and loose writing: Due to the nature of our game, you will be expected to create a large number of text assets - however, you will also be given a large amount of creative freedom in what you write: as can be seen in our demo, we have anything from poems, jokes, anecdotes, screenplays, to recipes.
Collaboration: As fellow creatives we understand the pain of having to compromise your vision. That being said, a few of us on the team are also quite keen on the world-building and character design aspects of the game, so be ready for some collaboration! That being said, for our project the story trumps all, so don't be afraid of having to compromise due to artistic or technical constraints - it will be our job to match the story.
Volume: We must once again stress the importance of speed: specifically, we're looking at around 180 pages of work (100 pages for the main script, 80 for all the side stories/objects) in 4 months, leaving 2 months for polish/QA.
Setting Though the plot and setting of the game has not yet been finalized, we are currently leaning towards magic realism as the genre. We are also steering away from romance; this is due to a variety of reasons, but mainly due to oversaturation from existing works. Scope We wish to start off by testing the grounds with a smaller project: our goal is to release a ~1 hour long novelette within 6 months. The system and pipeline has already been set up for easy integration with text assets - the bulk of the work will not be integration but creation and editing. By aiming for a smaller release we can also focus on quality of execution and polish. The fast release will also let us know on how to progress with the eventual "larger" game, depending on how the initial release goes. Finances We are working with a revenue share model. (Most of us are just students or recent graduates). That being said, we plan to apply for various funding bodies such as the Indiefund & Film Victoria - if any funding is successful, all members of the team will immediately get a share of the funding. For anyone interested in the position, please include an example of previous work you have done. As we are on an extremely tight schedule, please contact us by the 23rd of March. Look forward to the demo, which should be up by this Thursday Friday - apologies for the delay - we realised the submission deadline for the competition is Friday, so will use this opportunity to polish it up further. Feel free to contact us about if you have any questions, or simply ask us below! (I'll be sticking around) email:
[email protected] twitter: @projectven blog: http://projectvn.blogspot.com.au/