Voldemort Visual Novels?!

The summer's over, and I'm moving back (home!!!) into student housing tomorrow, but I wanna blog. So I'll go pack the playstation, and in the meantime, you read HiddenWings07's adorable (but spoilery!) review of TCAST.

You back? Coo. To the blog!

So I made up the term "Voldemort Visual Novels" to describe a certain type of VNs. They're not, like, Voldemort/Harry slash VNs or something. (Though that might be disturbingly awesome.) Remember how in Harry Potter everybody called Voldemort "He Who Must Not Be Named" because, well, saying his name scared them? And they thought things would go wrong if they said it, or summat?


A Voldemort Visual Novel, as I call them, is a game too early in development to be spoken of because there's such a high chance of it floundering. But the developer is obviously starting to work on it and they're excited about it, and the temptation to talk about it is too great, even if they have more stable and developed projects in progress.



The difference between a Voldemort VN and a regular unreleased VN is the non-Voldemort game has a significant amount of work in it and a moderately reliable promise that it will be eventually released.


Or am I the only one who tries not to talk about games before a lot of work has gone into them? I totally facepalm whenever I see a project in the Lemmasoft WIP board that's like "0% complete! 8D" (Especially if they're recruiting...) I understand that people may need encouragement to complete something, but it's awful to watch an interesting idea go to the WIP board to die. o.o



But here I am! And I wanna talk about my Voldemort VNs! Because... well...

lordcloudx's fantastic title image for the game!

Let's talk about Darlings Lost, my upcomming (non-Voldemort) game, for a minute.


You may have noticed that I haven't posted any blogs about Darlings Lost. There are several reasons for this.

1. Work is coming kinda slowly on everyone's end, mine included. No one is at fault here, everyone has circumstances and other projects. Except me. XD I could be working harder on it.

2. Darlings Lost is kind of a spoiler intensive game, which makes it hard to talk about.

3. The honeymoon period for this game... is waaaay over.



I'm still working to make it a good game, and I'm still excited to have you read it, but I wrote the first draft of it in summer 2009. Which means it predates the TCAST draft by three or four months.

That may not be that long ago in terms of how long it takes to get out a visual novel, but in that time I have changed a ton as a writer. I've taken creative writing classes, the writing subjects that interest me have changed, also, I've discovered tvtropes.org. I've also changed a lot as a person. I started college, left Christianity, come to terms with my genderqueerness, and my self-esteem has considerably improved.

Frankly, Darlings Lost doesn't inspire me anymore. Which is fine and normal, because those fuckers who say 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration are 100% accurate.



So, yes, while I'm powering through Darlings Lost, my brain is floating off somewhere else in a happy land of ideas. Namely I'm dabbling in Voldemort VNs and pondering which is going to be turned into my next big project. And I'm going to do my best to talk about them without talking about them! Here I go!

1. Start Date: November/December 2009
Type: Dating Sim
Current line count: OVER 9000!!! (For reference, TCAST is about 2000 lines.)
The script for this is probably a third done. I love this game very much. I've spent so much time with these characters that they're my homies. I think it will be a very interesting dating sim, and it certainly will stand out a lot, but I'm not going to say anything else about it. I have no intentions of giving this one up, but it's too early to announce it or bring any artists in simply because it's so massive. It may be another couple years before I even have a draft. The reason it may not be the next game I do is because in the meantime it'd be a lot easier to write and develop another TCAST-sized game in between Darlings Lost and this sucker.


2. Start Date: January/February 2010
Type: Visual Novel/Short Story Collection
Current line count: 0.
This is a very weird game that I am very excited about. I have it outlined out, (which is more than I can say for any other game on this list) but I haven't started on it yet. I'm not sure how big it'll be until I do start it, but it will probably be in a league with game 1 rather than TCAST. I tend to think of game 1 and game 2 as a pair, even though the tone, structure (and possibly the audience) will be vastly different. They're kind of like the ying to each other's yang. They both deal with the same themes from very different perspectives. But 1 has much more work in it, so it takes precedence over another visual novel of comparable size and themes.



3. Start Date: Early July 2011
Type: Dating Sim
Current line count: 200.
Very early developed game. Not sure if/where this one is going.


4. Start Date: July 2011
Type: Kinetic novel/Short story collection
Current line count: 0.
This is probably the second shortest proposed idea here, which makes it one of the most promising. I'm considering holding this one off for NaNoRenO.


5. Start Date: July 2011
Type: Kinetic novel/Short story collection
Current line count: 250.
Unlike the other short story collection ideas up here, this one is an anthology that I would bring in other writers to do short stories with me. This is the shortest proposed idea, or at least, my part would be. ;3


6. Start Date: August 22, 2011
Type: Kinetic novel
Current line count: 500.
I came up with some dramatic tension that really interests me, however, I'm not sure how to resolve it... I like this though. This would probably be about TCAST-sized or a little longer.


7. Start Date: August 24, 2011
Type: Kineticish novel (It may have choices, but I don't see the replay value being that high 'cause I don't think it will have very different endings... or maybe it should have different endings... *game gets bigger*)
Current line count: 150.
THIS VN IS DEPRESSING AS HELL. I need to figure out if this whole thing is going to be too angsty to continue. (I struggle with most of my games dissolving into boring amounts of angst... ^-^;;) But I think it has the promise to talk about some ideas that really interest me... This is another one that I see being about TCAST sized or a little longer.

I didn't know Voldemort was in Titanic...

As you can see, I came up with five of these since TCAST came out. I think interacting with the community and getting great feedback is what inspired me so much. Oh yeah, the hypothetical TCAST sequel is totally one of those five. XD Not saying which though! It's too early! It still might not even happen! I see you raising your hopes, you shoot those down!


Because NOT ALL OF THESE GAMES WILL BE FINISHED. That's the way Voldemort Visual Novels are. I would probably be here for another six years trying to finish these, and spoiler alert, I will come up with more ideas in between then and now.


I guess the reason I typed this up is mostly for myself--just to take a step back and see which ones I should take seriously. I'm especially excited about the last two because they're fresh to me, but maybe I need to sit down with number 1 and just crank that sucker out? But that will take so much time maybe it makes sense to do something smaller in the meantime?


If any of you out there feel like commentin', let me know, what do you think about Voldemort Visual Novels? If you do VNs, how do you manage them? If you don't do VNs, what do you think about other people talking about their barely developed games? Do you like my name for them? o.o Should we make that a thing?