rastagong-tearoom

[rastagong-tearoom]

I wasn't planning on it initially, but I took part in the 2023 O2A2 visual novel game jam last week!

On Mount Ségou is a very short, dark fantasy/fairy-tale horror VN with a focus on atmosphere, and an old-school sound novel/NVL. I hope you enjoy it!

To provide a bit of context, O2A2 is an annual, 10-day-long (originally 7-day long) visual novel game jam with very strict asset limitations to encourage brevity/minimalism/creativity under strict constraints: you can use at most 1000 words, 1 background, 1 sprite, 1 music piece, 1 sound effect.

My taking part was a spur-of-the-moment decision: I started working on my project only late last Sunday, without even being sure I'd complete anything… And then I found time to push forward only in bits here and there over the evenings last week (plus one afternoon at work, and a final push at night on Friday).

I knew I didn't want to, and could not possibly have crunched over this weekend on top of everything (the jam ends in a few hours this Sunday night), so I went for what I knew how to do best at every step:

a focus on atmospheric horror through NVL typographic effects, sound effects and music, e.g the usual fare I already like & know the best (I was glad to realise the usual horror NVL staging tricks still came to me as easily in Ren'Py!)

a strong narrative voice rather character- and dialogue-based writing

a whole lot of very familiar ideas/tropes/inspirations ahaha. Although the setting is “new” (especially the fairy-tale framing), there's almost nothing new under the sun in On Mount Ségou: I've either already played with these ideas in my last release Sylvan Disappearance, or I currently fiddle with them in some other shape in my long-term project Blooming Chasm.

The end result is something that's definitely very atmospheric! Although I think I didn't quite stick the landing ending-wise, but I'll let you judge that.

I hope I can find time throughout the week to write a longer postmortem, but I'm really glad I could participate; it was a pleasant breather from work & general exhaustion, I really needed a set time to exercise creatively! (Especially outside of my more long-term project, which I love too, but to get more immediate creative results)

In the meantime, don't hesitate to explore other VNs released during the jam! Some projects are very involved, with a lot of shine & creativity, and large teamwork produced over multiple days in a way. There are also some very impactful, more individual works which just condense so much under very very tight constraints and also astound me in very different ways. It's a nice snapshot of different trends/approaches in the VN sphere, and span across a lot of genres, it's pretty cool!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Hi everyone,

You may have noticed that the ongoing collapse of Twitter has been pushing a lot of people to explore other social media options lately. (Though If you see this post on your dashboard, then i'm sure you never really left Tumblr in the first place and must be looking at this with a lot of amusement.)

I thought this would be the perfect excuse to finally dust of this tearoom to talk about VN projects again!

I've never really been able to use Twitter to talk about VN development on the regular in a satisfying way, so I'd love to try to spend more time here with this sideblog instead.

So please a take a seat! The tearoom will be open on the regular again, for night owls (1am ~ 6am) and afternoon visitors (1pm ~ 5.30pm) alike!

Here's the plan:

How I'll use this tumblr

The goal is to use this place for shorter updates this time around, since that seems more suited to Tumblr's format.

Some of the posts I wrote around the time of Sylvan Disappearance's development were nice enough, but too long to be written on the regular, and I never really found a fitting voice. I think it'll be much easier if I just post updates when I feel like it without too much pressure!

My main blog

A year ago, I also reopened a main blog at home.rastagong.eu.

It's a more personal blog and portfolio, so you'll also find non VN-related content over there, if that sort of things interest you, along with more involved VN development updates. I'll link them here on the regular as well!

See you around!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Thank you for such a nice review, I’m so glad you enjoyed the story! It means so much to hear from other mystery fans, and especially so from people who share a fascination with Picnic at Hanging Rock!

so a few days ago I said I was gonna start doing little game reviews of free games I find on itch.io and here is the first one Sylvan Disappearance!

first of all I was super excited to play this because one of the inspirations for it is my favorite book/movie Picnic at Hanging Rock. now on to the review!

Sylvan Disappearance was created by @rastagong-tearoom  the game itself was amazing the writing was beautiful as well as the character artwork which was done by @hyanide. The game is of course a visual novel unlike most visual novels were you have choices to make this one is strictly one story and does not contain multiple endings. Which is nice too not all visual novels have to about the users choice sometimes they are just a way to tell a story. The story itself was beautiful its a perfect blend of Gothic, mystery, and horror. Overall this game gets a 5/5 from me.

[rastagong-tearoom]

A belated release announcement

Hello everyone!

Few people follow this blog, so I had not bothered to share the release announcement here yet... but I realised it would be a loss not to do so, and that I would not feel entirely satisfied myself either. Anyway, for anyone reading this blog who hasn't learnt it yet, Sylvan Disappearance has been released a week ago!

>> Download Sylvan Disappearance on itch.io <<

If you saw the release announcement, you must know that it was supposed to be released on the summer solstice. It was tough, and I almost succeeded: I uploaded the finished game at around seven in the morning of June 22, in my local time. That is close enough? In the end, I labelled this 1.0 version as released on “the 21st-22nd of June 2018” —a belated midsummer release, from the very first summer night.

So far, this has been a very small-scale release. Much as expected, there have been a few dozens of downloads, but not a lot of comments. A few readers did share their thoughts, and they seem to be enjoying the story so far, which makes me very glad!

If you happen to read Sylvan Disappearance, please don't hesitate to share your thoughts, either in the comments section of the download page, by reblogging this post here, or simply on the site where you originally heard of this VN.

I'll be writing post-release thoughts, but in a little while.

Until then, take care everyone!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Inspirational Blend #6: Dream Pop

Hello everyone,

Today's post is the very last one in a series where I reveal the inspirations behind Sylvan Disappearance.

Today, I'll be getting away from webcomics, novels and movies to focus on music! It is the first time I attempt to describe something musical in written words, which is difficult enough, but to spice it up, I chose the most nebulous kind of music genre: Dream Pop.

It is difficult to provide a pertinent definition of Dream Pop if you know nothing of it. The corresponding Wikipedia page, citing the AllMusic Guide to Electronica, tells us that it is:

“An atmospheric subgenre of alternative rock that relies on sonic textures as much as melody.”

This is in all good faith as close as we can get to a valid explanation, the key idea being: Dream Pop music means hazy, blurry textures which produce an impression similar to that of dreams. There is no pertinent instrumental or theoretical category, the genre is largely characterised by the subjective texture as it is experienced.

The definition is not exactly wrong in categorising Dream Pop as an alternative rock subgenre, but personally, I would say it is wiser to outright admit that it is not a very-well defined genre, that it comprises artists from very different backgrounds who can appeal to vastly different sensibilities.

Below are a number of Dream Pop artists and albums I particularly enjoy, along with a short blurb explaining what's so dreamy about their music.

In the course of the article, I provide links to listen to the music I mention on Youtube. If you'd prefer to listen to everything on your own, without having to read the article, I also provide the following playlist, which contains all the songs referenced here:

Julee Cruise

I personally fell into Dream Pop through Twin Peaks, that I watched for the first time last summer, at the time of the release of the 2017 Return of the series. It was a deeply moving experience in many ways, but one of the highlights was discovering the music of Julee Cruise. In the world of Twin Peaks, there's one bar and dancing just outside the titular town that is frequented by everyone —teenagers, small crooks and couples alike: the Roadhouse. The regular performer of the Roadhouse is Julee Cruise, a woman who sings love songs very softly. It is rare for the viewer to hear her songs in entirety, but usually, they're soft, slightly kitsch love songs. The scene on which Julee Cruise sings is usually lit in bright purple and red tones, with an iconic red curtain in the background, which produces an eerie, retro atmosphere.

Excerpt from Twin Peaks. Do not look at the comments if you haven't seen the show.

While watching Twin Peaks, it's easy to leave aside Julee Cruise's music, which serves an atmospheric purpose most of the time. However, Floating into the Night (1989) deserves to be listened on its own terms. It is arguably her most famous album, the one co-produced by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, who later had her perform it in various parts of Twin Peaks.

It is a very special album that I like listen from start to finish at nightfall. It is carried by Julee Cruise's singing, always lingering and slow, and by backing guitars and synths, which produces a very retro atmosphere. The albums hides both dark, melancholic moments, and lighter interludes. Depending on the song, the lyrics can be either sensual, pronounced through rose-colored glasses, or on the contrary, abstract, surreal and disturing —much like Twin Peaks.

If Floating into the Night was a dream, then it would be something at the border between nightmare and dreams; at the single moment where subconscious truths emerge from the night, and into your consciousness.

The Cocteau Twins

Most of the time, Dream Pop is strongly associated with its more famous neighbour, shoegazing. There is indeed a lot of overlap in both shoegaze and certain Dream Pop artists, in their common focus on atmosphere, and in their descendence from punk and psychedelic rock.

The work of the Cocteau Twins could be considered to be the most representative of this Dream Pop variant. In the 80s and early 90s, the Scottish trio enjoyed a large success in the UK alternative scene, like other artists under the independent 4AD label.

It is impossible to put in words the Twins' appeal. Fans will always tell you about the voice of Liz Fraser, the vocalist of the trio, but it is difficult to describe it. As for me, the least I could say is that ever since I started listening to them, a year ago, I gained access to a whole new dimension of existence. The Cocteau Twins offered me a new lens to view life through, and made it infinitely richer.

If you listen to them, you'll notice that in many cases, no words can be discerned in the singing of Liz Fraser, because it is not made out of words —it is a texture, something both abstract and yet so very life-like. But there is a great variety in their production. You'll find both haunting, Gothic songs like Alice, dark riffs like Blue Bell Knoll, and upbeat, light clouds like Cherry-Coloured Funk, which is also very beautiful in its breezy, alternative recording from a later album.

Since their breakup in the 90s, the Cocteau Twins have had a large influence on a number of contemporary artists, and gained a cult following. One of my favourite secret hobbies is to read about what the Cocteau Twins mean to their fans, in Youtube comment sections. There are plenty of anecdotes, often dating from the 80s, and they never fail to bring me a smile. If the Cocteau Twins were a dream, they would be a daydream; a soft fantasy which somehow finds a way into your daily life, and enriches it in ways that cannot be expressed.

Beach House

Beach House is a duo of musicians from Baltimore, in the USA. They might be the most popular contemporary band to fall under the Dream Pop umbrella.

On the surface, they're an indie pop band, but Victoria Legrand's soft singing, their simple synth melodies and their poetic lyrics makes their music sound as soft as velvet. They've just released 7, their latest album, but my favourite so far is their previous one, Depression Cherry.

If Beach House was a dream, it would be, in a straightfoward way, a pleasant fantasy dream.

Nicole Dollanganger

Nicole Dollanganger is an independent Canadian singer and songwriter. She has a very distinctive voice, both very soft and high, and writes songs with very simple lofi instrumentals, which clash with her bleak lyrics about emotional abuse, sexual and gun violence. The result is a dreamy, Gothic atmosphere from which transpires a lot of sadness underneath.

I am slightly obsessed with her 2012 album Natural Born Losers.

If she was a dream, Nicole Dollanganger would be an afternoon nightmare: it may start peacefully, but remain asleep long enough, and it will awaken long buried trauma, and leave you with a strange aftertaste upon waking up.

The Cranberries

I'm still sadder than I'd like to admit about the recent passing of Dolores O'Riordan, the lead singer of the Cranberries. I have a lot of memories associated with the band. I know I used to listen to Ode to My Family as a child, without knowing who the band was at all. Later, I got obsessed with Zombie like many teenagers. But it is only many years later that I re-discovered all of their music, and found out that some of their songs sounded like Dream Pop.

The last song I will leave you with is perhaps the best-known from Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? which is the Cranberries' 1993 debut album. It's one of the songs I most listened to while writing Sylvan Disappearance, and its title, lyrics and aesthetics are quite self-explanatory: Dreams.

[rastagong-tearoom]

Inspirational Blend #5: My imagined relationship with tabletop RPGs

Hello everyone,

Hope you're well! If you missed yesterday's post, here's a reminder that the release date of Sylvan Disappearance has finally been announced through this short video: it will come out on June 21, which is in two days!

In the meantime, I still have two inspirations to present you! In addition to today's post, there will be a final inspirational blend tomorrow.

Today's post is about an inspiration I had mostly forgotten until recently: tabletop role-playing games.

A key premise of the story is the years-long friendship between Mirabelle and Célia, which used to rely on their common love for “story nights”. In the story, I deliberately leave some amount of obscurity around these story nights —at least at first— but they are decidedly inspired by tabletop RPGs.

The strange thing is, I've never been a regular tabletop RPG player. I have always been fascinated with role-playing games, but I never got deeply invested in them.

The first time I heard of tabletop RPGs must have been as a child while watching D&DD, an episode of Dexter's Lab where Dexter's friends attempt to play an obvious parody of Dungeons & Dragons. In the episode, Dexter is the game master of the campaign, and his style of mastering, rife with unfairness, unexpected fits of anger and outright cheating, makes for an interesting game to watch, even before the intervention of his sister Dee Dee. Watching this episode sparked a huge, ever-lasting interest of mine in tabletop RPGs, but for years and years, it never concretised itself. I simply knew nobody who knew how to play tabletop RPGs in the first place.

There was another important trigger though, and it replaced tabletop RPGs for the longest time. French board game Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux has had a growing popularity since the 2000s, both in French schoolyards and on the Internet, with a number of digital-based adaptations. To briefly summarise the game for those who would not know it, it is a lightweight role-playing game that a game master directs orally, all players sitting in circle. There needs to be at least 8 players, but there is practically no upper limit.

The players put on the roles of villagers living on the outset of a mysterious forest. However, some of the villagers are secretly werewolves. At night, when all villagers “sleep” (by hiding their eyes), the werewolves awaken, and concert in silence to choose a villager to kill, to feed themselves. For werewolves, the aim of the game is to kill all villagers without being found out. For villagers, the aim is to debate of who might be a werewolf during the day, and to successfully execute all the werewolves by vote —one vote about suspects being held every day. Whenever a villager dies —werewolf or innocent— the game master reveals their role. There are other roles besides werewolves, including a witch who can brew potions, lovers who die together, and many more in the numerous add-ons of the base game.

The variety of roles creates asymmetric interactions and complexity, but the real fun lies in playing one's role: in lying about being an innocent villager when one is a werewolf, in sowing doubt around the village to protect one's lover from death, and so on. Overall, it is very simple game to organise, but because each role is secret, and deaths frequents, it is rife with treason, secrecy and unexpected twists. This board game alone might be responsible for introducing thousands of children to role-playing, and to this day, I still regularly find occasions to play it with either other young adults or children.

For years, both this board game and tabletop RPGs were a major inspiration. I was only vaguely aware of the latter and their more complex rules —I could only read about them on the Internet— but still I fantasised a lot about writing and playing tabletop RPGs. When the occasion presented itself, I ran lightweight role-playing games of my own, usually for children. These little games were the closest attempt at mastering and role-playing I had.

Eventually, I did find a few occasions to try my hand at actual tabletop games with other people —but it never quite became a regular hobby. This may be in part because I realised I had little interest in fighting and long-running campaigns, and that my preference went to atmosphere and mysteries. And while there are tabletop systems focused on these exact aspects, it can be challenging to find friends with matching interests.

The result of this history with little actual play is that my interest in tabletop RPGs remains largely more imagined than lived! That is not necessarily a bad thing. I do find occasions to play from time to time, and I know a few friends who might be interested in exploring atmosphere-heavy settings in the future —but in the end, I have far more imagined memories and idealised scenarios of tabletop role-playing that actual reminiscences of playing.

The story nights in Sylvan Disappearance are born out of this idealised, imagined relationship with role-playing. Mirabelle and Célia are two friends who took very, very far their love of role-playing, in a way I could never hope for. Their dedication to atmosphere-building, their hard work to design a single evening during weeks just for the sake of their friends, and overall, their undeniable success as storytellers were all important themes to me —if not because I aspire to this level of dedication, at the very least because I had fun envisioning a world where two friends could run such beautiful games in perfect harmony.

At the same time, there is something unhealthy and sad at the core of their yearning for role-playing, as it appears in the second half of the VN. I won't say more about this second aspect. Here again, it probably comes from my own relationship with stories, or at the very least or what I suspect it could be.

I hope this short personal post provides an interesting context about the story nights at the core of Sylvan Disappearance, when and if you ever read it!

See you tomorrow for the last post in this series, about an inspiration in a completely different media form altogether.

[rastagong-tearoom]

Mirabelle and Célia have an important announcement to share with all of you!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Inspirational Blend #4: Picnic at Hanging Rock

For this last (edit: fourth) inspirational blend, I will be talking about a story that is both very dear to me and complicated to tell at all. I have more or less been procrastinating writing it for this very reason.

This post is going to be both longer and heavier than usual, because today, I'll be talking about the legacy of Picnic at Hanging Rock.

2022 postscriptum. In retrospect, this post is really clumsily written. I leave it up because it's important still, and because I link it from the Ending Notes menu of the VN, but I'd frame the entire thing differently today. The cultural legacy of the story is extremely tainted, there's no way around it, but I'm more comfortable today admitting just how much it gets about trying to find a blissful exit out of absurdly rigid structures.

The very first thing I must tell you about Hanging Rock is that Hanging Rock is not the true name of Hanging Rock.

The 100-meter high rock formation lies in the state of Victoria in Australia, a few dozens of miles North of Melbourne —but its real name was erased. Prior to the 19th century, the site used to be a major ceremonial meeting place for a number of Aboriginal groups who inhabited the area —but very little else is remembered.

The long, century-old history of the site and its owners was erased through the violent settler colonisation of Australia in the 19th century. This process involved the mass displacement and killing —both through the introduction of diseases and through direct violence— of the native inhabitants of the land we now know as Australia. Like in many other regions of the world, colonisation has had dramatic consequences not merely on the populations who were subjected to domination, but also on the culture and representations of the colonial society which took shape in the process.

Besides the factual erasure of earlier history, Australian colonisation has resulted in the application of a White gaze upon the landscape of the continent. Through this colonial lens, which permeates paintings, literature, cinema and journalism alike, the local landscape is viewed as inherently alien, mysterious, exotic. It is seen as a terra incognita, a land of wilderness without history nor civilisation —and therefore, free to be settled by colonisers from European countries. If that land belonged to no one in the first place, if it was discovered by these newcomers, then surely their colonisation was justified to begin with? So is the unspoken belief promoted by this White gaze.

Much like in other colonial societies, this cultural fiction has permeated Australian culture. It is an original lie which serves both as a cover and as a justification for a history of violent colonisation, and it prevents any reparations from being made in the present era.

This contextual introduction is absolutely necessary to talk about the fictional story of Picnic at Hanging Rock. I am by no means an expert on Australian history myself, though I do rely on the work of researchers, activists and journalists (they are listed in the bibliography at the very end of the post). However, because Picnic at Hanging Rock has undeniably been a major influence for me, I cannot avoid discussing this important context.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is originally a mystery novel published by Australian writer Joan Lindsay in 1967. The story recounts the fictional disappearance of three schoolgirls at Hanging Rock in 1900, during a Valentine's Day picnic organised by their Victorian boarding school. Upon publication, the novel was immediately met with a large success in the Australian press and public.

Much of this has to do with the mystery from a formal point of view. No resolution is ever brought to the disappearance of the schoolgirls, the novel leaves intact the reason of their disappearance. What carries the mystery throughout is its underlying atmosphere. The atmosphere opposes the Gothic presence of Hanging Rock, unexplained, threatening, and the world of (White) civilised society, where the vanishing of the girls creates confusion, gossip —and eventually brings about more dramatic events. Much of the plot follows the consequences of the girls' disappearance at Appleyard College, their school, which is led by a strict Victorian headmistress. Throughout the plot, the looming, primitive power of Hanging Rock gradually extends far beyond the site itself, and ends up causing ruin even in the conservative circle of the headmistress.

These unspoken themes are even more visible in the movie adaptation of the novel —which is often better-known than the source material. Directed by Australian director Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) puts front and centre its aesthetics. The early parts of the movie and the sequence of the disappearance focus heavily on the intimacy of the schoolgirls, in a quasi-erotic way: the cameras films the girls lacing each other's corset, or lying lavishly asleep on the slopes of Hanging Rock. The soft, hazy texture of the photography also contributes to the underlying focus on the schoolgirls' sexuality. Miranda, the eldest and wisest girl of the group, is presented simultaneously as a perfect embodiment of purity, and as all-knowing, driven by a forbidden knowledge of something transcendent and blissful. As for the ascent of the rock, it is filmed through dreamlike, contrasting shots of the girls in white dresses, walking in the middle of the wild landscape.

Through this unique atmosphere, Picnic at Hanging Rock has deeply imprinted itself on the collective consciousness of the Australian public —many more iterations of the story have been produced, notably in theatre, and very recently, on television. Critics have deemed its unresolved mystery to be subconsciously revelatory of the alienness of the Australian landscape for settlers, and of the inadequation of its modern-day inhabitants. The movie has also been described as an exploration of female sexuality and sexual repression —its atmosphere was famously a huge aesthetic and thematic influence of Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicides.

However, there are more unexamined themes to the story than it appears. Cultural researcher Elspeth Tilley has called Picnic at Hanging Rock a quintessential narrative of White vanishment. The novel and movie belong to a wide corpus of tales which recount the disappearance of White settlers in the Australian bush. The structure of Hanging Rock follows that of most of these stories: some settlers get lost in the wilderness, become disoriented, and either die, or are never heard of again, despite extensive search. According to her, these tales reveal the lens through which settlers approach the Australian landscape: as a threat, an alien terra incognita, devoid of civilisation. In the process, this erases the very real history of inhabitation of the continent, and the history of their removal.

In the case of Picnic at Hanging Rock, this erasure is only more blatant, since the rock used to have a major role in the societies of the originial inhabitants of the region. The threatening presence of the rock makes sense only in the context of Australia's violent settlement history: the rock can be the symbol of a primitive and untamed presence only because its true owners were forcibily removed from it.

This erasure has been perpetuated and amplified by the legacy of the story. The fame of the movie has had a large and concrete impact on the popular conception of Hanging Rock. The rock is more renown for being the setting of a fictional story than as a site with a very real history —I myself write this only because I first heard of the site through the movie. This confusion is, in fact, encouraged by the novel and movie themselves: Joan Lindsay framed her novel as an account of a real disappearance, related under the pretence of truth, a pretence which was kept in the movie. In interviews, she always refused to assert whether her story was “real”, despite it being entirely fictional. This masquerade has added a lot to the weight and erasure performed by the story. More perversely still, the tourism centre at the bottom of Hanging Rock displays the site to visitors only through the lens of the novel, making scarce mention of its preexisting history. Visitors themselves have taken the habit to visit it as a pilgrimage for the sake of the novel. They shout “Miranda” at the top of the rock, or participate in an annual Valentine's day picnic where girls disguise themselves in white dresses, reenacting the fictional disappearance endlessly.

In recent years, there have been efforts to recontextualise the history of Hanging Rock. In 2017, academic Amy Spiers launched the Miranda Must Go campaign, an attempt to confront head-front the pervasive legacy of the story. The campaign has attracted both a substantial amount of media attention, and violent opposition on the part of many fans. It is entirely thanks to the activists behind the campaign that I have been able to write this post: this is merely a summary of the hard work of research and organisation that they have been leading.

Among the three goals of the campaign (Remember our troubling past • Remove the white vanishing myth • Rethink the stories we tell at Hanging Rock), I think the second one is by far the hardest one to achieve. As analysed in a 1-year anniversary update on the campaign, the media attention received by the campaign has been important, but has not triggered substantial material changes on its own. Even with the release of a new Picnic at Hanging Rock iteration on TV, I have seen many people briefly mention the legacy of the story, but it is not certain that mere mentions of this legacy are enough to undermine its pervasive weight.

To put it more clearly, with Picnic at Hanging Rock, the only acceptable decision is not to retell the story at all anymore. There have been justifications on the part of the people involved in the new mini-series on TV, and more largely on the part of fans who still find value in the movie —but given the weight it carries, is it fair to keep reenacting a narrative with such perverse colonialist effects?

This is not something I am saying lightly. If I am writing this post in the first place, it is because I did find value and inspiration in the movie —but I am not so sure that it is merely enough to acknowledge this legacy, without actively working against it.

To elaborate on the worth of the movie, I came to it first through Daphne du Maurier's Monte Verità, a mystery novella set in the Alps about a mythical community towards which women are unexplainably attracted, and never to return. Monte Verità shares the same dreamlike, unexplained atmosphere. Another mention came through Asphyxia, a visual novel inspired by Romantic poetry which deals with depression and unfulfilled relationships among women-loving women. The story is set in the historical Lake District, and has slight Gothic undertones. Neither of these two stories carry the colonial legacy of Picnic at Hanging Rock —if anything, they deal more subtly with female sexuality. Nonetheless, the fact that I found references to Hanging Rock from them shows that the story has a place in the Gothic genre, and especially so in women's narratives.

More broadly, there are a number of favourable interpretations of the story, which assert that it is not so much about the alienness of the Australian landscape, but rather about the inadequation and violence inherent to White settlers and their Victorian morality. In other words, the story would already bear premises of a post-colonial narrative. However, this nuanced view bear very little weight in comparison to the popular conception of White vanishment perpetuated by the public and the tourism industry —neither does it address the total absence of Aboriginal history in the story, movie and novel alike.

There is no doubt that Picnic at Hanging Rock is a theatre where colonial anxieties take shape —but the story is not suited to address them, lest we put them front and centre. The only acceptable solution is to directly address the function the story has had since its inception, and to work towards undermining this influence.

This post has been a way for me to be fully open and emotionally honest about the undeniable influence that Picnic at Hanging Rock had on me. I hope it has proved to be interesting, and encouraged you to think about the power of the stories we tell. Below is a bibliography to go further.

I am still rather glad I got to experience both the novel and the movie, if only because they in turn led me to learn about the hidden legacy they perpetuate. I may not be Australian, but neither am I white, so it was important for me to learn other societies' colonial legacy.

Bibliography

The Miranda Must Go campaign

A very thorough exploration of the story's legacy in The Brag

White Vanishing: Rethinking Australia's Lost-In-The-Bush Myth, the essay on White vanishment by Elspeth Tilley

[rastagong-tearoom]

Inspirational Blend #3: The epistolary device

After this long interruption, I'm back for the third post in a series where I talk about some of the inspirations behind Sylvan Disappearance!

In today's post, I'm cheating a bit and reusing some points I've already mentioned in a previous serving. Today's post is about the epistolary framing of this story!

It might seem surprising, but epistolary novels alone did not actually constitute the main inspiration behind this story. To understand why, it might be useful to distinguish two kinds of narratives which can fall under the very broad “epistolary” umbrella. (Advance note, this post is going to be mostly theoretical, though it is not even based on actual serious literary theory orz. So, you know, this is… a completely unsourced bit of theoretical rambling.)

As a general rule, epistolary novels are understood as narratives where the events told by characters in their letters constitute the main framing. Through the artifice of letters, the narration is presented as having a contextual role within the story itself. In the simplest case, this framing may merely be a matter of presentation and style. Having a character narrate events through letters grants a very specific kind of narrative lens to the story —an intimate, subjective one. In addition, the division of the narrative into discrete letters spaced by several days allows the writer to play with temporality, the moment where a character writes being significant and necessarily linked to recent events. More importantly, the correspondent of the narrator does not even need to express themselves: they may always remain the unnamed, silent recipient of the narrator-character. This simple declination of the epistolary novel is for instance used in Goethe's Werther, where the letters of the narrator are merely a device to reveal the extent of his infatuation with Charlotte. However, most of time, epistolary novels feature the entire correspondence between serveral characters, as in Les liasons dangereuses. In this case, the strength of the framing lies rather in the implicit interactions between the characters —in what they say or do not say, in the polyphony and differences in their outlooks, and in the timing of their answers.

But there is a second, distinct category of novels which can be likened to epistolary novels. In other stories, the framing does not necessarily consist of letters exchanged between characters, but more generally of narrative documents for which the plot provides a contextual role. For instance, Bram Stoker’s Dracula consists of a large variety of loosely-related documents, including newspaper articles and scientific accounts, to provide a multiplicity of viewpoints on the singular phenomenon at the core of the story. Written letters are featured in the narrative, but they are merely one type of document, among many other. Therefore, the two-layered nature of this framing is its primary strength: the narrative context around the documents featured the story becomes the backbone of the entire plot. Where a document comes from, how it was acquired, and why the reader has any knowledge of it at all in the first place —all of these questions become significant within the plot.

Today, we tend to think of this kind of device as “post-modern”, but the truth is that this kind of frame story has a long history in literature: The Odysseus, the Decameron, and the Canterbury Tales are as many examples of frame stories deployed through another device, the oral story being recounted within the plot.

When writers reuse this framing in interactive fiction and games, it becomes much more dynamic. Indeed, through interactivity, the player can virtually embody the narrator who explores a set of documents or letters within the setting.

There’s a loosely-defined subgenre of interactive fiction which relies on this framing, because it offers very interesting possibilities to present a narrative, especially mysteries. In the visual novel format, Christine Love’s Hateful Days series relies on a virtual databases of letters, diary entries and logs from a futuristic society that the player explores to understand the reasons of its demise. Her work has been hugely influential on a number of other works, like A Normal Lost Phone, where the player navigates around the virtual interface of a lost mobile phone to find its owner, or Her Story, where the players watches hours of recorded interrogation by the police to solve a crime. (Other iterations of a slightly different kind, like Mystic Messenger or Bury Me my Love, put the framing of narrative documents in the present tense through instant messaging, making the player respond to messages in real time.)

All these stories present their set of documents, logs and letters with the same device, a virtual interactive screen, itself contained within the game. This device can be compared to the framing layer of epistolary novels, where the letters are themselves read by characters within the storyline. In the same way, these interactive works have the player explore documents through databases, computers and interfaces which are contained within the setting of the game.

In other words, the “story within a story” deployed in epistolary and document-based novels gains a whole new level of strength in interactive fiction, because the player can put on a significant role in the context of the frame story.

The framing of Sylvan Disappearance does not reach this extent of layering. The epistolary aspect is played straight: the story features the correspondence between a few characters over a certain period of time, but the player has no say in it. The story does play with timing and with the multiplicity of viewpoints though. The result is a strange digital rendition of epistolary-based interactions. I hope you will find it interesting! I was still very much inspired by the interactive fiction works I've mentioned above, though I did not aim for this extent of interactivity. Sylvan Disappearance is a relatively simple attempt of using this device, but it's definitely something I'd like to play with in the future too.

On an unrelated note, the story's now in the playtesting process, so release is closer than ever, but I'm still not annoucing a specific date. As for this series of posts, it should go on at the current semi-regular pace until the release. I have only two more posts planned, but both the inspirations I'll talk about are kind of special, and very dear to me, so please look forward to them!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Inspirational Blend #2: the charm of seaside cities

Hello, everyone! A day late, I present you this second inspirational blend! As a reminder, this is part of a series of posts where I disclose and talk about the inspirations behind Sylvan Disappearance.

Today's inspiration is most likely shared by many of you. If you've ever watched some movies from Studio Ghibli, and more specifically from Hayao Miyazaki, then you must have been struck by the charm of their seaside cities.

The seaside city from Kiki's Delivery Scene has been a major inspiration for me. To tell the truth, I watched the movie for the first time only some months ago or so. I distinctly remember seeing the posters for the movie everywhere as a child —it was originally released in 1989 in Japan, but where I live, it made it to the movie theatres only fifteen years later, well after a number of other Ghibli features were released. And though I also remember that some of my friends went to see it, and talked about it with praise, I myself never went, and it was only many years later that I finally decided to address this gap in my Ghibli knowledge.

There is much to say about the movie, but somehow, the main theme encapsulates a lot of it. A Town With an Ocean View [海の見える街] manages to express all at once the charm, novelty and attraction of a seaside city for Kiki. It renders the half-idyllic, half-modern atmosphere of the city, which was inspired by the studio's visit of Stockholm in Sweden.

But is this joyful atmosphere representative of life in the modern world? Or merely of Kiki's perception of life as an adult?

In a lot of ways, this question is at the core of this coming-of-age story. In Kiki's world, magic still exists, but city-dwellers don't know of it. The city has an exciting aspect to it, but it's also uncaring —towards naive newcomers, and towards witches too.

Kiki's growth as a person and as a witch is about learning to adjust to a new context where none of her previous points of reference hold true. Friendship, work, inspiration and purpose —they are all equally altered in the city. Overall, the story retains a largely hopeful tone. Kiki overcomes the loneliness and confusion of her first days, and thanks to the help of her friends, she succeeds in finding her place as a witch in the city. Though her new life takes a different turn, the movie suggests that is possible to care for each other, even in such a confusing city.

However, a certain level of nostalgia can still be perceived throughout the story. Whether in the loss of Gigi's speaking ability following Kiki's growth, in the lack of connection of the inhabitants with magic, or even in the resounding failure of the modern airship, it is hard to shake off the impression that both the seaside city and Kiki have lost something in the process of their growth, and that the beauty of the city is incomplete.

Interestingly, this contrasted impression is also visible throughout other works of Miyazaki which also feature idyllic seaside cities with a distinctive European style.

There is a beautiful and quaint town in Howl's Moving Castle too; it sits by an estuary which gives out to the sea. In a scene in the middle of the movie, Sophie goes into the town in the morning, doing her market among the food stalls of the peaceful harbour, with seagulls squawking all around in the skies. But suddenly, a warship from the kingdom's navy makes her way into the river. Heavily damaged and about to drown, her state sends the crowds on the harbour towards the shore. The scene itself is a call-back to the departure of a whole fleet of warships from the same shore —the returning ship being the only surviving one. The scene is followed by an airborne attack, and by the dropping of propaganda leaflets, which further accelerates the panic. The rapid transition between the peaceful portrayal of the town and its nationalist underbelly serves as a reminder that both sides coexist together: the late 19th-century rendition of Europe that Miyazaki portrays so beautifully in the movie cannot be divorced from the rampant nationalist sentiment and wars of the era.

In Porco Rosso, this aesthetic duality is made only more explicit by the setting. Set in a fictional rendering of the Italian coast by the Adriatic Sea in the 1930s, the premise of the movie relies largely on the beauty of aviation as a concept and on the freedom of flying over the sea. At the same time, the movie puts front and centre the monstrous usage of planes at the hand of fascist powers. Marco's own appearance of a pig is a further testament to the trauma he's suffered while flying over the sea, as a war pilot. The result is a nostalgic, bittersweet atmosphere, which makes the beauty of each moment all the more appreciated.

All three movies have contributed a great deal to my love for seaside cities, Howl's Moving Castle being the first one. It is actually among my greatest wishes to someday be able to live by the sea. At the same time, I really cherish the way they tie in the historical and cultural baggage that comes with these aesthetics, all the while remaining resolutely optimistic.

This is all to say that it's not a coincidence if Sylvan Disappearance prominently features a seaside city too. The setting will not be as developed nor as charming as those I have mentioned, but in the broadest terms, it shares some of the spirit from Kiki's Delivery Service.

[rastagong-tearoom]

Inspirational Blend #1: Emily Carroll’s webcomics

Hello again, Welcome to the tearoom, please have a sit and enjoy today's inspirational blend of tea! This is the first post in a daily series where I present some of the creative influences behind Sylvan Disappearance.

The very first person I'd like to present you is someone I've admired for a long time, and who's had a huge influence on my interest in narrative games and visual novels. Today, I'd like to present you the work of Emily Carroll, a Canadian comics artist!

Emily Carroll first gained widespread attention for her webcomic His Face All Red, which turned viral on Halloween 2010. Set in an isolated village on the border of the woods, His Face All Red is a captivating tale of horror and jealousy about two brothers and a beast coming from the woods. Depicted with stark lines, sharp contrasts and ominous silences, the story manages to revive in a modern format the eerie cruelty of old fairy tales. Carroll reuses their archetypal simplicity, their economy of words, their formulaic turns of phrases. Her illustrations, which often take the lead of the narration, further set a dark, suspensive mood around the entire story —up until the very last page, which is fraught with ambiguity.

The atmosphere of Emily Carroll's webcomics is also instilled by their presentation. On the first page of Margot's Room, another of Carroll's horror fairy tales, the reader is immediately confronted with a scene of mysterious violence set in the titular room of Margot —blood stains on the bed, broken window and rain hurling in. At the top, a poem recounts elusively a tale of courtship, love, regret and loss. It is only by clicking on the items in the room, guided by the poem, that the reader can uncover fragments of the narrative, and learn the events which led to this moment.

In both of these stories and in many more as well, the core mystery revolve around the themes of family, friendship, and unavowed sentiments. Carroll's narratives tend to center women, and though the form her horror takes is often elusive and ambiguous, it always succeeds in giving shape to the underlying anxieties, guilt and violence to which her characters are confronted.

Often, the setting of her stories is a further vector for the exploration of these ideas, through the isolation and mystery inherent to the location.

Some personal favourites of mine in this regard include My Friend Janna, which you can find in Through the Woods, a book which collects some of Carroll's webcomics, with a few originals as well. The story is set in a misty countryside and revolves around two friends and their morbid fascination for the occult. Unlike the stories I've mentioned until now, My Friend Janna has a more historical, Gothic setting —it could be set in the late Victorian era— which makes the character interactions all the more believable, and the horror elements all the more troubling.

Similarly, in The Nesting Place, which you can also find in Through the Woods, an early to mid-20th century setting can be inferred from the narrative. The story follows Bell, an introverted teenager who recently lost her mother, as she spends her summer in the isolated house of her older brother and his newly-wed wife. This tale is among the longest and most realistic in tone of Carroll; it relies a great deal on nuanced character interactions to paint a complex portrait of Bell and of the adults around her. And yet, the story remains strongly concerned with the archaic folklore of the woods, and the things they may hide. The Nesting Place succeeds in weaving together the unspoken fears of Bell, the strangeness of her brother's wedding and an uncanny horror which came from the woods.

Carroll has also co-created a multiplayer story-driven game called The Yawhg. It plays out like a visual novel or CYOA book, but in shorter sessions, and with friends, each player going on improbable adventures in a fantasy city. Theft, drinking, alchemy, pursuing love… anything is possible —but there is not much time, because the Yawhg is oncoming. It is a very fun game with touching storylines, a mysterious setting, and an underlying atmosphere that is hard to describe.

The mysterious settings, the fairy-tale aesthetics, and of course, the particular shape of Emily Carroll's horror —both folkloric, ambiguous, and yet very psychological— have all played an equal part in my fascination with her work.

In a lot of ways, her stories and their unique atmosphere have driven my interest in narrative games and VNs. More than once during the planning and writing process of Sylvan Disappearance I turned to my copy of Through the Woods to try to understand what made them work so well.

If you have any interest in folklore, fairy tales, and of course in horror, I urge you to try out Emily Carroll's stories! I'll leave you with a collection of useful links for this purpose:

Emily Carroll's homepage, where her webcomics can be read. His Face All Red and Margot's Room are great starting points for her fairy-tale horror. When the Darkness Presses is, on the other hand, a great example of her contemporary horror.

Through the Woods, her book collection of stories is extremely good and very much worth reading if only for the exclusive stories.

The Yawhg, the multiplayer story-driven game she co-created with Damian Sommer

A very insightful critique of her work by Eve Golden Woods which closely analyses their format, and what makes their horror tick

If you're lucky enough to live near Toronto, you'll also be able to meet her this weekend at TCAF! (Inio Asano will be there too! How lucky you are)

[rastagong-tearoom]

Serving #5: The finish line, one step at a time

Hello, everyone!

As you can see, it is the 7th of May, and Sylvan Disappearance still hasn't been released, which means that I broke my promise. >_>

I —once more— apologise for this delay! April's been a… difficult month to get through. However, the month of May has already turned out much more pleasant in many regards. Therefore, I can tell you with certitude that Sylvan Disappearance will be released this month.

You may wonder what still remains to be done, and the answer is: not much. I've gone through a large editing pass already, and to my own surprise, I did not even feel compelled to drastically alter the story. It is quite satisfying already in its current state. I still need to have a few other people read through it on their own, and to incorporate their feedback into a final editing pass.

Before this though, I need to finish attributing every asset in use in the VN. I've been doing only so for the past two or three days, and it has proved to be more time-consuming than I had imagined. It is in part because of my own foolish decision to provide contextual information on some of the photographic backgrounds I use —what physical places they represent, what their history is. Even though I had already compiled the URLs and authors of each background, I had not systematically researched their origins. Besides, I took time to properly present the Credits menu, where these assets are listed. I don't believe that many people will be interested in this section in the first place, but for those who will be, I want to make sure that it is pleasant enough to navigate!

To return to the release of the game, I'm not going to provide a specific date this time, hehehe. I can say that I'm roughly aiming for a release next weekend, but this is a mere estimation, don't take my word for it.

Throughout the end of this chaotic development process, I've come to realise that there was no need to hurry at all costs in the first place. I wish the whole process had been easier, less uneven throughout the months —but it has been so, for a number of reasons, both within and outside my control. Looking back, this has probably been for the best. If anything, I wish I had taken it easier still. Therefore, I might as well take my time, and release the story at my own pace, instead of trying to meet imaginary standards of professionalism that are not worth very much.

Part of this nonsense race for time has been motivated by the need to communicate around the VN regularly, visibly, professionally. I have definitely done little in the area overall —but that is fine. I actually enjoy the infrequent, often long-winding form of blogging I have offered in this tearoom. I doubt it's always been very interesting for everyone, but I believe it fitted well enough the kind of small-scale, personal creative process behind Sylvan Disappearance.

It is in this optic that I would like to approach VN development in the future. By setting smaller goals, not only in the stories themselves —though I do intend to focus on shorter VNs— but also in my own expectations and standards.

Leaving aside this long digression, I promise I will have more news. Starting from tonight I'll be presenting you the inspirations behind the story on a daily basis, in short blog notes!

It's something I've been meaning to do for a while. It's common to reveal creative influences only in ending notes, or in the post-mortem, and while it makes sense, it also limits their reach to a very limited segment of readers —those who completed the VN.

I'd really love to talk a bit about some of the stories, ideas and people who influenced this VN, because they're all genuinely fascinating in the first place. For once, I will endeavour to make these notes shorter! (Though I may break this promise too… at least in one specific case.) There will be few, if any mentions of Sylvan Disappearance. The goal is to shed light on these other creations.

I hope you're excited about this! See you tonight then.

[rastagong-tearoom]

Serving of Tea #4: The last stretch

Excerpt from Devilman Crybaby, courtesy of reddit user Tomaiua.

Hello everyone!

I know it's been forever, apologies for this utter lack of updates. I am not dead yet, and I have been working on Sylvan Disappearance all the while.

It has been pretty challenging, though. It's also not over yet. I've had a pretty busy semester school-wise with a certain research project, and working on both a visual novel and my research consistently has been……… pretty difficult. I think I fared well enough, overall? Well, I still have some amount of work ahead of me.

At the same time, part of why this whole VN development thing took so long is because I didn't want to cut too much on sleep, social time, down time. For the most part, I have succeeded in this regard! Yeah for healthy habits!

Besides, I can announce that the scripting process of Sylvan Disappearance is now complete! This is the last stretch, finally.

Here is a brief description of what remains to be done:

Going through a last editing pass

I still haven't read the VN from back to back myself, and I absolutely need to do so! For the sake of editing the text itself to a satisfying level of course, but also to ensure the internal coherence of the story and to polish the general presentation.

I ended up changing a number of core scenes during scripting, and if I do not ensure that the whole narrative is consistent, some parts might feel somewhat strange in the final result.

I might also cut down on the length of certain scenes! The story currently sits at a little over 45 000 words, which is actually quite a lot. I promised myself that I would not hesitate in cutting down where possible, if appropriate. We'll see.

Soo, yeah, the whole thing definitely goes a bit further than a mere editing pass.

Some amount of external testing

It's tempting to skip this step, but I know I shouldn't!

In the field of game developement, it's usually recommended to test early and frequently. This generally holds true for parser- or choice-based interactive fiction.

I am not sure of the applicability of this idea to visual novels, though. Since they tend to be longer, and more linear —in short, more alike to regular novels— iterative testing doesn't seem as helpful. It usually doesn't make much sense to have someone read an incomplete draft, unless the projected length is very high, or specific feedback on a precise aspect is needed. (I'd be curious to hear the thoughts of other writers on the matter!)

At any rate, I'll be kindly asking a few friends for help regarding playtesting, I hope it will work out!

Correctly attributing every free-to-use asset in the story

This one is going to take more time than it appears.

As I explained in the past, I rely extensively on photographic backgrounds with permissive licenses for the story, and it will probably remains so for the foreseeable future. As you can imagine, this practice of reuse extends beyond backgrounds: all sound effects and music in the story are somehow free to use.

Whether or not they use a Creative Commons license (which explicitly requires attribution), the authors of all these resources ask to be credited for their work, as they rightly should be.

I always strive to be precise and exhaustive when attributing specific assets! It's basically the least I can do, and it's even very little in comparison with the real, hard work which went into the production of original music, sounds, photographs.

However, explicit and correct attribution is not that common. It might be because in the mind of creators and final users alike, there's something shameful or cheap in the act of relying in pre-existing work, which all ties into our expectations of high production values regarding digital works. This is of course very understandable, because commercial pressure requires market value. And there is obviously tremendous value in original art.

However, I genuinely believe that assets in the public domain or with permissive reuse licenses should be valued as sources of common wealth too. And this starts with rightly attributing these assets to the creators who kindly offered them to everyone. The Creative Commons non-profit offers us both a succint summary of good attribution and an in-depth look at the best practices for attribution. I highly recommend checking out the latter if you're interested in the topic!

The baseline is that good attribution does take a little time, but not too much. Ideally, the title, the author, the license and a link to the source should be included. There are no hard rules though, it is more of an general ethical recommendation. As stated in the page: “there is no one right way; just make sure your attribution is reasonable and suited to the medium you're working with. That being said, you still have to include attribution requirements somehow, even if it's just a link to an About page that has that info.”

The best practices page also acknowledges that attribution is harder in non-textual media, like games and videos, and suggests different methods of attribution.

I've personally settled with:

A succint summary of all the contributors on the itch.io page that will host the VN. It merely lists names by category.

This summary is also reported in the rolling credits at the end of the game.

An in-depth credits menu inside the game, accessible from the main menu at any time. Each track, sound and background is visible either with a thumbnail, or with an audio player. In all cases, the credits menu explicitly lists the author, the license, background information on the asset and a link to the source.

I won't lie, coding a credits menu takes a little time! I still think it's worth it, and I hope some players enjoy having a look at the assets that went into making the whole VN, and learn a few things about the numerous real-life locations and talents behind it all!

The credits menu itself is mostly coded now, though I still have to add the audio player for sounds and music, and to fill it with all the assets. I've also coded the rolling credits at the very end, and I similarly only need to fill them with the names of all the involved authors.

Attributing each asset with all the required information will take some time, though. It's relatively easy to get lost in the task, to spend hours tracking the source of each asset if it was not cleanly compiled somewhere prior to beginning. I learnt this lesson the hard way in the past.

For Sylvan Disappearance, I prepared myself correctly. I've been using a giant spreadsheet to keep track of each and every asset used in the course of the story, with all the required information easily accessible by column. I even added bookmarked assets that I did not intend to use at first, for easier reference in case they became useful. Here's a sneak peek:

Now all I have to do is reporting each and every line in the credits menu. It will take time, but it is doable!

A potential release date?

When will this VN finally come out? ...I... still can not say for sure.

This month, this much is certain! I am almost done with schoolwork, but I will most likely be busy again in the second half of April anyway. But overall, Sylvan Disappearance should be released by April 26 at the latest!

(Most likely, it will be released right before April 26.)

That is all for today! This should be the very last long-form serving of tea before the release.

I will endeavour to write very short promotional posts. And since I still cannot show anything else from the game itself, I will find something else. I already have a small idea, I think it can prove interesting!

Until then, take care everyone!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Serving of Tea #3: What’s an epistolary VN anyway?

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the tearoom again! Please enjoy today’s serving, I hope it will warm you up in this cold time!

This serving should have been offered several weeks ago already, but current real-life circumstances haven’t left me with much time to do VN related work.    (Well, in truth, I could have found the time somehow, but… Sometimes it’s wiser to actually relax during free time, instead of spending it on more side work.)

Anyway, here are the latest developments, even though they’re almost a month old now!

I’ve done a small share of scripting on Sylvan Disappearance. The end is not any near yet, but I would say it is in sight? And that’s very uplifting to me.

Though scripting is becoming easier and easier, I’m still trying to pace myself, and not to rush through the process. I'm paying more and more attention to the general atmosphere and coherence of the story, since I’ve got to a point where it all starts to come together. This mostly means that I constantly worry that no scene is any good in the end. It’s not the final editing pass yet, but I feel like the moment to start polishing the edges has come!

It is not on scripting that I spent most of my time, though, but rather on the UI and on the epistolary phase of the story!

I had put off working on both for a long, long while.

The user interface

The UI is usually held to be to be a key part of the presentation of a VN. It can easily set the mood from the very title screen. There’s only one problem: I’m not convinced by the utility of polishing the user interface.

I obviously appreciate beautiful and expressive interfaces as much as anyone, and certain key screens like the textbox, the game menu and the title screen do need to be expressive. However, I worry about the fact that highly polished UIs are becoming a minimum requirement for all visual novels, even free ones. More broadly, I think the increasingly high production values of indie VNs and the drive to “polish” can restrict the range of creative expression in the medium. (You may have seen me ranting about this on another social network. I think I’ll just write another blog post focused on this topic next time.)

But anyway, as of now, customising the UI of a VN matters a great deal, so I finally took some time to improve the UI, and I’m reasonably satisfied with the end result!

I particularly spent time on reworking the splashscreen (not pictured here), and I think you’ll like it!

The title screen and the game menu were already pretty much done, but I'm finally satisfied with them.

The epistolary component

The epistolary component of the story is, well, very much at the core of Sylvan Disappearance. “This is going to be an epistolary visual novel” was among the first things I thought of for this project. When I started to draft the story, I had probably conceived more details about the way the epistolary component would work than specific storyline developments.

As the synopsis explains, Sylvan Disappearance is in part an epistolary novel, because Mirabelle receives letters, and replies to them. A good half of the narrative is contained within those letters, though there are also segments external to them.

Usually, epistolary novels frame the narration as a succession of letters or documents presented linearly. You read the letters from a character to another (Goethe’s Werther), the entire correspondence between a few characters (Les liaisons dangereuses), or even a succession of loosely-related documents (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Call of Cthulhu to a certain extent). When writers reuse this framing in interactive fiction and games, it becomes much more dynamic. Indeed, through interactivity, the player can virtually embody the narrator who explores a set of documents or letters within the setting.

There’s a loosely-defined subgenre of interactive fiction which relies on this framing, because it offers very interesting possibilities to present a narrative, especially mysteries. In the visual novel format, Christine Love's Hateful Days series relies on a virtual databases of letters, diary entries and logs from a futuristic society that the player explores to understand the reasons of its demise. Her work has been hugely influential on a number of other works, like A Normal Lost Phone, where the player navigates around the virtual interface of a lost mobile phone to find its owner, or Her Story, where the players watches hours of recorded interrogation by the police to solve a crime. (Other iterations of a slightly different kind, like Mystic Messenger or Bury Me my Love, put the framing of narrative documents in the present tense through instant messaging, making the player respond to messages in real time.)

All these stories present their set of documents, logs and letters with the same device, a virtual interactive screen, itself contained within the game. This device can be compared to the framing layer of epistolary novels, where the letters are themselves read by characters within the storyline. In the same way, these interactive works have the player explore documents through databases, computers and interfaces which are contained within the setting of the game.

Sylvan Disappearance uses a virtual screen too, but more artificially: the screen is a mere substitute for a more manual process, that of reading and replying to hand-written letters. The goal of this epistolary screen, as I call it, is to embody the process as seamlessly as possible, for the narrative to proceed smoothly.

I had already programmed a functional mockup before starting scripting, but it was not graphically polished yet, and offered no kind of explanation for the player.

I have taken some time to polish it, and it is finally complete! Without waiting any further, here are a few previews:

As you can see, letters are represented by coloured sheets of paper. The colour indicates the status: red letters are still unread, orange letters await a reply, blue letters have been read and replied to. In the end, it looks like a basic webmail interface…

As for the way it works: The story follows Mirabelle through snippets of her life in a seaside city, at work, with her friends, and so on. At the end of any such day, Mirabelle comes home, picks her mail and finds one or several new letters on her desk. This is the epistolary phase. She must then read the letters, and reply (replying being automatically done). It is possible to re-read any previous letter at any time, which will probably come useful at certain points.

I’m honestly very satisfied of the epistolary screen from a technical standpoint! It took…… a lot of time to get it right. Not so much for the screen itself, but rather to organise the way it works within the script in a clean, coherent and readable manner.

Here are a few of the challenges I encountered, if you do not mind technical discussion:

Organising letter data. Each letter has both immutable metadata, which never change, like “who sent it” and “when”, but also a number of status flags like “unread” or “awaiting a reply” which do change in the course of the story. They had to be cleanly separated so that the status flags would be saved by Ren’Py, while the metadata would just be available as constants at any given time. In the end, letters have their own custom class with attributes for the status flags, while metadata are represented by Python namedtuples generated at initialisation, and added as attributes as well.

Compartmenting the narration of each letter into independent Ren’Py labels so that any letter could be re-read. Replies also required independent labels. Smoothly transitioning from the epistolary screen to the narration of a letter and back, handling the status flags, the music… it all required a surprising amount of code.

I had to write a number of short tutorials to introduce certain features of the screen, and to script a hook which could trigger them at the right moment. Also, a help menu to replay the tutorials.

Dealing with rollback and saving during the epistolary phase was hell and I do not believe I could summarise the matter at all in less than 500 words. But now it works as smoothly as intended, phew.

It was not as bad as it sounds! I really enjoyed working on this whole system.

I won’t be writing more in-depth descriptions of it, but I do hope it can be useful to other VN devs. The code of the game will probably be open sourced at release, and I’ve tried to put comments everywhere in the code to make everything readable. I could also make a standalone tutorial detailing everything about the entire screen? Feel free to ask if you would be interested in such a thing!

Thanks for reading this long and technical update. I’m not sure of when I’ll be able to get back to VN dev properly… but the end is getting closer and closer. See you next time!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Serving of Tea #2: Mid-journey Thoughts

Hello everyone, welcome again to this humble tearoom! Please enjoy today’s blend, it’s the very last of the year.

Progress Report

The scripting of Sylvan Disappearance is still ongoing! I am not pressing myself too much, but I make a little bit of progress every day. I am still around the halfway point, though a little further than last time.

I have to confess that I did not think the scripting process would require as much time and attention.

That was probably naive of me to think, but I hoped that having not only written, but also edited the story draft would ease scripting, making it something through which I could go on autopilot mode.

It really was naive, ahaha…

There is no VN until it is scripted. Until each scene comes alive through scripted Ren'Py statements, even the best draft is not necessarily worth much. (I was talking about it with a friend not long ago, and this might be less applicable to VNs which rely heavily on dialogues, because dialogues can usually be reproduced in the script without much change.)

But in the case of VNs with more narration, like Sylvan Disappearance, I often find myself thinking that certain sentences do not flow as well when they are read in a VN format.

More broadly, I often find myself wondering whether such and such scene work well now that I can actually read through everything with music, backgrounds and sprites. So I make small changes here and there, though nothing too drastic so far.

This is especially the case when it comes to the ~core mystery~ of the VN. While writing the draft, I spent time thinking of how to present this mystery, during which scenes, and so on. I thought that my decisions would be definitive, but now that I’m scripting, I tend to re-consider many of them. I change details for the sake of presentation, decide to introduce a character later, etc.

I am still very glad I spent time editing in advance. It really helps in trusting the draft as it currently stands. There are a lot changes to make, and I take note of them all, but for now, the general goal remains: scripting as much as possible!

I know that if I spend too much time musing on improvements, I will never finish, so I’m trying to do my best and power through my doubts!

………What about screenshots?

I don’t have much to show this time, because the further I advance, the more I get into spoilery territory.

However, it might be time to introduce you to Célia, who is (or was?) Mirabelle’s dearest friend of many years:

Together, they’ve run many a story night for their friends in the village, and it used to make the talk for many weeks.

And here’s Mirabelle once more, now living a very different life, in a distant city:

I know it might be frustrating to know so very little on these characters, but since the story is relatively short anyway, I think it is preferable to let you discover who their lives in the VN itself. They will speak better than I could. :)

That’s it for today, everyone. Until then, take care, and see you soon in 2018!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Serving of Tea #1: The eternal search for Photographic Backgrounds

Hello everyone, welcome to the first serving of this tearoom! It is getting cold and depressing out there —in all sorts of ways— so please enjoy today’s blend and warm up!

As you can see, I truly am no good at giving frequent updates… Apologies for this, this is probably not going to change anytime soon. You’ve probably heard this one before, but here goes anyway: the end of my school semester was pretty heavy in terms of workload, so I haven’t been able to work on Sylvan Disappearance much before this week. Working both for school and on this VN at the same time hasn’t always been easy, but the holidays should grant me much time to make progress! I’m still going to try to take it easy for a little while, working slowly but surely is always better than burning out, and I think I could use a little rest.

Progress Report

Progress-wise, I haven’t made tremendous steps, however, I have almost finished scripting half the story of Sylvan Disappearance.

It might be time for me to introduce you to Coline, a new friend that Mirabelle made in the seaside city!

Being halfway through scripting is an important landmark for me, both within the story, because the mystery really starts to thicken about halfway through, and on my end too, in the process of scripting the story in Ren'Py.

To put it simply, the more I script the story, the easier further scripting becomes. Like with any other tool, digital or physical, the more you practice with Ren'Py, the easier further usage comes.

I have reached a somewhat satisfying workflow, where I know how to position sprites, which transitions and atmosphere to use to make the story come to life on the screen. I have also mostly finished coding the most important systems, like the epistolary screen, which allows Mirabelle to read and respond to her correspondence, or the GUI. I still have a few final touches to add, but I’m saving those for the end. So, for the most part, I’m able to script the story easily!

But the main reason why further scripting is becoming easier and easier is because of my use of photographic backgrounds.

A short history of photographic backgrounds in VNs

As you may have noticed on all the screenshots released so far, the backgrounds I use are not drawn, but based on photographs.

Those of you familiar with visual novels will immediately recognise in this use the favourite solution of small VN creators with little to no budget to present their works. Using royalty-free or outright freely-licensed photographs as backgrounds is cheaper than commissioning artists to draw backgrounds. This technique is used by many small VN devs in the West, but it was really pioneered by Japanese VN devs throughout the 90s and 2000s, many of whom have released VNs now critically acclaimed.

However, when VNs aim for higher production values, which is a general trend for both commercial and small-scale VNs, they tend to abandon this technique and to prefer drawn backgrounds. The re-releases of Higurashi and Umineko on consoles are perfect illustrations of this fact. Both originally used photographic backgrounds based on real Japanese locations, respectively the Shirakawa village and the mansion of the Kyu-Furukawa Gardens. Both abandoned these photographs in favour of drawings exactly based on them for the console re-releases.

While this is a perfectly understandable choice because drawn backgrounds have qualities of their own, I think this trends has also resulted in the relative under-appreciation of photographic backgrounds, and of their own potential.

The charm of displacing reality

I have been using photographic backgrounds for a long time in small experiments, mostly by constraint, but I have also become very fond of the process of searching for photographs.

Usually, when a story requires a certain type of location, I start by searching on Flickr with general terms like “Victorian manor” or “forest village”. (I always filter results by license, and use mostly photographs licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC. You can do so by appendng “&license=2″ at the end of the Flickr search url.)

It is not always easy to find the fitting background. Sometimes, I have a very specific setting in mind, and it is hard to find it, because in their descriptions, photographers do not always use terms which describe the things they have photographed accurately. This makes complete sense: if you are visiting, say, Highclere Castle in the UK, you are probably not going to describe each photograph with the specific county where it is located, nor with the period where it was built. You will most likely say “Entrance Hall of Highclere Castle” if you photographed the entrance hall. Maybe you will not even mention the ornamental details, unless you know what they are, because to you, this is just “the entrance halll of a castle”.

This makes the search for certain settings difficult! However, once you have found the ideal real-life location for a fictional setting, everything changes. Now, you are able to search photographs by the name of this one specific location which perfectly fits for your fictional setting.

At this point, it is possible to base the entire fictional setting upon a real-life place. This part to me, is always the best, because I always search for additional information on the location, explore its history, find unexpected rooms or points of view, and in turn it influences the way I decide to present the story through photographic backgrounds.

There’s always a certain charm in displacing reality to fit your fictional setting. It warps both your knowledge of the real location and the internal idea you had of the fictional setting. The end result is something which is halfway there, between reality and fiction.

This effect is always heightened by the application of filters upon the photograph, to alter the image and fit a certain mood. Most people use the filters of Photoshop, but I use Paint .NET, any good image editing software could do.   

For instance, the painted oil filter, of which I’m very fond, can grant an old-times atmosphere to the setting. It could also be as simple as B&W filter to underline the emptiness of real life, as in Lucky Me, Lucky You. You might choose to present the photographs raw, for the sake of a lo-fi aesthetic, as in We Know the Devil. Or perhaps you will decide to accentuate bright colours, as in Tokyo Alice, to render more vivid the fantasy of Alice’s word.

Anything is possible, depending on the atmosphere of your fictional setting. This is not to suggest that photographic backgrounds are intrinsically better than drawn backgrounds. I rather think that just like an artist may choose to paint in a specific style to fit a certain aesthetic, photographic backgrounds allow VNs to display many different aesthetic effects through the way they distort the reality photographed.

As you can see, it’s something I’m really interested in and would like to explore further!

The real-life locations used in Sylvan Disappearance

To get back to my progress, the main reason why scripting is becoming easier and easier is because I have found and edited the majority of the photographic backgrounds that I will use in the course of the story! I will still need to find a few additional backgrounds for the second half of the story, but most have already been found  and will be reused, which means further scripting should be only easier.

Here are a few of the locations on which the VN heavily relies.

The seaside city

The seaside city mentioned in the synopsis is meant to evoke a Mediterranean setting. As you might recognise by the distinctive style of the houses below, it is heavily based on Dubrovnik in Croatia.

Upper and lower backgrounds of Dubrovnik courtesy of Suhas Dutta on Flickr. Both are licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0.

In recent years, Dubrovnik has been famously used as a filming location of Game of Thrones, but as a general rule, Dubrovnik is a common setting for fictional works which require a seaside city with a certain pre-industrial atmosphere. It certainly fitted my own requirements, since Sylvan Disappearance is set in a “fairy-tale” setting.

A few backgrounds are based on other Mediterranean cities, like Menton and Nice, in the South of France. Those cities were my initial inspiration, but it soon appeared that it would be difficult to get views without cars or modern technology, so I used them only for the most general views with the sea!

Upper background of Menton courtesy of Axel Naud, licensed under Creative Commons BY 2.0. Lower background of South Queensferry, near Edinburgh, Scotland, courtesy of Beth, licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0.

That said, most of the less important backgrounds used in the seaside city are not based on Mediterranean cities, but on any real-life location which fitted the bill for a specific detail, and that I found suitable through my search on Flickr. I have bits of Edinburgh for certain hilly streets, of Lisbon for a central square, of London and San Francisco for the harbour. I even needed bits from the Botanic Garden in Chicago and from an island in Maine to evoke the quieter, more rural atmosphere of the outer neighbourhoods.

So my focus on specific real-life locations is never entirely accurate. I try to avoid making a patchwork of different cultures and places, but sometimes, there is no other way. Hopefully the end result will still be convincing!

The village area

The village from which Mirabelle and Célia comes from is the second important location in the story. I had absolutely no idea of the real-life locations I would use when I started my search. I wasn’t even certain I would find a single village which would fit my criteria. The general idea was to find a small, quaint village, if possible with woods in its surroundings.

But it turns out, there was such a village! Much like Dubrovnik, the village of Gerberoy in Northern France is a location known for its specific architecture and atmosphere. It is often visited by tourists, and its roofs, gardens and old mill have all been photographed numerous times.

Upper and lower backgrounds of Gerberoy courtesy of JR P, both licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0.

Finally, though I will not reveal more about it, I also needed a country mansion, which would be located in the surroundings of the village. Finding one is usually pretty easy, since most remarkable mansions are open to visitors in some capacity nowadays, and are usually pretty popular. The whole thing is to find a fitting mansion in terms of style and architecture. Bonus point when the gardens and rooms inside are in a suitable state to be used too.

I was very lucky this time, because I found the right country house right away, when searching for a background for the title screen:

Upper background courtesy of David MV (licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0), middle background by David Merrett (CC BY 2.0), and lower background my Matt Cornock (CC BY-NC 2.0).

This is Scotney Castle in Kent, England, and I will not say anything more about it, except that you will see much of it throughout the story!

[rastagong-tearoom]

Sylvan Disappearance, an epistolary fairy-tale mystery

Hello everyone, welcome to my tearoom!

I opened this tiny tumblr to talk about VN development on occasion. I find it very difficult to talk about my creative projects openly while making them… but I’ll do my best! I’ll try to write weekly updates on my progress, which is already well engaged. :)

Progress on what, you ask? W-Well, for the past few months, I’ve been working on the following visual novel thingy:

Sylvan Disappearance, an epistolary fairy-tale mystery in 19 letters!

Synopsis

Mirabelle and Célia have always loved inventing stories, and acting on stage too. They used to entertain their friends by running story nights for them, in the woods near their village. Not anymore, though.

Three months have past since the incident which shattered their friendship, and Mirabelle has begun a new life far away, in a bustling city by the sea.

One day, Mirabelle receives a letter from Martin, another friend of hers:

“This is none of my concern, surely, but I fear I must ask... Has Célia written to you yet? If I may hazard a guess —she has not at all, has she? I do not believe that she has spent a very pleasant summer, but I would like to believe that very soon, life will turn out all the better for her. If you ever find the time, do not hesitate to write to her.”

Could this mark the beginning of a renewed friendship? Perhaps. But not all secrets can be told truthfully, even to one's closest friend.

In a nutshell, Sylvan Disappearance is a fairy-tale mystery visual novel with an epistolary component. In the course of the story, you follow Mirabelle's life in a seaside city, and read the correspondence she receives from her friends Martin and Célia.

This visual novel will be published for free on itch.io.

The story is about 40 000 words long, and it should require 3 to 4 hours of reading! There are no choices, though you may read some of the letters that Mirabelle receives in the order you wish.

The wonderfully expressive character art is by @hyanide! A big shoutout to her, she’s very talented and her art contributed a great deal to the atmosphere of this VN.

I’ll be talking about this project more and more over the next few weeks, so please feel free to visit this humble tearoom at any time. :)

(The next serving of tea is planned for tomorrow!)

Enjoy the rest of your day!