PAGE WORK IN PROGRESS

CD4 is a short, complete Visual Novel about 2 cops, one of whom has Dissociative Identity Disorder, investigating a murder scene while trying to get over themselves.

Word Count: 3574

Why make this?

This project was made over a week during a holiday, as a means of completing a Visual Novel (VN) from start to finish.

Although I’ve been working on a long-term Visual Novel for a few months,I never completed one before This blind spot towards the finishing part made me nervous about the long-term project, so this was done to fill that blind spot.

Why a Visual Novel in a Tech Design Portfolio?

Well, it shows I can adapt to new engines and styles of game. It shows a level of preparedness.

Visual Novels as a genre might be the best way to get your word-heavy fiction out there nowadays. It’s flashy visuals, small dialogue boxes and music make the simple act of reading more engaging, which makes the text itself extremely accessible.

The runaway success of games like Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Persona 5, Echo, and even Disco Elysium show that text-heavy games can garner large fanbases. The quality of the text provides the staying power, but the medium through which it’s delivered means more players will hear you out.

As of writing this, the visual novel is The Medium for getting your writing out and seen. It’s relevant and here to stay.

Research

I dissected “Arches”, one of my favourite visual novels with a full team behind it, for how they did it’s technical implementation. The VN engine “Ren’py” has minimal game file encoding, so you can read the code and files as-is. I learnt organizational methods to keep different functions in different files. I learnt a lot of sprite manipulation techniques that I used in CD4.

Testing with sprites from Horseshoe Theory VN

Process

Visuals

The visuals of this game are mostly questionably drawn stickmen, and edited real pictures, to play off my strengths of posing and paint.net.

This creepy hallway reveal was originally a vertical picture that I expanded manually to widescreen by drawing and blurring. The blood is a font that I edited to fit with the lighting and droop off to the side. The effect is at first glance, a cohesive scene despite being heavily edited.

The slow slide reveal also makes the most use of the asset, creating maximum tension and simulating a character slowly peeking over their shoulder to the horror behind them.

Presentation

Lessons from Arches were used to make a dynamic, first-person scene here, something I haven’t seen other visual novels do.

What’s utilized nicely here is the dual-information highway of visuals and text. Standard practice in VN’s is for dialogue to be the main driver of information, with visuals backing it up.

This moment uses visuals, and specifically body language as the main driver of character information, while the text secondarily reacts to the visuals.

There is a real mind-body divide with dissociation, which this character experiences, and that is meant to be felt through the presentation here.

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Character Study.

It’s a common trope for DID characters to be murderers, especially when there’s an “evil” and “good” alter present.

I wanted to subvert this trope, by seemingly playing into it only to pull the rug away and exploring why someone with DID might actually play into that role. Specifically how leaning into a malevolent persona as a protective measure, can make past mistakes feel easier to deal with. But then also how to move past it; with love.

Reflection

Looking back, I am pleasantly satisfied with what I managed to complete in a week.

The process