The Waves v0.1 (Patreon)

Hi folks!

I'm back with something special - the promised first build of The Waves is here!

What is The Waves?

Based on a side story conceived for Lake, written back in 2024 (or 2023?), never released in any form before now - I long debated on what I should do with it, and if I should release it at all. At the time of writing, the story felt too personal for me, so much that I just kept it on my hard drive. The shape of the story I came up with didn't seem to fit the VN format - short scenes, so much that they're rather vignettes, paragraphs of text, barely any movement - so I shelved it for the time being, hoping to revisit it someday.

Why now?

I remembered about it earlier this year, re-read it and decided that I should release it in some form. Ultimately I settled on a VN as the form that the other side story has taken too - and a medium I genuinely love. I wanted to lean into the aesthetics of VNs I read years ago, when I first encountered them and sat at my computer into late hours of the night, mesmerised - hence the 4:3 aspect ratio, small resolution, monospace font.

I really wanted to see Anders brought to life - Haku was tasked with it this time too. They also drew Noah, and later will do the remaining third character. The backgrounds are all my own photos, and I'm once again doing the soundtrack - but it's all much more low key this time.

What's inside?

This first build, containing only Chapter 1 out of 5, is very short - about 2.5k words, less than a half of any of Dawn Chorus updates. The text lends itself to a slower mode of reading, however - it's intentionally sparse.

There's no Android build for now. The UI is mostly custom, making sure everything looks good on Android is a lot of work I didn't have the time for before this release. An Android build is coming later, though!

What's next?

The 2nd chapter is still planned for a release in two weeks, but only if I get the assets I need from Haku before then. The rest of the chapters wait for adapting them from a short story to a format more suited to a VN, and also crucially, Anders is waiting for more expressions. For now, they have only their default sprite, so any interactions I've tried putting in the VN looked very stiff.

I'm also thinking of a complete overhaul of the soundtrack before v1.0 releases - I recorded a few pieces over this week that I felt were fitting, but now I'm thinking I might've leaned into more retro vibes with the soundtrack too. I'll see.

So, here it is - the first look into a work I've struggled to find a form for, laying in my metaphorical drawer for more than two years now. It's, as a consequence of that, a fairly experimental piece - and I'm curious about your opinions on it. What do you think about the form (especially the fullscreen text mode), the soundtrack, the look of it? Is this the way to go forward, or should I go back to the drawing board?

-Keo