Wanderlust

My main goal was to create something sweet and cosy, to escape from everyday life and travel a bit by meeting new people and culture. I'm from France, and we have a great railway network across all the continent. Train is a cheap and eco-friendly way to travel, and I wanted to put the spotlight on the History of these coutries not so far away from me that many of us don't actually know. 

Being from a popular family, I wanted to show my love for crafts and how they are important to preserve culture. 

For Axel, the main character, I wanted to use a cosy aesthetic and warm colors, reflecting the mood of the game. It's not hyper common clothes, but it's worn a lot in young artsy groups, a mix of "dark academia" and "cottagecore" aesthetics. 

I couldn't design 30 different cities for this project, so I choosed 3 really different cities. The climate, size and european region are as far as possible.

Each city has different main characters with different stories, and different themes linked to their local history that you'll learn through books. By chosing some dialogues, you can unlock new storylines so it's great for replay value, as well as changing your itinerary each time (or not) !

For the first one, Narvik, I wanted something really calm and clear, so the sky is big and you can always see it. The color palette is also really small.

I wanted the second city, Istanbul, to be a lot more lively. I chosed a warm color palette for the climate, but added accent colors regularly, and there are a lot more details instead of large clear spaces. The places I drew also have characters in it, even many in some.

The third one is Newcastle. The two ideas i wanted to use for this one are a young life in an old city (like the pub where the characters go is the oldest on of the city but a lot of young bands play there, or the train station that is a really old architecture but with almost only recent trains in it), and the idea of family and familial traditions. 

The characters you meet is an important part of your journey. They are as different as the cities you go to !

There are 4 different mini games you can play each time you restore a book. Some books will need the four, some will only need one or two. You can't fail them, at worse you'll have to redo it. You can change the difficulty though, if you still want a bit of a challenge !

The last one is really about creativity, and how YOU want to decorate the book. Even if you'll have some obligations given by the client, you can pretty much agence everything as you wish. If it's not what you enjoy, you can do the bare minimum and it's ok, no pressure. But if you want to spend hours on each book and put a lot of thought into it, you can do that too ! In the end, the goal is to have fun, so everyone can enjoy it the way they want.

I thought adding mini games could really add energy to the game, because as much as I love visual novels I think they could use a little bit more of gameplay. I also thought it might make the game more attractive for people that don't usually like visual novels !

Next is all the UI.

First is the map you use at the end of each city to choose your next destination. You can dezoom and move around to see where you come from, and some secret paths can be unlocked after some dialogue. Maybe a character thinks you can go meet their cousin that is near the city you told them you wanted to go to ! Now, you have a new city unlocked. It's another great way to increase the replay value of the game, and the surprise around each dialogue !

You can access the basic menu by clicking on the notebook icon on the top right corner of the screen. Here, you have quick access to every other menus and a summary of the events of the city you are in. But if you want something more precise, you just have to click on the object you want (like the paper, map, polaroid...) and you'll have a more complete menu. I thought it was important to be able to see everything that happened in your game, because I know often life gets in the way and it's really frustrating to not remember where you were in the scenario, or where you were supposed to go. 

I'm really happy to show this project, as it means a lot to me. I tried to incorporate many things I like and care about in it.

I wish I could've done more, but I had health problems and, in fact, I think it was a good challenge to accept I did what I could ! I'd be happy to add more illustrations, and maybe even some gameplay with Ren'py later !

I hope you liked reading this project, thanks for taking the time to do so !