A visual novel I'm developing. The working/placeholder title is "As The Bell Tolls" (as a sort of double meaning - school bell due to the setting and funeral toll because people died). I'm going to use Ren'Py to code the game, but that's not for a while yet - I haven't got all of the characters or bg/cg art finalised yet, and I need to smooth out the edges of my story.
Three girls have been murdered in the span of four weeks and the police have no leads other than their broad connection - they're all girls and they all attend the same school, Sanford East Secondary.
With this in mind, Riley, Lynn, Maria, Penelope, Victor and (possibly) one other male student decide to do their own independent investigation. There will be five main routes and one secret route that will utilise Ren'Py's point system capabilities.
Expect to see a lot of placeholder names such as "fem07" or "male02" - a lot of my characters have designs but no names. The characters that are named may or may not have the same name by the time the game is complete, but the ones with designs and names are:fem01 (Maria); fem02 (Lynn); fem03 (Penelope); fem04 (Riley); fem08 (Hannah); fem09 (Courtney); fem010 (Sophie); male01 (Victor)
As The Bell Tolls (placeholder title) contains examples of:
- Alpha Bitch: Riley thinks that since the rift between herself and Hannah that the latter has become this, but Hannah could be more accurately described as a Lovable Alpha Bitch to a certain extent. Played straight with Sophie.
- Ambiguous Gender:
- fem05. She is somewhat flat-chested, she has short yet "fluffy" pink/peach hair, she wears pants (whereas most of the female students wear skirts), she is one of the taller girls, and she wears a blue flower hairpin and an amber/orange bead bracelet.
- Curtains Match the Window: male03. His hair is a light shade of green, and his eyes are a deeper/brighter shade of green, but I'm pretty certain it still counts.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: Victor, towards the end of the common route, due to staying up working on the case. Can become Creepy Shadowed Undereyes when he is revealed to be the serial killer. It's more than likely that he's actually like this because he's planning out how exactly to entrap and kill his next victim, Hannah.
- Eye Scream: During Hannah's route, during the confrontation with Victor, if the player has 5 or more points with Hannah, she will come between Riley and Victor in an attempt to protect Riley. Hannah sustains a nasty injury in her right eye as a result, losing sight in that eye. During the courtroom epilogue she testifies against Victor, and her presence/injury is basically used as evidence of attempted murder/grievous bodily harm.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Defied/averted with Hannah. She willingly aborts her pregnancy a year before the start of the story. Hannah told no one else except Riley, so it's why Hannah initially hates Riley.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Averted in the case of Courtney, a member of Sophie's bitch posse. She's merely being pressurised by Sophie, and in Hannah's good ending, breaks free from Sophie's metaphorical hold on her.
- Secret Character: Hannah's route, which will be point-based.
- The plan is for the maximum amount of points to be 10 - five choices that will either add or subtract points, depending on what the player chooses. For example, to get the max amount of points, the player would choose all the options that add 2 points, thereby getting ten points.
