Recruiting ][ Facility: Dreams of the Long Fever ][ Sci-Fi Visual Novel Horror

ABOUT

Facility: Dreams of the Long Fever is the first game in what I hope to turn into a loose series. The game is a horror-themed science fiction visual novel with puzzles. I intend for this to be a commercial game, but I can't pay very much upfront for people to work on this, so I'll trade skills and/or give you some amount of money once I begin selling the game, read down below for some more details on this.

The basic premise is the main character has amnesia, and they wake up in a strange room. Exploring, they find another fellow who also has amnesia, and a computer that responds to text inputs. From here, the player can make different choices that affect how things go. Regardless of the specific decisions, the player will encounter characters who are trustworthy, and some who are not, and will slowly figure out what's going on. Nothing is as it seems in this place, wherever it even is.

I must stress at this point that the game is meant to be horror-themed, not an actual "Horror game." What I mean by this, is that the characters will be scared, but the game will not try to scare the player. I find that unnecessary and distracting for the kind of story I want to tell. Also, by "Science fiction" I don't mean starships and blasters, I simply mean technology plays a role to a high degree. There's a lot of keycards and weird little gadgets, and things like that.

Now here's the weird part... For the sake of uniqueness, I've decided to use anthropomorphic animal characters for the entire cast. I think it would add flavor to the game, and it makes it easier to tell characters apart. They would act human completely, and still call themselves human, it's solely appearance related.

As far as technical details, I want the game to run in a custom high resolution. 1280x720 would be optimal. I know there's a script or two for XP that'll do that, and I think there's one for VX Ace as well. I'm mentioning both because although Ace is what I would prefer to use since I already have it, but if I can't do HD in it, I'm going to buy XP just to do it.

The only progress this project has so far is that the story and characters and setting are all nearly finished, except for finishing touches and potential modifications. I do not have any art, scripts, or music or anything done at the time of writing. Check below for more up-to-date progress.

WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR

I'm currently looking for one of each: An artist, a pixel artist, a scripter, a musician, and a mapper who does parallax maps. Here's some specifics on what I need:

Artist -- I need someone who can make a full body piece for each character, and a bunch of waist-up pieces for different expressions and emotions. And as I mentioned above, they need to be anthropomorphic animals. I'm open to different interpretations, but generally I'm looking for something that's as 'human' as you can get before a neko [human with animals ears slapped on]. Also, I'm not going for realistic, I'm more looking for a stylized and/or anime look. I have a description written out for each character that I will give

Now I may need a second artist for this, but I also would like the backgrounds for the puzzles to be drawn out, and various scenes where you can look in close on something in general will need a picture. They won't be anything too detailed for the most part, but they will be there. I may make a mockup of these.

Pixel Artist -- I need someone to help me make the resources for the mapper to use, and to make items and character sprites. The sprites will be based on the art from the artist, and I'll most likely handle the items by myself, the tiles and what not are what I'm going to need more help on probably. The character sprites will be one tile wide by two tiles high, because I don't like the chibi style.

Scripter -- The puzzles will need to be scripted, and there's several kinds of them. There's riddles, which will need to identify a word that'll be typed in, and then there's logic puzzles that need to track a few pieces of information, and others. There's also a game that'll need to be scripted in, that's based on chess, and I need a weird sort of script to switch between sets of maps and characters every time the player dies, and other odd things. I also need a streamlined combat system that's not really combat as much as it is a cutscene that plays out different depending on what choices you made up to that point, and what you have in your inventory, with only a quick prompt about "Use strongest or weakest weapon?" before launching the combat. I'd like for all these scripts to be free for others to use in their games, with the exception of the chess one, since it's not even really chess, just a weird thing.

Musician -- I need a few ambient pieces, for different moods, and some character themes. There needs to be a few different versions of each character theme, and two versions of the ambient pieces. I also need a few short jingles to play for key things, and some event music. Also, credits music, a few different ones for different endings, and a piece for the title screen. As far as styles, something electronic and/or orchestral would be fine. Think the first four Ace Attorney games.

Mapper -- I need mostly small or medium maps, with only a couple larger ones. There's not that many maps, but there has to be two of most of them, with slight differences to each. If you can make your own resources to make the maps, that's a big plus, but if not that's fine as long as I get someone to help make the resources. These will be parallax maps, because more detail can be achieved. They need to be made with consideration of the fact that the sprites for characters will be one tile wide and two tiles high.

As far as how I want to approach teamwork, I want to keep things somewhat friendly and casual. Yes, it's a commercial game, but there's no reason to be stuffy and uptight for the sake of professionalism. As long as everyone's getting their jobs done, we're good.

WHAT I CAN OFFER IN RETURN

So you don't want to work for free, huh? Okay, well, I'm moderately decent at pixel art, I can make some kinds of animations, I can voice act and sing [male, American accent, but can fake many different accents pretty well and imitate some voices], and I'm a moderately experienced writer. Also, if you're willing to risk the game not getting money, I could always just promise to give you all the money owed plus interest once the game is released, or pay you a portion of the profits. Ask me and see if we can work something out, I'm open to negotiate. Also, I have other skills I didn't mention. I'm a jack of all trades, master of none.

OTHER AND CONTACT

I won't be putting the progress of the game here, I'll make a separate thread for that in the appropriate area and put the link here when I do.

If you want to contact me about working on this, send me a PM. If you want to use something else to talk, mention that in the PM and I'll see if I can use it. Skype would be great to use, or some kind of thing like it, but it's not absolutely required.