Our Crossing Paths: Otome Visual Novel Work in Progress

One of my first post gracing this blog will be the talk of my otome visual novel currently in the works, Our Crossing Paths.  Our Crossing Paths is seeing almost a definite as the first and last visual novel I will create.  In the beginning, the idea just stemmed from listening to "Friends" by J-pop singer Stephanie and remembering some moments from the last few episodes of Romeo x Juliet.  The idea then developed into a "Hey, I often see romantic spy stories where the spy (often a female from what I have watched, I can't remember though) ends up not killing the target he or she is assigned to".  I figured the most clichéd of things would be the power of love or that kind of gooey crap feeling surpassing all and there would be a happy ending.  Then I remembered that one scene from R.E.D, the movie with elderly actors kicking ass, where Hellen Mirren's character said that she put 3 bullets to the chest of her Russian agent lover when her loyalty came into question.


This is where the idea comes into a visual novel project where the basis of the story is this:
The player takes control of Claire Parker, one of the top lieutenants of the British army, on a mission to infiltrate into France's army in order to assassinate the French army's top general.  Set in the turbulent war period of the 1800s where Great Britain and France were at war with each other as well as other countries.  I guess it's kind of strange that our British heroine is finding herself potential guys who are foreign save for one, but that's what happens when someone spends a long time in a foreign country.

Here are the features so far in this basic visual novel:

• Choose how you want Claire to behave or react: passive, neutral, or aggressive.
• The basic meaning of a dialogue choice such as kind words or passive words may work on one guy, but not another.
• 10+ endings, good and bad, some involving you the player possibly hunted down.
• Each guy's route will be distinguished as mini arcs that will branch from the main story and then come back.
• Exams will be given from time to time to either give you a chance to win affection points from the guys or lose face with any of them.
• The more you try to ignore your mission or fail to make any progress on your mission, the more difficult it will be to finish the mission and avoid grave consequences.
• This visual novel is all built on the VN engine, Novelty, a program with a promising concept to help those who are non-programmers create visual novels without relying on coding while having the option to code on AngelScript.