Toksan.

This project was all about what I liked, and how I could express my skill at the time as best as I possibly could. I chose to create a visual novel that centered around Japanese mythology and culture, combined with modern Japanese trends and westernizing it to reach a better audience. The simple fact is that I love anything to do with Japanese, and when I was given the opportunity to create something like this, I went all in.

While this was a school project, I went into this as if I would be publishing a game. I wrote a story from scratch, curated the backgrounds, and decided on a logo, UI, everything. The hardest part was easily the story; coming up with a story that not only leads the player through a narrative, but also provides context for events, a meaningful tutorial, and weaving interconnected plotlines and memorable characters, it's a lot, and there was a massive amount of burnout, but man was it fun.

The story is set decades in the future on an island called Toksan. Your name is Ara Naobu, and you're a young, lone-wolf detective who's just been hired by the Japanese government to investigate corruption and mistreatment of citizens on the island. Except, that's not all you're looking for. You're also secretly looking into cultist activity to find out why people are going missing, and if this has to do with your past...