After three years of off-and-on development in my spare time (after conceptualizing the characters and concept in the mid 2010's), I finally pushed myself to release my work-in-progress build of the original visual novel I've been creating!
DownRight Fierce by Destiny-Smasher
A visual novel about fighting game gals finding themselves, losing themselves, and finding themselves again.
The slice-of-life shenanigans of visual novels like @brianna-lei's Butterfly Soup and D̷o̸k̷i̸ ̴D̶o̷k̶i̸ ̸L̴i̷t̷e̶r̸a̸t̵u̸r̴e̵ ̴C̵l̶u̴b̷ meet the quirky, power-infused worlds of fighting games like Street Fighter and Rival Schools in this character driven visual novel. Designed to feel like the fully fleshed out backstory of a small fighting game roster, DownRight Fierce will have players riding shotgun with protagonist Nishiko Shimomura as they are shipped off to a private school after acting out one too many times by abusing their latent Street Fighter -esque powers. Nishiko will have to navigate relationships in Windy Pines Academy, a strict boarding school designed to train those who are able to wield Ki-Flow, the ability to manifest one's own soul and spirit energy into physical form.
Make choices that will influence Nishiko's personal growth, from physical attributes to friendships and, if you're lucky, perhaps some sweethearting on the side. The choices you make will alter Nishiko's abilities, affecting how they perform later on in fighting scenes, as well as unlocking or locking dialogue options at various points. Think of this like a TellTale/Life is Strange styled game with a primary narrative but branching side scenes and various alternate moments -- much less flashy presentation but a lot more variables and variation in things that can happen during scenes.
I personally do not think a character's identity or sexuality should inherently be considered a 'spoiler,' but I can respect wanting to discover these characters' identities yourself in-universe. So for now, what I will make clear is that this is a queer, LGBT+ story, featuring characters of various ethnicities and identities.
I created this story concept and its main characters in ~2014, and the release of Butterfly Soup inspired me to start adapting it and rebooting it as a visual novel. I've been working on it sporadically since January 2020, and this is the first public release of my progress so far. As of this build (January 31, 2023) I've managed to edit the Prologue through to much of Chapter 2. I'll leave what I have past that present in this build, and intend to do a follow-up update in February or March to bring things up to the end of Chapter 3 before progressing further into the game's development using feedback I get from this public build.
Thanks for checking the project out, and please let me know what you think of it! I have a lot of work to do but this is a big first step for me and the project has come such a long way since I started it.
(Yes, there is a $ tsundere stat)
(Logo art by Shannon Ehrola, Character sprite art by @sakura-rose12, and smoke photo by Pascal Meier. )
Our server has been around since 2019. We're a chill spot to hang, talk about fighting games and whatever else.
Activity has been light as of late, but come the new year, we will be picking back up on events! Weekly fight nights, maybe even movie nights and tournaments!
A ToD combo from my fighting game :) Power mode increases damage, but removes the ability to doublejump, airdash, and chain normals into eachother. You also can activate overdrive with 4 bars of meter, which increases damage further, but locks your burst and slowly drains your meter.
Don't you just hate it when a word completely loses all it's meaning and just devolves into another "person I disagree with" word just like cuck and soyboy and woke or whatever?
I know that queer people are drawn to forms of self expression like moths to a flame, but fighting games are still one of the most interesting. Shout outs to Sonic Fox, Magi, Goblin, and all the many many others that I'm forgetting. Y'all make the FGC a better place.