sometimes i’m not proud of my work. i look back on onyx sometimes and think about what i could’ve done better. it’s got its good points, but i know it’s got it’s faults too. but on days where i’m feeling super down about it, i remember…. i made a vn before this one, a game worse than onyx… and i don’t mean that in a “it’s way darker and edgier” kind of way…………
this is maori, a magical girl themed visual novel i made when i was around 13. yep, this game is nearly a decade old. it's the polar opposite of onyx in tone and story, so don't expect anything too strange. i hyped up this game to all of my friends... hopefully they don't mistake this game w onyx bc i would have never come up w the latter at age 13 O_O
now, then. were you expecting a download link? i hope not! the game is completely unfinished, and i don't intend on finishing it not only due to its poor plot, but also because it was made w a program that is basically no longer supported. you see, instead of using renpy, i used a program called novelty which doesn't require any knowledge of programming (i was too afraid to learn it at the time). i ran into a bunch of roadblocks and tried to sign up for the forum, but my account was never approved because the forums were a ghost town. that was basically the first nail in the coffin. anyways, you guys will have to settle with my own little let's play. let's go gamers
somewhere in a paralell universe there's a gang of baddies wreaking havoc. as you can see below, i'm not very creative with names
so who will stop these destructive fiends?
enter the protagonist. i don't know why i named her maori. her only character traits are hanging out with her friends and disliking homework ngl
she has 2 cool friends, lilia and rosalie. man alive look at those cgs. what quality
after a normal school day, she comes home to see a magic wand sitting on her bed... she's transported to some place where the girl seen earlier, michiko, recruits this random 12 year old to fight against the guys.
she agrees, and...
she becomes a magical girl here's a cg!!!
(there's a transformation video that plays beforehand but it doesn't work on my current pc so it's lost media. i'll update this page if i find it. it's a windows movie maker masterpiece)
i did isekais before they were cool apparently
the first thing maori comes across is rosalie's lookalike getting beat up by a furry. in case you can't read the white text on maori's white clothes her name is lilith
she gets away, so maori and michiko go to find her cave den thingy. apparently they have fused together
they track lilith down, and she goes into creepy mode and attacks maori. the eyes person from onyx is shaking in their boots
by the way, this is a game with bad endings! there's a choice you can make during the fight that can cause you to die. basically, maori drops her wand and you can choose to fight lilith empty handed or pick your wand back up. if you choose the former, a bad ending happens.
here we see a 12 year old trying to engage in combat with a person wolf hybrid. it goes as well as you can expect. she grabs maori and HURLS the frail child into the cave's rocky walls.
ok back to the main route
if she picks the wand back up, maori takes her down bc she is such a queen.
fast forward to the next day.
i gotta show this cg because it irks me.
a girl transfers to maori's school! her name is kali and she has purple hair for some reason. but maori comes home to find....
michiko breaking into her home!!! apparently there's another Destroyer they have to take out. so off they go into the parallel universe to track this girl down...
this time, maori doesn't see michiko anywhere when she spawns into town, so she decides to do it on her own.
someone keeps making it night and day like they're flipping a light switch. this is vaguely problematic. who could be the culprit of such dastardly deeds?
meanwhile at lilia's house (yes the game made a hasty transition just like how i'm hastily discussing it.),
anyways. who could be the culprit of such dastardly deeds?
KALI BUT NOT KALI???? maori comforts herself by reminding herself it's not kali but parallel universe kali. they begin to throw hands, but...
kali has the power to change the material of an object, such as the wand maori was holding. unfortunately this means maori is now wandless and is forced to flee.
(kali totally could have made maori into jello. why couldn't she do that)
there are another set of choices here. you have to choose a direction to go and hope it's the right direction, bc otherwise you'll get a bad end where kali catches you and supposedly kills you.
if you go the right way, she still manages to corner you...
MICHIKO'S COMIN IN CLUTCH!!
kali begs for her life, and michiko obliges. michiko asks why she did this, and we learn that she isn't a destroyer but one of their servants. the person she reports to is ember, a half-dragon half-human girl with fire powers. looks like we know who's next on the hit list
and that's the end of day 2! but are we gonna talk about what happened to maori's wand? no? ok
remember maori's bestie from the beginning? she's gonna be important later wink wink
the next day, maori and michiko are taking a leisurely stroll through the countryside, when maori thinks about what happened yesterday. she brings up a good question-
man if you're so powerful why do you need a middle school girl to do your job for u???
backstory time!! michiko was, in fact, a magical girl at one point, with a sidekick and everything.
(what lovely background work)
but the dragon girl mentioned earlier literally ended her career. third degree burns (?) are no joke
(i remember drawing her sprite and being like "wow i can't believe i'm drawing blood poor michiko!!!! O_O" really funny when you see what content i made during my late teens)
michiko remembers that maori's gotta fight the dragon lady. so off maori goes into the town again.
she walks around, but then she runs into someone familiar-
at first maori wonders if this is just this world's copy of lilia but then lilia says "WAIT HOLD ON???" she has also been tasked with defeating the dragon woman, because what's a better way to train than by fighting the girl who burnt your mentor to a crisp. anyways they eventually make it to the fire mountains
*smack*
the girlboss arrives (her name is ember btw). michiko doesn't react to her and she doesn't react to michiko. it's almost as if the above backstory was pointless and i read all of that out just to put more text on the page :)
and so, the gang starts fighting. the girls' technique of fighting doesn't work out and lilia got a little burnt. so maori wonders what they should do. she asks michiko for advice
ok thanks michiko! this is just like a game of card-jitsu
lilia doesn't seem to know any water spells but she did bring some water bottles for her and marisol bc this climate is probably hotter than florida. is this enough to beat the girl who ruined your mentor's career? and who's next after we kill this girl with a water bottle? who knows!! because i literally didn't write anything after this lol
so yeah! that's maori in a nutshell. what a game
the lesson to be learned is this: everything you create is a stepping stone. sometimes it's nice to look back and see how you've improved since then, so don't feel so ashamed at your first attempts. there are things i dislike about my newest work, onyx, and i get flustered easily with the stories i write sometimes, but i'll use mine and others' critiques to do better next time. and this doesn't just apply to stories- i find it crazy how much my artwork has improved in the span of a decade.
sorry ik that's kinda cliche and i probably could've worded this better if i didn't have this absolutely nasty cold. anyways see you next time!! ovo)/
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