Hey!
If you’re reading this blog, that probably means you’ve at least got a tangential interest in cartoon teenage girls saying things written by grown men who have never talked to a teenage girl before in their entire lives! Do you? Well, then I have got news for you.
Motivated by boredom and an unused Steam code for TyranoBuilder Visual Novel Studio I had lying around, I have created a teensy tiny visual novel for everyone who wants to to enjoy. Inspired by all those anime about girls talking about nothing, I present to you Nothing Special, a (very hokey) visual novel(ette) that features just that, and, as the title implies, little else!
Nothing Special includes everything you’d expect, such as:
- Pointless, meandering dialogue about subjects you never think about!
- References to movies from 20 year ago and weird indie music you’ve never heard of!
- Six (6!) different sprites I made from lovely (open-source) art assets by Yuchinko!
- Three (3!) different annoying sound effects!
- Stock music!
- Random, sudden drama at the very end!
If this at all sounds interesting to you, you can download Nothing Special here (Windows only, for now)! Unzip the folder, open it, then click the file entitled “Nothing_Special.exe” and enjoy!
Playing through all of it will take you around five minutes, but of course I recommend you go back to pick all the choices you didn’t pick in your original run, which shouldn’t be too hard because this game is extremely linear because I don’t know how to code. Fun!
Let me know what you thought in the comments, and share this game with your friends if you want to inflict it upon them!
The Glorio Blog 
Hmm, I tried to download it and it didn’t work. Other than that, it was a very nice game! Good work!
Wait, how can you say that if it didn’t work? Did the download not work or did the file not work?
The download didn’t work, I just got an error page. But it was a nice error page!
You have to actually click the download icon in the Google Drive screen, then unzip the file it downloads and in the veritable trash heap of files you then get, you have to click the .exe file for it to work!
Tried downloading it again and my anti virus/firewall stuff broke it. Sorry, I don’t think it will work on my computer!
I’ll give it a try after work. On a related matter, have you played 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim? I found it to be the best anime protagonist stimulator ever. You’re trying to solve some bullshit dire sci-fi plot but meanwhile you’re in high school and go out for ice cream after class and get into fights with delinquents. You do plot relevant conversations in the school hallway but behind you the background characters are carrying boxes to the teacher’s lounge and gossiping about the latest idol and all that. The world felt really alive even though mechanically the game itself was just pressing X over and over.
I have it, but I haven’t really given it a proper go yet, so I should! I finally bought it on PS4 after a lot of grumbling about how I prefer to play a game like that on Switch… and then they actually announced a Switch version.
Okay, the game works for me. It’s cute but not my thing, the indie music references just went over my head. But kudos for finishing an actual game, I have a JRPG about Stalin in RPG Maker that I’ve spent years half-assedly poking at and I’ve only got 9 minutes’ worth of playable content to show for it.
Thanks for playing! I totally get where you’re coming from, though. I kept the scope of this project deliberately very small so I’d actually finish it.
I wasn’t expecting to play a visual novel tonight, but I really enjoyed that! Your writing is pretty good, there were plenty of one liners in their that got me smiling. The banter felt reasonably natural too. I felt like you had good characterization in spite of the short runtime. Speaking of runtime, I think it was just about exactly as long as it needed to be, didn’t get tedious and had enough content going on to keep me entertained. Great job, and as Sarapen said congrats on seeing the idea through from start to finish, it’s not as easy as it looks!
(Sorry for being a bit late to the party but I’m only a very occasional Glorio reader. Every few months I find the bookmark to the blog I made after reading the excellent Scum’s Wish posts here lol)
Thanks a lot for your lovely feedback! I think the fact that I managed to finish this is indeed the most important thing about it. It took me longer than it looks, maybe (I started this way back in January when I had to quarantine due to a COVID infection), but still it feels good to actually see a project through to the end.
Speaking of projects, those Scum’s Wish posts sure were a long time ago, huh? Been a while since we’ve had a show I could psycho-analyze like that.