This is the final release for The Teacup Visual Novel Festival 2010. Dream Chasers -Final- is ultimately a choice-less visual novel told through the point-of-view of different protagonists.
The first version of this story came in an rpgmaker game released discreetly sometime in 2002-2003. The rpg featured only a small portion of the final version of the Dream Chasers story, which was softly released without music in the Lemmasoft Forums in 2008. At that time, I’d made a promise to release the full version of Dream Chasers with fully-voiced characters while leaving the actual release date open.
Unfortunately, after various attempts at collaborating with different voice actors, the inconsistency in the sound quality and the unavailability of some of the original voice actors made me decide to drop the character voices for good.
Before proceeding further, I’m afraid I must bore you with a short historical background about myself and LSF (The Lemmasoft Forums) because it is ultimately connected with this final visual novel project from Radical Dreamers 2002.
About three years ago, I decided to start working on my own visual novel after reading the English translated versions of Narcissu and Soremata (Until We Meet Again). Both stories touched me deeply, as I’ve mentioned in some of my notes included within my own games. This was the starting point for the persona known as lordcloudx/Cloud^ and his adventures and misadventures in the world of English Visual Novel Creation. I started out by releasing my works to upload.com, from which, they received fairly favorable audience response. Of course, it would not be until a few months later when PyTom (Creator of the Ren’Py visual novel engine, which I used for all of my Visual Novels) himself would discover my first three Visual Novels and introduce them to the Lemmasoft Forums. The narcissist that I am (I like Narcissu after all ;P) I did not let this opportunity to freely advertise my works slip past me (lest I regret it forever and have to do a redux :D) and I soon became a regular in LSF.
It was fun, fulfilling and sometimes frustrating; this whole business of writing visual novels for a hobby. However, It actually felt a lot more enjoyable and meaningful back when I was never a part of this community called LSF. Now, I cannot deny that LSF has become a part of me, just as I have established myself as a part of it over the years. LSF was fun, and perhaps, it still is even now; just not to me. The community has changed… or should I say, “evolved” over the years, not just in the structural, “virtua-physical sense”, nor even in the current population of active posters. It’s hard to describe, but I feel that it has lost something important. Yes, change is unavoidable in a growing community, but the fact that I don’t have to like it either is equally true. That said, personally, VN Creation was really becoming more of a migraine than it was worth for me, thus, with this piece, the final version of Dream Chasers, I say my final farewell (as a creator) to the EVN community, though I doubt if that much even means anything nowadays.
Originally, a sour, biting and generally undignified rant was to follow after this paragraph, but given that this is no longer LSF, but The new Teacup EVN community, I decided to scrap the idea.
So yes, I have lots of gripes with the way the community was shaping up and as LSF continued to grow, I could only imagine how much more warped it will have become in my eyes compared to three years ago. Yet, I cannot deny that LSF has (had) its good points as well. It was there where I met many good people with hobbies and interests similar to my own. It was through LSF that I was able to participate in countless interesting discussions without the nonsense that pervades other anime-related forums.
There are still many more thoughts racing through my mind right now. Things left unsaid but, I feel that they are merely reiterations in different forms of the stuff I’ve already mentioned.
Nonetheless, I would like my ramblings to end on a subjectively positive note. Thus, to everyone in the EVN community, thank you very much and I hope you enjoy Radical Dreamers 2002’s swan song.
I'd also like to express my personal thanks to everyone who has been a part of this project whether you saw it through to completion or not. VN.
-Title: Dream Chasers
-Author: lordcloudx
-Description: Short Visual Novel
-Platform: Windows
-System Requirements: Almost any modern system that can run ren'py should be able to run this program
-Year: 2010
Download: http://www.zdnetasia.com/downloads/dream-chasers-39396815/
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