DEAD WEIGHT

Hi! My name is Jesse, and my buddy Rowan and I are making a visual novel. We've been working on the story for a year or two now, and we waffled about whether to make it a comic or a novel. A visual novel seemed like the right format to let us do everything we wanted to do, and would also give us an excuse to invite talented-but-unemployable friends to work with us.

DEAD WEIGHT is a story about needing help when you don't trust anyone to help you because you have nothing to offer in return. It's a story about being too old for this shit, but never old enough to take care of yourself. It's a story about being a "real man" and also a sad wet meowmeow. Its about wanting to fuck your best friend but like, not in a gay way, dude. The story is set in 1999, and begins right before the end of the world.

It's different from other visual novels in that there aren't any branching choices -- just a story about people trying to survive an apocalypse. (I've heard some people call this a "kinetic novel" instead.) We plan to try and release it a chapter at a time on itch.io, for pay-what-you-want prices. Neither of us make very much money but it's important to us that this story be free, so if you want to help us out, that's what the tip jar is for. Here we plan to keep a dev log as we work on the thing, in the hopes that maybe it will help other people create their own stories.

Right now, we're working on a custom version of the Renpy engine, which we also plan to release for free as a customizable template once it's polished-up. We'll be posting behind-the-scenes stuff here as we go along, along with announcements about chapter releases.

Thanks so much for your time!!!

You can find us elsewhere:

Jesse - pibbbou.bsky.social | @slimmeroo | @sveltte Rowan - voidm0nster.bsky.social | @sretann

Spider likes to draw and write in his journal, when he gets a chance.

Showing off height comparisons for some of the cast. Vince is tall, but certainly not the tallest! Spider meanwhile rocks it as a short king.

A little preview of the kinds of things that Jesse has done with the ren'py engine. Background images, and panels having easy to use and set positions. It results in a really fun way to set up timing and dialogue, along with making it appear more like a comic.

Being able to manipulate where the text appears as well is really handy! It really gives some nice effects, letting you use the text to lend to the aesthetic or vibe.

The thumbnails are all obviously placeholder images of course, to be reworked later! But it helps to have a visual to position things like text, or work with the timing of panels.

Vincent showing off his card tricks, to a very enthusiastic Spider.

Character interactions between these two are extremely important! So figuring out what a lot of their dynamic looks like, and how they act while getting to know each other, is super important.

Just two guys on a couch, drinkin' beers cuz they're probably a little gay.

This sketch was done quite a while ago, while still hammering out the story.

Some Vince and Spider kisses! There's a lot of drawings from both of us of these two kissing. We know what we are about.