#sosvn

Want to be on a reality dating show with sun, sexy singles, and the chance to win 50 grand?

Ahoy! We've read the applications, watched the tiktoks, made the calls, and now, after wading through a sea of some of the hottest singles on the planet, you are among the lucky ones chosen to take part in this once in a lifetime experience: Sink or Swim! 

So put on your lifejacket, drop that anchor, and point your compass towards love! Will you sink to the depths of heartache or will you swim all the way to your happy ending? 

Your voyage starts now!

Our villa moves away from the typical reality show set-up. On the Sink or Swim island, gender doesn’t dictate partnerships and our contestants are very diverse.

🔆 Customizable Main Character! Choose your gender, your romantic preferences, pronouns, hair color... you get the idea.

🔆 Fall in love or in friendship, whichever you prefer.

🔆 Be nice, funny, or bitchy! Or a perfect combination of all three.

🔆 Game is rated 18+

We are a group of Interactive Fiction fans and writers, who decided it would be great fun to make our own reality show style visual novel. This is purely a passion project, and we will not be monetising it.

So far, we have all of our contestants figured out, and are working on narrative, outlining, art, and coding. Feel free to ask us anything!

We’ll be releasing a few surveys in the coming weeks, about what you might want to see, and regarding sensitivity readers. Please beware that we are a bunch of amateurs, and just simply will not be able to include everything that people want to see.

Follow us for updates!

Happy summer, everyone🌞😉

We’ve gotten a lot of questions about this game, and we’re so excited about how interested you all are! But to make it easier to answer all your questions in one place, we’ve started this FAQ! Feel free to submit any more questions you may have - for this FAQ or otherwise.

Will there be gem options?

Short answer - No.

Longer answer - We want to keep this game as accessible as possible, and that includes keeping it free to play. There will be no gem options, no purchases of any kind. Just a fun, free game for you to enjoy.

When’s the release?

We’re definitely aiming for 2022, but we'll release an official date when we know more. We have a wonderful team working on this project, but we all also have lives outside of it and want to take our time to make sure this story is as good as we can make it.

How long is the game?

There’s 20 playable days, with 3 episodes each. We’ll update you on the specific length of these episodes when we know more.

What devices is this available on?

Any device with a browser - as we said, we want it to be accessible for everyone, so you won’t need to download anything. If you have a browser, you’ll be able to enjoy the game!

Are there x/y/z characters?

Diversity and proper representation is one of our biggest goals with this project, and that includes diversity in race, sexuality, gender, ability - as much as we can. Unfortunately, we are also sometimes limited in what we can do, as it’s impossible to represent everyone with less than 30 contestants. If you have a question about anything specific, feel free to send an ask!

How many characters/ROs are there?

28! 28 different personalities, styles, and looks, and 28 characters to fall in love with - that may or may not fall right back ;)

We’ll be introducing some of them as we lead up to releases, with more sneak peaks and Q&As to come in time.

Are there unromanceable characters?

Yep! It’d be very difficult for us to make every single character a love interest, and would take away from some character’s individual stories too. However, we won’t be telling you who is and isn’t romanceable (and who isn’t exactly a forever option) - you’ll have to play to find out!

Will MC be customisable?

Yes and no. There will not be an MC sprite as you may be expecting - as in, you see your MC on screen with the other contestants - but you will still be able to customise your MC and see it referenced in dialogue. Want some tattoos? Great, your partner can point them out! Want some bright clothes? Wonderful, your best friend loves that accessory!

Who’s working on this project?

A whole team of wonderful people - writers, artists, creatives of all kind. You can find them at these usernames:

Disclaimer: due to the fact our backgrounds are a work in progress, what you see may be tweaked before the initial release.

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Ahoy, Maties!

We're back to offer you a progress update, as we've made a lot of headway since we last checked in with you all.

Firstly, our team of outliners are working so hard on planning out a compelling story, and as you can imagine, with all the characters we have, it means there's many different routes, so there's a lot of ground that they're needing to cover. They're currently working on Day 4, and are in cahoots with the character team about the types of storylines and character arcs. Obviously, we want it to be as compelling and realistic as possible, so making sure the story and the characters within it are fleshed out is a big priority!

Speaking of the story, and this is not a drill, WE HAVE A COMPLETE DAY 1!!!

Narrative have written out the whole day, with all the potential branches, and it's been Beta read by the Quality Assurance team. We're all very happy with it, and we hope you will be too! Moving forward from here, a lot of progress has been made with Day 2, so it's looking like it'll be in the same place as Day 1 very soon.

Coding are currently doing the impossible... Well it's not impossible, some of us just simply don't understand it. But our team of geniuses are programming the game using Ren'Py, and doing everything in their power to make sure that it's accessible and user-friendly to everyone. They've been discussing everything from how it's going to look, to how it's going to work. At least, that's what we think they've been discussing...

Anyway, you're all familiar with the work that our art team produces by now, and we can assure you that the standard hasn't changed at all! They've had a lot to do, with having to perfect the villa and work on our beloved characters, but they've made some amazing progress with the villa backgrounds, and we can confirm that they are looking good. The social team might have to share some more with you soon😉.

So that's all from us for now, but remember to keep a weather eye on the horizon and feel free to send us any questions you have about the project!

Ahoy, sailors.

We've got some bad news on the horizon, and we hope you can forgive us for it...

Sadly, this project has been on the back-burner for quite some time and, while we were all very excited about it, we're afraid to say that we won't be able to continue it any further.

It's been a great journey, but we've been facing a lot of setbacks that have made it harder to carry on. We wanted to put everything we had into this project and give you something that you'll all love, but with different challenges and life getting in the way, it's something that doesn't seem all that possible to deliver on at the moment.

We still have a lot of love for our characters (who continue to, quite rudely, live rent free in our heads), so the shipwreck might not be entirely unsalvageable. There might be something we can do in the future, whether it's a much smaller visual novel, or just an interactive fiction. But for now we're sorry to say that Sink or Swim has reached the end of its voyage.

Thank you for all the support you've given us. We've loved answering your questions and teasing all of our hard work. You've been amazing.

So, for one last time...

Anchors away,

To say happy holidays from the SOS vn team! You didn't think we'd leave you without a gift, did you?

As always, we have our art team to thank for this reveal. As we move into the New Year, they'll be focusing a lot on solidifying designs and styles that we're so excited to share with you.

So far, they've managed to take an initial concept and started to turn it into something a little more realistic, and all we can say is... Arrr you serious? It's g-oar-geous! (We're sorry, we can't stop...)

It's a great honour to introduce the outer workings of a beautiful creation:

The Villa

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"Rough day, huh? Might I offer you a Raphy Hug in these trying times?"

Disclaimer: Please consider this more as concept art, as our artists are still figuring out the style, and some things may change.

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Our art and character teams have been working hard to create a group of diverse contestants and you might just be able to make them out... if you squint😉

But there's no fun in keeping all the power to ourselves, so we're here to ask you all a very important question:

Which of our unique contestants do you want to see first?

Vote in our straw poll below to choose which character gets a reveal and which ones will remain hidden in the depths...