Nimbus

Notice: If you made it to this post, you've either clicked a very old link or you've done some exploring on my blog. This project was made when I was younger and more idealistic about writing, and doesn't reflect my current sensibilities; in particular, this fan theory has been debunked by later canon for these games, and I have numerous misgivings with how I tried to tell this story.

This post and project will remain up for archival purposes.

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Nimbus is a visual novel project of mine that I worked on from about Feburary to July 2016. It was created using Ren'Py. It's a work of fanfiction based on Sora, a shoot 'em up created by Orange_Juice. It was inspired by and follows a fan theory I read about on Sora's Steam forums. As such, Nimbus requires readers to have some cursory knowledge of the Sora universe, and it probably isn't meant for everyone; despite this, I tried to write it in such a way that little knowledge of the game is necessary for readers to enjoy it, though some parts proved difficult to write with this limitation in mind.

Nimbus concerns the story of a husband and wife, Yukito and Alte, and their daughter Suguri. In a world dominated by an endless war with no end in sight, the two have spent ten long years trying their best to raise their daughter the best they can. After a surprise bombing raid destroys their town, however, the two have to make tough decisions about how to raise Suguri in their new world. The journey not only take them to the military they've tried to avoid for ten years, but also to the question of how far they will go to protect her.

Nimbus can be downloaded right here. It's about 30,000 words long, and I estimate it'd take about 2 hours to read all the way through. The overall product is a bit rough; I don't have an artistic bone in my body, and as such, there are no sprites for the various characters. That said, the medium is still something I wanted to experiment with, and even without notable graphics, I still feel I wrote something worth reading.

As usual, constructive criticism is always welcome.

I don't think I'll create another visual novel again, owing to my inexperience with coding, as well as the surprising difficulty behind it, but I did enjoy working on this project and slowly learning the nuances of both visual novels and Python.

Some author notes come after the jump, primarily about where this idea started.

The fan theory centers around Alte, the first boss of the game; in her head sprites after being defeated by Sora, she has a silver ring visible on her left hand. The purpose of the ring is never stated in-game, though Alte does express worry over "him" in some dialogue before the fight; in extra, non-canon games, Alte does similarly reference such a character. As such, it is widely accepted that Alte is married, but the extent of this marriage, if it does exist, is never revealed.

A user on the Steam forums for the game, Aethereal Bunny, suggested one potential fan theory for Alte's marriage. In it, they suggested that Alte is married to Yukito, the scientist who finds Sora's unconscious body between the game's first and second levels; the theory suggests the reason Yukito found Sora's unconscious body was because he attempted to find Alte's body after her fatal fight with Sora.

Yukito, however, has also been stated by Orange_Juice's artist, hono, to be the father of Suguri, the protagonist of Suguri, which Sora is a spiritual sequel to. Assuming Alte were married to Yukito, this would then make her the mother of Suguri.

While this theory has no official backing in the games so far, some circumstantial evidence suggests this link is plausible. I thought the theory was rather interesting, but didn't think too much of it for a while.

Some time later, a user named Hijikata99 posted on another Steam forum about how he wanted to create several works of unofficial visual novels starring the various Orange_Juice characters. I was interested in this concept, and later decided on trying my own hand at creating a visual novel, using Aethereal Bunny's idea. I downloaded Ren'Py, fiddled around with it, and got on my way to weaving a narrative.