It is now almost a year ago to the day that my Comiket-inspired brain thought that instead of writing another book (which is still something that I need to do), I should make a new VN.

After all, I’m a “veteran” now, surely it wouldn’t take so long this time, right? We could get one act done within a year and the rest done a year after that.

Of course, I forgot that I didn’t have a team at that time, and only the most basic of an idea.

The call went out, and thankfully some really gifted people answered. Before long, we had a team, and after several re-writes of the basic description of the game (the “treatment”) and many cups of tea later, we had something workable.

I have to note that everyone on the project so far is doing this as a volunteer, so it’s not like we can devote our full time to this. That being said, it’s rare that I have to wait more than 5 minutes for a response if I post something on the Slack. So far, it’s been a positive experience.

I was originally reluctant to make anything public at this Comiket, but in the last 4 weeks everyone has put in some crazy extra hours, and I can safely say that we’re happy to release this very first “taste” of Historia. It really only is a taste. We don’t want to give too much away. This is as much as we can tell you for now; I hope that it is enough to keep you interested until we can release all of Act 1 – which I’m hoping can be around Summer Comiket (in August).

You can find the download links here:

Download For Mac: http://cdn.lucida96.com/demo/historia-demo-mac.zip

Download For Linux/Windows: http://cdn.lucida96.com/demo/historia-demo-pc.zip

So far, Historia has been totally self-funded, and we’re putting in a lot of effort around this passion project. While the full release will be a paid game, this demo is free. Unfortunately all of the sound effects and art do cost money.

Whilst you can download the demo for free, and share it around (it’s under a CC BY-NC-ND licence), we’d really appreciate it if you could donate a dollar or two to help pay for the expenses, like Comiket tables and a bottomless supply of coffee! To do so, please click the button below and drop us some spare change!