Dev Log 1: Introduction to Achlys

On January 1, 2024, some random person decided to publish a VN, their very first VN, amounting to ~76,000 words and ~2000 renders without so much as a preview, a patreon, any announcement, anything.

Just an itch.io page and a link sent to everyone who would want it.

What is it? What is Achlys?

It’s a question I’ve been getting a lot from my friends, as well as a question I had struggled to answer when trying to come up with the itch page, or any material related to it.

The most simple answer is that it is a visual novel that I had made about a fog that had destroyed the world, and the characters it impacts.  The main character, seeing a dream where one of his classmates jumped off of a school building, makes a pact with a being they see in their dream to save her, and from there, must jump into her dreams.

That is a summary of the plot in the most basic answer, but I was never really happy with that description.

According to various sources of the internet, Achlys is described as a goddess of misery and sadness, and the fog (sometimes specifically the mist that covers mortal eyes), as well as being a primordial spirit who existed before the world, and even before chaos. These sources seem to conflict. All in all, Achlys truly is primordial, a figure or idea that precedes the known stories from the Greeks, and has faded into history, a forgotten figure.

In terms of the game in how it actually plays, it is a semi-sandbox VN created in renpy with a heavy, heavy focus on the internal world of the characters, rather than solely a mystery revolving around a fog. The models were created from VRoid Studio and the renders made in unity with location assets I purchased. Finally, the music I had taken from a long list of royalty free sources compiled in the about section in Achlys Book 1.

But that’s too practical. What would I say? What words come to mind?

“Welcome to Achlys.”

Achlys is a deeply personal and introspective VN written to explore a wide range of topics such as loneliness, despair, hope, and joy. It was the personal culmination of all of my learnings throughout school and of life, taking inspiration from the authors that I read and cherished, especially Joyce and Dostoyevsky, as well as things from Japanese media such as Shin Megami Tensei, or Evangelion.

I had put into Achlys all of my dreams, fears, and ideas that I had remembered from throughout my life. I aimed to make this VN the complete package of the spirit that I had embodied during the specific time of its envisioning and creation. I wanted to write something such that if I had never written anything again, I would be satisfied.

I admit, it sounds pretentious, but rather than pretend that I wasn’t trying at all, and to be crass about it, I would like to be wholly sincere. I spent years on this and did my best.

Even in the early days of my childhood, I had always dreamed of creating stories and games. Once, and this is something I am quite embarrassed about, I watched this pokemon ROM hacker Youtuber who created stories from those ROM hacks and recorded them to youtube. He decided one day to have an open contest to add a character into the world based on messages people sent. I sent some wildly long giant block that was the entire synopsis of a story that I had been writing. 

No, that character didn’t make it in. 

Later, my act of sending giant blocks of overly thorough messages had been affectionately named as “Space explaining.” (Here's a self-demonstrating example.)

Since then, and throughout my adolescence I began “writing” stories, that is to say I thought of the stories throughout the day and before I went to sleep, committing them to memory. I struggled to ever put them on paper. Later on I would “lose the magic” necessary to write those stories, but still kept that dream, buried somewhere deep underneath. 

Even after all that time, I wanted to prove to myself and to people who doubted me that I could do it. That I had something meaningful to say. That I could make something. When COVID came around, I found myself with enough time on my hands, material, and a deep need to sort and share my thoughts that I began working on something that would become Achlys.

So what is Achlys Book 1: The World as She Saw It?

(Or Achlys for short)

Achlys is the first book in a series of ideas that I have, centered on the exploration into the mind and dreams of Ellie, as well as her classmates, and the rest of the cast.

Achlys is a deeply personal work that is the fruit of years of labor and contains many concepts and ideas that have floated in my mind for many years prior.

Achlys is an experimental VN, meant to push the limits of what I had seen in the western market, using literary techniques, styles, and a single minded focus on the inner lives of the characters (mundane and all).

Ultimately, I imagine Achlys as a game that will absolutely ring true for certain people, and hope to deliver enough that the rest can enjoy it as well.

I really hope you try and like it.

So what now? What is next?

For Achlys Book 1 itself, I have been having my friend QA test and do basic typo checking. (It's incredible how much he has found.) My own impatience led me to release on 1/1/24, but he has since found minor typos for me to check. This, along with anything that others find will be compiled and put into a bugfix. Generally, this game is considered complete.

My current focus is to write a long series of dev logs (I already have others drafted) to go into my thoughts and the steps of the dev process, partially to promote the game, partially to get it off my chest. I have been wanting to discuss these things for a long time now.

Next would be to gauge the general reception of the game, and see if people like what I have to offer. Truth be told, if people do not like it, I would struggle to create something similar, if I create anything at all.

I also plan on evaluating my ideas and the landscape to judge what to do next. I am gated to some degree by what I am capable of doing myself, so if other people help me, the horizons are broadened. Regardless, I would need to spend some time to compile all of my ideas together and really see if there’s any magic there.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you, and please try Achlys Book 1, as well as join the discord!

Your support helps to encourage me to make more!