The Cage of Nemestrinus

Hello everyone, it's Doomsayer again and I've got something to say: we're not dead yet. Now that we got the sad news out of the way, let's talk a bit about the direction of the project as of now.

We've been working on Cage of Nemestrinus for some time now, but somehow we don't seem to show as much results as other projects who started around the time as us... That's not really a problem, that's how we are I guess. But that doesn't mean we're always slacking, we're just having a slower start.

So why am I annoying the internet with a silly blog post? Well, I wanted to clarify a couple of things about our project now that we're settled on some things. I know these things usually don't interest anyone until the project is released; you only want to see concept arts and stuff. But anyway, if anyone ever asks what our project is about, I'll be able to link the blog.

First, some information about our current situation. At first, we thought we could do a big project with 3 heroines per faction, but that idea died a bit when we realized some writers showed up only once and never came back. We decided to narrow it down, and it turned out to be a good idea. We kept our 3 most motivated writers and chose to make it 1 heroine per faction, so it's basically a Faction Route now instead of a Heroine Route. But that doesn't end there, we also decided to add another type of route... which I won't talk about now.

Okay, so now what is Cage of Nemestrinus? At first, we decided that we wanted our project to be inside a closed environment. We didn't want our world to feel small, but somehow, we wanted the events in the VN to feel apart from the normal world, completely independent from modern society. So we came up with the idea of a "loop-lock" or whatever. The inhabitants of the Cage can't leave because the moment they leave the area, they end up walking in an "abstract zone" and eventually get looped back on the opposite side of the area! Very clever, I know. Nemestrinus was referred in the Roman mythology as the god the forests and woods. While the nemus god itself doesn't make an appearance in the novel yet, someone on IRC then thought it would be cool to name the forest after a Roman god. Don't worry, we didn't actually put that name for no reasons, you will see as you're playing the novel.

A long time ago, almost twenty years ago, a great man and his followers decided to set foot for the first time inside the Cage of Nemestrinus. He had heard legends about this place, and his group ended up being stuck in there. It didn't take long for conflict to arise and for a schism to appear. Then followed the formation of two distinct factions: the Wardens and the Enforcers. The Wardens are relatively passive: they do not search for meaningless conflicts. The organization is led by an oligarchy, they live in trees... Right now, they're just our generic bunch of "wood elves", but we're still working on this one. The Enforcers, though, decided to settle in man-made tunnels inside a mountain. Elves vs dwarves stopped reading right there This faction is more firm one: it is entirely led by two men. One, officially named the Enforcer Leader, doesn't actually do much. He holds all the power, but doesn't actually get involved with most decisions. His only interest is war, when he can afford it. The one doing all the work around here is called the Overseer. He's a tall, older (older than the bunch of teenagers we call characters anyway) and is obviously a very busy man.

It's not clear for everyone what is the purpose of both factions inside the Cage. Some say that someone is searching for a way out of the Cage, others say that the leaders might secretly be searching for some ancient artifact.

 Oh, also we got a new artist.Still in concept phase, we'll wait for a colored version before showing more concept art this time.

About Giselle

    Oh look, a blog; might as well use it. We’ve been working on this project for more than 2 weeks now and the main idea has been set. We’ve had a couple of lurkers, all wondering what the hell our project is about. We thought it would be a good idea to dump the bit of info we have. This post will be about one of the many routes of Cage of Nemestrinus, the route of Giselle.

Like many - or every - Visual Novels out there, routes in CoN will tend to focus on a character and its interactions with the main character (more about her in a future post). But don’t expect 100% romance, at least not from me. On topic, let’s talk a bit about our character.

Giselle Lamoureuse, smile of cynicism, heart of apathy and a condescending stare. It is impossible to predict what will make our protagonist take a liking to Giselle, but we know that to reach her ending, players will have to tolerate her derision and mockery. Anyway, we can consider this heroine the misanthropist type. Living apart from society but excelling in every duty: people tend to hate Giselle. Solitude and the perceptions of society will take a big place in this route. Our main character will also eventually join Giselle’s fight against the world, without actually asking for it. She will face many of the cruel hardships of the Cage. But will she let herself get degraded by her new surroundings, or will she overthrow the stigmata...?

Also, appearance-wise, we have a concept art… Here it is.

                                                         By DUBSDRAW

It IS kind of simple, but that’s mainly how I’d like to keep it (it’s not like she cares about looks or- or anything…). Giselle has expertise in lots of things, like hunting or fighting, so I thought she could have a couple of scars and damaged clothes.

Anyway, I hope you at least perceived the taste of Giselle’s route; and yes I know my post doesn’t say a lot of explicit content, it’s intended.