It’s quite a week for visual novel fans on Kickstarter. This week marks the launch of Tales of Valiance: First Light, which is an upcoming game in the genre by Talen James and Darian Bower. Their funding video doesn’t actually explain much about the game, but their mission statement of sorts. They’re tired of visual novels with samey plots and characters and are looking to spice things up with Tales of Valiance. Have they succeeded? It’s far too early to tell, but here’s what can be gathered from perusing the campaign page thus far.
The story revolves around a man named Owen who is pulled from dull merchant life after an attack by a dark, incredibly dangerous creature. After being saved by a paladin, he joins the Paladin Order himself. He enters along with nine other recruits and must survive all that this new education entails to become a paladin. Many visual novels would turn this fantasy storyline into just another dating sim, with saying the right thing leading to a character falling head over heels for you. Another wrong word might cast someone as your immediate enemy. The plan with Tales of Valiance is to imbue a much more realistic depiction of interaction and choice, so that everything doesn’t turn out so black and white. As of now, this is all speculation though as there is no demo or video preview to show the “end” result.
Tales of Valiance is planned to be five chapters long, but Chapter 1 will be available for free. It appears that after its successful launch on Windows/Mac and Android/iOS they’ll return to Kickstarter to fund the rest of the game. This Kickstarter requires $5,000 to succeed and has already raised a surprising chunk with just a few backers.
Track the progress of the Tales of Valiance Kickstarter in our Campaign Calendar.
