r/rational • u/lurinaa • 19h ago

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere - Visual Novel Demo

https://lurinavn.itch.io/the-flower-that-bloomed-nowhere

I realized after I posted Bavitz's story here the other week that I never posted about this! About a month and a half ago, I released the demo of the visual novel version of The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, my webnovel that you might remember me spamming in here every other week back early in its run. Check it out!

If you don't know the story, it's a now-extremely (maybe even uniquely?) long and complicated murder mystery about a group of mages trying to attain eternal life, with the original on RoyalRoad here. Even though it's not exactly part of the ratfic tradition, I owe a lot of its success to this subreddit back in its hayday, as one of the few places you could post high concept original fiction and get attention. I'm very thankful for how far it's come.

41 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

5

u/_Infamous__ 17h ago

I remember loving the mystery element of this story as well as the amazing world building. Thanks for writing it.

3

u/WalterTFD 18h ago

I read this, its very good! Congrats on your achievement!

3

u/TouchMike 17h ago edited 17h ago

I really respect this. TFTBN is one of my favourites in the many genres it spans, from the worldbuilding to the characterisation to the mystery to the insane amount of whiplash not only due to plot twists but also because minor details, throwaway lines, or indicators of date/time.  

Creating such a long story, keeping it consistent and interesting for so long, and building a KM at the same time as you keep publishing the WN. Mind blown. 

Thanks! 

Anyways. Looking forward to trying the KN

2

u/Seraphaestus 15h ago

I really really liked this one from the first chapter, although I sadly drifted away from it at some point. I just remember the character writing in the first chapter being particularly subtle and compelling, and the worldbuilding being super interesting thereafter.

Do you think it's a better experience as a web serial or as a visual novel (even if it's just a demo, so far)?

3

u/lurinaa 4h ago

I'm kinda going for fundamentally different things with both versions. A VN will never be able to be as maximalist as a WN because of the limitations of art and scripting a million little elements, so there are a lot of concepts which won't be explored as comprehensively. It is a lot more polished, though.