The Legend of Astera Stone
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
The Mage Academy has put together a team of two (reluctant) specialists: Astera Carras, who specializes in all things magic, and Hunter Falke, who is an excellent vampire hunter in need of money.
Together they must retrieve a stolen magic artifact from a vampire's castle. How will the dream team fare? Do the misunderstandings and mishaps ruin the whole mission? The castle awaits...
This game contains material that might not be suitable for everyone.
This is a general list without spoilers. If you want to read more details, click the button below.
The game contains:
- violence
- wounds
- psychological abuse
- harassment
Click here to see a detailed list! (Might contain spoilers)
Violence:
- One of the characters is armed with swords, and it's implied he uses them in battle
- Visual depictions of characters striking each other
- Visual depiction of a character strangling another for a few moments
- Biting and blood drinking is implied via text and sound
Wounds:
- Visual depictions of blood spatters
- Visual depictions of old scars in characters' face and body
- Visual and auditory depiction of a minor burn wound on the face
Psychological abuse:
- The game features intimidating characters who manipulate others to get what they want
- Some characters wield mind control magic, rendering their victims powerless
- One of the characters uses verbal abuse in the form of name-calling
- Some of the characters undermine other characters and their abilities
Harassment:
- There are characters who get physically too close to others without their consent.
Other:
- The game has scenes with minor screen shaking.
This visual novel game was originally made for the Spooktober 2021 game jam. It is a prequel to my O2A2 Again jam game Vampire†Hunter. The 2.0 version was published during the Amare Games Festival 2024.
For the best experience, I recommend downloading the 2.0 version (the game jam version is available for posterity's sake).
Final (2.0) Version:
- ~5700 words
- two routes!
- 4 characters
- lots of CGs
- pretty music and creepy sounds
- two endings
Game Jam Version:
- <5000 words
- one route
- 4 characters
- unfinished art
- no sounds
- 1 ending
This game uses mostly CC0 assets as well as Ebbasuke's art.
The background art was made by filtering and editing free photos from Unsplash. The sound effects were picked and modified from various CC0 sources, such as freesound.org. No AI-generated art was used in the making of this game.
The following musicians' work was used wholly or partly in the game's soundtrack. All the songs are licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Postmortem 2.0Apr 21, 2024
- The Legend of Astera Stone - PostmortemOct 02, 2021
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
the art and character designs are so good. the endings were so interesting it feels like a prequel to a much potentially longer story (edit: just read the postmortem, it really was a prequel!)
Glad you liked it! I feel like this prequel became a lot bigger than the project it's a prequel to. I might expand this "world" in the future!
I really liked the characters and the art! Looking forward to updates of this game :)
Saved this in my folder and finally tried it out. I love the art and characters. Can't wait to see the unfinished CGs X3
That was a fun adventure! I'm not gonna spoil the story but I can say I found every character interesting even though some had very few lines. Everyone looked really dang good, too! I also liked the transitions between showing sprites "normally" and next to the text box whenever necessary. Very smooth!
The CGs were also done really well. I don't normally pay much attention when games display a picture of some important object, but the object illustrations in this game made me stop and go "oooh, pretty." :D
I absolutely loved the character art and the way you had the speaking character in the bottom left to see their expression as they spoke, keeping both parties in play as the conversation happened. I'm surprised that technique isn't used in more VNs. I was a little disappointed by the lack of sounds. The art is astonishing, both BG and character.
I wouldn't mind revisiting this when the CGs and audio are complete, it was delightful!
I'm glad you liked it! I'm itching to update this project but, unfortunately, I'm in the middle of moving countries, so the updates will have to wait for weeks before I get to my pc. ;_; I have already finished a few more CGs for it, so there's going to be more eye candy in the future. ;)
A very enjoyable and immersive game with relatable characters and lovely art! Well done :)