Shadows of the Republic Prototype
Project Overview
Note: Payment will be negotiable for those tackling multiple characters. The unpaid project now is only a brief prototype. This project does not uses generative/LLM AI with the exception for debugging program code. No voices, sounds, music, art and writing is auto-generated.
Shadows of the Republic is a Visual Novel RPG set in the historical and turbulent period of Republican China and World War II. Navigate investigations and conversations, building your identity as you deconstruct the world.
Premise
Following the Northern Expedition, the flag of the Blue Sky White Sun was raised across provinces as warlords fell like dominoes. China was now united once more, at least in name and spirit. The fate of the nation had now fallen into better hands. However, not before a new East Asian Empire rises from the East Horizon, eyeing the fragile confederation of warlords, officers and careerists.
You are Fang. One day, you wake up to find your world upended and thrust into a new matrix of shadows and deceit. Navigate 10 chapters of intrigue, betrayal, espionage and shattering events. Start off as a border customs officer in Beijing, uncovering Japanese smuggling and opium exploitation in northern China, work as a double agent for the Kuomintang and the Wang Jingwei Regime in the devastation of Nanjing, and achieve your final mission in the occupied wastelands of Canton.
Features
Personality Development SystemYour personality develops through your choices and actions, and this will affect your narrative options, paths through puzzles and investigations, and social interactions. Keen to lie a lot? You will gain a pathological trait that makes the truth difficult to disclose!
Skillcheck SystemYou will gain 15 "echoes" or skills that enable you to have unique commentary and perspectives on world affairs and insights into people around you. Some echoes are perk-based and tied to your personality and will not scale, such as the Death ECHO, hearing the ghosts of people long gone advising you.
ExploreThe world encourages you to go into rooms and locations and wind back to places to reexamine NPCs, objects, thoughts and insight. Interact with small observations to complete investigations.
Voice Actor
A Professor from Peking National University, a Western-trained psychologist and intellectual with some experience in Chinese medicine. Scholarly and patient character and politically loyal to the regime. A paternalist figure in good standing with the protagonist.
- english
- warm
- chinese (mandarin)
- animation/character
- male adult
Maybe he's just shaken up. I can run a psychological examination on him.
There is an officer in critical care as far as I know. You were knocked out when I found you and rushed you back home.
I ran to the scene where most students had disperesed from. There was a group lying on the ground and an officer battered to near death.
Voice Actor
A bitter, cynical traditionalist. He still wears the traditional Queue of the Qing Dynasty and sees the protagonist as a troublemaker. Although not cruel, he is just cranky as an elderly man and carries a lot of integrity. Dramatic and near senile, too. Believes the republic is temporary and that the culture of old will perservere.
- english
- gruff
- chinese
- male senior
- Hoarse
Too many rumours, everyone wants us to lose face. You!
If the pulse test is fine, then he should be alright. I think this boy is just trying to weasel out of his next lecture.
That head injury seem pretty serious. Ai-ya.
Voice Actor
A lead role, in charge of all non NPC dialogues, mainly items interactions and dream sequences. A soothing, soft, warm voice full of reflection, pacing and patience. Ideally closer in voice profile to audio-book narrator but with a more engaging tone on a personal level. British Chinese accent preferred if possible.
- english
- female adult
- chinese
- soothing
- calming
- Measured
"The Medicine Box remains where you found it."
You can spot a grid consisting of five by five, twenty-five in total allotted rank and file with either dried ingredients, raw herbs or opaque bottles with obscure labels."
"There is twenty-five little slots each with a unique ingredient or concoction."
Voice Actor
A inner voice which handles the proagonists sense of logic. Is a rational agent who works to form coherent chains of reasoning and or expose them/faults in others. A warm patient voice, non-judgemental for puzzle sequences.
- english
- soothing
- chinese
- Measured
"You were obviously not the only one in the fight. There were bound to be others."
"Sometimes a state survives on practical compromises not rigid ideals. It saves money, manpower and reallocates political capital to important matters."
"His worldview cannot rationalise the reasoning behind Marxism-Leninism as a political model."
Voice Actor
A quiet inner voice made to register the five senses. Will pick up on hearing, smell, touch, taste but not sight. It's meant to be alert, informative and straightforward but not authoritative.
- english
- chinese
"The room smells of burnt tobacco and tar. Professo Po's face deflates as he expunges the fumes from his mouth."
"The whole room smells like tar and tobacco. It's as if you've stumbled upon an aclhemist's workshop."
"The exertion in his voice has made him slightly hoarse."
Voice Actor
This inner voice character is in charge of vision. They decode cyphers and Chinese character codes/radicals. It's a starry eyed voice who loves to artistically depict their observations with flair.
- english
- starry
- chinese
"He dances the cigarettes across his fingers like playing with an ink brush. The minute embers flay like the cracking of a whip."
Voice Actor
An inner voice which feeds you real-world information/knowledge, and facts. It is a non-judgmental scholarly voice working to teach you things and bring to the forefront cultural comparisons, trivia and make the player more familiar with the setting through schematic exploration.
- english
- Scholarly
- female adult
- chinese
- male adult
"These cigarettes are imported from the port of Shanghai. A cosmopolitan urban nest of vice and materialism from foreign countries."
"The product is popular among both the women and the men and have taken everyone's breath for little reason."
"Even the billboards of the port city are graphically devoured by such advertisments."
Voice Actor
An imaginative and dreamy innervoice. It guides you to corners of the world far away from you, it lets you imagine different lives, people and philosophical reflections. A soft, artistic, evocative voice, slow and measured.
- english
- narration
- male adult
- Reflective
- narrative
- female adult
- Somber
"The world continued to spin and weave with history without your agency."
"Somewhere in those sandy mountains, red banners and demoralised peasants reside. They're probably selling their rifles to purchase rice even."
"Perhaps disapointed of the empty promise or apathetic to the unchanging wasteland of politics arresting their own free agency once more."
Voice Actor
An inner voice with much excitement and animation. It manages all the wordplay, manipulation, convincing, and conversations. It's highly judgmental and slightly cynical in how it perceives linguistic constructs to reach a goal. An energetic, if not chaotic, voice.
- english
- emotive
- male adult
- animated
- audacity
"It was like a confederation of Mongol hordes, with problems sweeping over the northern capital."
"They were the men legally assigned to deliver a "fuck off" message."
"Academics are so cryptic and dramatic."
Voice Actor
A domineering inner voice. It is the drill seargent or general, rought gruff and strongly toe to toe with authoritative and direct statements. highly judgemental, rebukive and tends to interfere in other thoughts.
- english
- Authority
- male adult
- chinese
- authoritative
- audacity
"The correct position."
"They charmed the undsciplined soldier to cease resisting temptation of such vices, throwing the republic into degeneracy, one puff at a time."
"Corrupt eunuchs live amongst us still."
Voice Actor
The voice of inner reason. A soft, motivating voice teaching you how to keep yourself going for focus, morale and other factors. It will also point out biases in the other skills and give neutral, balanced views. A voice of neutrality, calmness and paternalism with emotive motivation.
- english
- motivational
- male adult
- female adult
- audacity
"It's time to get up."
"Change is a medicine for stagnation. The people drive forward entropy and erode tradition when its fangs turn on them."
Voice Actor
An inner voice describing other people and their networks to others. It is an animated voice with excitement that likes to detail large character desriptions and personalize upcoming characters.
- english
- male adult
- evocative
- female adult
- chinese
- audacity
Newsmaster Wang in the Great Eight Alleys, son of a disgraced journalist who grew up in subsequent poverty from a young age.
Functionally illiterate, he worked as a paperboy and plastered his house in spare newspaper and became an auto-didact literate.
He uses his walls as dictionaries and creative runes for ruminesce advice from the downtrodden."
Voice Actor
The inner voice maintains both drama and pacing. It is used to react or improvise in a situation. It is a mischief, a troll, and at times unreliable. It's an excited voice modelled closely to Sun Wukong's nature. slightly chaotic but mostly animated.
- male adult
- female adult
- chinese
- Ecstatic
- dramatic
"The perfect answer for misdirection is to say you 'forgot'."
"Excellent performance and timing."
"A perfect stage name, 'Newsmaster Wang'."
Voice Actor
The underlying inner voice of memory and instinct/intuition. It is a calm alarm bell for anything explaining something you forgot or a sixth sense giving you insight into a situation. A cautious calming voice with some scholarly sense.
- english
- male adult
- female adult
- warm
- soothing
- audacity
"Nothing emerges from the abyss, but it is not yet lost."
"You can always try to remember at a more opportune time."
"Let the moment pass."
Voice Actor
An inner voice of pure chaos. It is like a gaslight voice for alcohol, gambling, and ruining your body for hedonism. A warm voice with some sleazy undertones, perfidy and sass, but should be presentable and in tone with the other voices.
- english
- Sleazy
- chinese
- male adult
- audacity
"What if there is something of value here? Imagine, just imagine, you can go *invest* this money into gambling and walk home with a few more big notes in that hollow pocket."
"Or even better, find something with a strong kick and consume it, let it rent our nerves asunder and turn chameoleon to reality."
"I have offerred a *genius* win-win situation. We either get seed capital for dogmeat or we bask our mind into a herbal infused wash where we purify ourselves from the inside out."
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