By Michelle Curtis on May 25, 2014 at 10:26pm
You are Auralee, a heavenkind aspiring to be a knight, out on a routine patrol on the outskirts of the town of Berri. Daughter of Lady Bayard, a former Captain of the Guard, knighthood is in your blood. You seek to protect others and pursue justice. On this patrol, you come across a strange man with rock-like protrusions where his ears should be. He is asleep and will not wake despite your efforts to do so. You make camp and watch over him. When he finally comes to, you learn that he is Kerr and that he is in fact a dragonkind with the element of Earth. His master turned him into a heavenkind to learn how to interact and possibly understand the heavenkind. Despite his obvious distaste for your kind, he allows you to escort him on his quest to visit the dragon altars.
“Autumn's Journey” is the first project of Apple Cider, a development team from all over the globe, from Chile to Canada, Malaysia to the U.S. It started as a NaNoReNo project (the visual novel version of National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo), but soon it grew much larger than anticipated. A small but enthusiastic team utilized free resources and even dipped into their own pockets to fund the game. While this venture marks the first time these members have worked together under the Apple Cider banner, each of them has had varying degrees of experience with the visual novel genre and dating sims.
Gameplay
First and foremost, it is a fantasy visual novel with elements of romance, action, and intrigue. There is some debate on its status as an otome or dating sim game. As with most visual novels, there is no real gameplay involved other than making choices for Auralee.
While the choices are very limited (typically there were only two options per decision scenario), there is a sequence in which you are expected to carry out missions. You receive several choices in which missions you can carry out (you can choose about four). Depending on which mission you choose, the game plays a semi-animated chibi scene detailing the outcome of the mission. While this was very entertaining (and adorable), I am disappointed that the other decision scenarios seemed to have little effect on the overall outcome of the storyline. The game also felt kind of short. The story wrapped up in about nine chapters.
Environment
True to its genre, the backgrounds were static but very pretty. The outdoor scenes were lush and vibrant. The interiors were very earthy and rustic which fit with the fantasy theme. When you first encounter Kerr, you are outdoors on patrol. The background is a wooded area, thick with birch trees. I really enjoyed the fact that they used a distinct variety of tree instead of a generic brown-trunked tree. Each background was given a great deal of forethought and attention.
The colors used throughout the game were absolutely perfect. Drawn in an anime style, Auralee, as well as the other characters, were colored with palettes that matched either their persona or their element. For instance, Auralee is a very bright, exciteable character. As such, her colors are warmer and more vibrant. The character who stood out the most to me, though, was Ilmari. The image of him in his water dragon form as he is rising from the water struck me as particularly beautiful. The tranquility of the blues and greens in that image matched his even-tempered nature.
As I mentioned earlier, there were some semi-animated chibi scenes in the game. They added a fun, light-hearted element to the game that felt very essential to “Autumn's Journey”. While there were some tense scenes, the chibi scenes helped balance out the atmosphere of the game.
Soundtrack
The background music was not distracting, which is incredibly important when dealing with a visual novel. You want to be able to read the text but still remain immersed in the world. “Autumn's Journey” featured a variety of tracks to set the mood. The expository scenes utilized simple harp music, but it sounded almost ethereal when coupled with the beautiful backgrounds. It lended a very Ren Faire feel to the game. Actions or tense moments were heightened with more instrumentals and sounds of conflict.
My biggest complaint with the soundtrack was the character voice work. While many visual novels don't typically use a great deal of voice acting, While I appreciated that the characters were given voices, many lines were reused too often. There were times when Auralee came off as kind of annoying (which bothered me because she's such a likeable, relatable character) and Kerr sounded kind of generic.
Final Words
Overall, it was an enjoyable experience. I look forward to another Apple Cider project—perhaps a sequel—to “Autumn's Journey”. The characters were fun and relatable. I was highly impressed with the caliber of the game considering that it is free to download across various platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux with a possible future release on Android).
