Rat Rhapsody ~ a Waning Crescent story
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
Vampire: the Masquerade ~ Rat Rhapsody: a Waning Crescent game
In a Camarilla court, love and politics are always uneasy bedmates. When a Nosferatu discovers his young Toreador lover has betrayed him, he must navigate the dangerous waters of court, choosing allies — and possibly new lovers — and risking making enemies, as he decides how best to proceed.
Visual novel game based on Vampire: the Masquerade V5, created for the VtM game jam 2022 and part of the Dark Pack agreement. This story is fully standalone, though those who played Waning Crescent will recognise some familiar faces! If you are new to the WoD universe, we recommend to try playing Waning Crescent, it has a fully integrated glossary of terminology.
Game length is about 40-60 minutes.
LAST PATCH update for bug fixes: 02 April 2023
The Team:
Game design and project management: Gaia Fiorenza / Archon Bun
Writing and editing: Katy / finch
Programming and SFX design: Moira / Q
Artist: Thomas / snjorvasaris, Veri's original visual lead
UI assets: Vasilis / Eucatastrophe Design
Music: Red Robotix
With thank you to ingo for their tips about Hungary.
Art and sound assets are used under an open access or CC attribution license or are in the public domain. We do not own these materials.
Background image of Vajdahunyad Castle Interior used with the permission of the Hungarian Museum of Agriculture and the photographer Miluță Flueraş. We thank Robby McCullough for the open source image of the red study used under Unsplash license.
All under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication:
Laughing male uploaded by bwav
Longchuckle1 by ehohnke
Bells by keweldog
Breaking glass mirror by gladkiy
Gasp 5 by jayfrosting
Horobiro(Perish)(Deep)(Scoff) by KeenanAXQuinn
Tut tut by anvil278
s museum uploaded by cmusounddesign under Attribution 3.0 mixed with footsteps in museum uploaded by arpeggio1980 under CC0 License
All under Attribution 3.0 license:
Museum Fine Arts uploaded by pmedig
Footsteps - hard heel uploaded by SoundsofTh
Turning Pages of Book uploaded by 190042
Male laugh uploaded by Ch0cchi
All under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0):
Whispering Sounds uploaded by SPANAC
Male Gasp Short uploaded by TheBuilder15
Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.
Download
Install instructions
To play the game, simply download the appropriate zip file for your operating system, unzip and double click the executable/app to play.
Development log
- Version 1.9 is liveMay 07, 2023
- Rat Rhapsody Windows Version 1.8Apr 02, 2023
- Version 1.5Dec 02, 2022
Comments
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I was super excited when I saw this entry as I absolutely adored Waning Crescent last year and had actually replayed it a few months ago. I was curious to see what you would do for this year's game jam and finally got a moment to play it and once again, I had an absolute blast.
I was even more thrilled to see this story was from the perspective of Tamás as well. I was very much intrigued by him in Waning Crescent, so this was a fascinating insight to his character; choosing to explore the theme of love among monsters through the eyes of a Nosferatu is such a beautiful decision. It also brings me a lot of joy whenever other people choose Budapest as their setting as it is so rich and intriguing.
Once again the music was fantastic in how it propelled the suspense between decisions. I also really enjoyed how clean and readable the UI is, and the inclusion of save states made it very useful to go back and pick all of the alternate options!
As always, I'm interested to see whatever future endeavours are in store, well done to you all! :)
Hey, thank you so much for leaving a comment. We're really glad that this second "instalment" worked for you. We wanted to do something in the same universe so to speak, and explore things and characters we didn't manage to work into the story last round (like the Bahari lore that exists for Budapest. It's a great city, by the way).
We definitely think the save system was needed and we wanted to put it in last time as well, we just kind of fought with the engine and ran out of time. We learnt for this round though! Again, thank you so much, we hope to produce more visual novels for VtM!
I listened to the Waning Crescent soundtrack on repeat while working on my own game this year (it's so good!!), and I got myself through the last few days of the deadline by telling myself I could play this one as a treat once I was done. I really love the way the writing and music come together to create the game's atmosphere, and I like how the text boxes are positioned so they don't hide the art.
It was also fun to see how I found myself slipping really easily into this new character. In Waning Crescent, I found myself making choices that I, as a player, normally wouldn't because I felt so drawn into Florian. And now here, I found myself doing the same thing, making choices that felt right for Tamás instead of me. I really admire the strong yet subtle sense of voice in both games that drew me into that headspace so quickly.
I loved seeing more of the court in this entry, too! The stuff with the Prince and the politics surrounding her have me so interested!! I'm so glad you decided to participate in the jam again this year, and I'll be looking forward to any further entries in the series if you decide to make them :)
- Megan
Red's work is phenomenal! I'm glad it helped you with your own project ♥
Tamas was a cool character to give the spotlight to, and it's a great compliment to hear that he made you think "like him" and that the voice drew you in. Thank you so much for playing and leaving a comment.
I played Waning Crescent when it came out last year and it turned out to be my favourite of the game jam entries, so it was a joy to see you come back this year to revisit the setting. Really enjoyed seeing Tamás again and especially liked hearing his internal monologue and having the chance to see a bit beyond the purely pragmatic Nos we met in Crescent. His dynamic with Ariel was especially compelling to me.
Loved the music too, that cello! So good.
Overall, this was fantastic and I'll be rooting for you to get another podium placement. It'd be well deserved!
Thank you so much, we had fun with revisiting the setting from a new point of view. We love the work Red is doing with the music and were glad to have him on board again for this. Thank you so much for your kind words, I hope you'll enjoy playing this again (especially now that all script bugs should be squashed lol...)