A downloadable game for Windows and macOS

Vampire: the Masquerade ~ Waning Crescent

The game won third place in the Game Jam!

Visual novel game based on Vampire: the Masquerade V5, created for the VtM game jam 2021 and part of the Dark Pack agreement. Includes a glossary for players new to the World of Darkness universe! Press ESC to access it in game.

Game length should average between a half hour and an hour, depending on how quickly it's played. It has three endings, one slightly updated on Nov 30th. Please let us know in a comment if you find any bugs. : )

To open Waning Crescent in Mac OSX, please go to System Preferences > Security > General > Open Anyway if you get an alert about security due to developer issues. Windows executable will give a security warning on download (including to us who developed!), please ask your PC to ignore it to install and play.


What's a Thinblood? A vampire whose blood's curse is too weak to fully manifest, leaving them somewhere between life and undeath. Who is believed to be an omen of the end times. A vampire who gets branded by their full-blooded cousins if captured, to be recognisable, traceable, and sometimes hunted down.

Play as Florian, a Thinblood dragged before the court of modern Budapest, and watch the personal intertwine with the political, your betrayals with your safety, as you pick between a Nosferatu and a Toreador to survive the night.

Play the stand-alone sequel in the same universe too, Rat Rhapsody!

The team:

Gaia Fiorenza / Archon Bun ~ writing, narrative design, art editing
Katy Maziarz / finch ~ writing, editing, copyediting
Veri ~ art, UI design, programming
Moira / Quoth ~ programming, sound design, UX design
Red Robotix ~ music

Listen to the full soundtrack HERE!

Other credits:

Creepy Atmosphere by Blocky

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. Sounds are taken from freesoundlibrary.com and freesound.org. 

Three strikes with room reverb uploaded by odditonic, Footsteps Concrete A uploaded by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk), Finger Snaps uploaded by Snapper4298, all under Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0); no changes were made to these files. Crowd light whisper uploaded by kyles, Pencil uploaded by zakkolar, Long Chuckle 1 uploaded by ehohnke, all under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication; Whispering Sounds uploaded by SPANAC under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Heartbeat SFX provided by MrSnooze https://youtu.be/fLXLo3rEdrE

Art assets are taken from pexels.com and unsplash.com under their free licenses. Photoshop brushes by Brusheezy.com.

We thank for the open source photography: Peter Hermann, Nate Watson, Ján Jakub Naništa, Robby McCullough, Max Vakhtbovych, Nicola Nuttall. We also thank rawpixel.com, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the paintings that appear in the game, as well as the V5 Art Pack 1 from the Storytellers Vault for two backgrounds; they are all in the public domain or part of the Dark Pack agreement. 

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.

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS
Rating
Rated 4.9 out of 5 stars
(21 total ratings)
AuthorsGaia Fiorenza, Quoth
GenreVisual Novel
TagsAtmospheric, Creepy, Horror, LGBT, Multiple Endings, Narrative, Queer, Vampire, vtm
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
LanguagesEnglish

Download

Download
Waning Crescent Mac v2.1.zip 112 MB
Download
Waning Crescent Windows v2.1.zip 104 MB

Install instructions

Download the relevant zip file for your device and unzip to play!

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

I loved it. I don't know why but the music really caught my ear, it was very atmospheric and not tiring to hear on repeat at all. Also, the art is beautiful. Also loved the characters, William in particular. I kept going back in his dialogue to hear that little sound effect of his whispers hahah

I feel like I could play a game of 20 hours just about these characters lol, a shame (for me) it was so short but SO impressive that it was done in such a short time

(+1)

Hey, thank you so much for your words! Red did an amazing job with the music, we loved working with him and he remained in the team also for the "sequel" game. 

Really happy you liked William, he's a fun character to write. Overall we're super happy that you enjoyed your time with the game so much. We totally would have added more things, had we had more time available!

(+1)

Really enjoyed this game! Currently playing through all the submissions of the game jam and started with yours first. Hehe going to be a high bar for others to pass. Me and my friend loved the characters and wished we could have more time with them. 

I did have one question, we got 2 of the endings but were having trouble finding the third one you mentioned. We got the endings with William and Tamas becoming our Mawlas, but not certain how to get the third ending. Any tips or hints?

Hello, thank you very much for playing! We had fun with making this game and I'm glad other people are left with a wish to interact with the characters more. Hopefully, something will come in the future!

As for the endings, Tamas and William are the only two guardian options, but there is a chance that, even picking William, you will not succeed in gaining him as Mawla. Essentially, you can a) pick Tamas; b) pick William and get William; c) pick William but, due to choices in the flashbacks, get Tamas instead. The main way to reach this ending is by selling William to Tamas and by giving Tamas information on the Voice; the more Tamas knows, the more likely that he will be able to convince the Prince that he is the right guardian for Florian during the confrontation in Elysium. In this ending, flavour text changes and Tamas picks a different location for the Thinblood brand during the branding scene.

(+1)

Thank you so much for getting back to me! I look forward to running through to get that ending. We were looking everywhere for someone to tell us how to get it. My friend group have been playing VTM tabletop for a few years now and I am so thrilled by all the name games and other media being produced in that universe. 

(+2)

Loved every second of it, great work. Has been some time since a game really made me conect with characters and doubt my decisions, thank you for the experience.

9.5/10

Hey, thank you so much for your comment. We're glad we could deliver an immersive experience and characters despite the limited length and time costraints. We're definitely planning more for this game, it's great to hear that you enjoyed it. 

(+1)

I absolutely loved it! I played through both routes like I couldn't put down a good book and read through it all in one sitting. The character sprites were beautiful, and the music was really nice too, it really made the perfect atmosphere you'd expect in a VTM game. Best of luck in the game jam! 

Thank you so much! I'm delighted you enjoyed it enough to play the different routes, and I can't thank enough the rest of the team for all the work they put into it. I'm glad the atmosphere we tried to build worked for you. Thanks for leaving us a comment. ♥

(+1)

The bad:
- some of the models are either missing or were not finished in time. 
the good:
- existing art looks beautiful
- the existing characters have very distinct personalities and I'm loving them. 

Overall I feel like I wanted to know more about what happens after rather than before, however I had a lot of fun with this one and I feel like it drives the point of "there's no winning" fairly well.

(+5)

I'm a sucker (lol) for Thinblood stories, so it was right up my alley! Loved the setting and beautiful character sprites, all three of them were very interestingly written and I'd love to roleplay with them if I could :)

(+1)

Thank you, glad you enjoyed! ♥ Another version of William is on SbN too, though at the moment he isn't being played.

(+3)

"...as opposed to me, dead only in halves."

A great take on the Thinblood perspective. I love all these jam entries based in specific locales--this felt lived in, no pun intended.

Excellent production values over all--even down to this download page! I liked the clean look of everything. I ended up picking Tamas, but William was very intriguing. Liked the whisper effect you gave him. Really, not enough good things can be said about such a high-quality game made in such a short period of time. 

Thank you so much for playing! I'm glad that the research on Budapest paid off, we tried to make it feel like it was really set in that city. Happy that you enjoyed it so much and thanks a lot for leaving this really nice comment. ♥

(+1)

Hello! I played this on my stream last night and totally enjoyed it. The writing is superb, the story and characters are revealed wonderfully as you work your way through the plot. I loved the art style of the characters, the atmosphere and the music were susperb. Here's the link to my streamed video, I hope that's ok

(1 edit)

Hey, thanks so much for playing! You making the voices was really a treat. Also thanks for bringing to our attention that small options bug, where if you change resolution it turns off the audio for some reason, we will be looking into ways to fix it. I'm very glad you enjoyed the team's efforts. ♥

(+1)

Hey, thanks for the message, the pleasure was totally mine, its a great game and I hope it does will in the jam. Glad you liked the voices :)

(+3)

Huh, just got finished with Waning Crescent (well, one path anyway), it was pretty good though short. It felt me with a lot of questions but also a weird sense of satisfaction at the end. 4.5/5, would recommend.

What I liked particularity was the fact that you only truly showcased three of the characters with individual figures and left the others as blank visages. This shows the fear/uncertainty of the main character as well as when you show Tamas and William that this characters stick out. Each of the mawla are interesting in their own right and true to their clan but in a way that they stick out to a reader that they are their own individual person.

(My favorite part was how you described the Prince honestly, I already had a clear idea of who you were trying to describe and my mind filled in the blanks for me.)

Thank you so much for leaving a comment. I wish I'd had the time to add more content and still finish in time, with another month I would certainly have loved to make the game lengthier, but even so I'm glad it worked for you with the narrative that was in and with the way we handled the sprites. Also cheers for recognising the Prince!

(+4)

With its clever plot, lovely graphics, and an amazing soundtrack this game is designed to leave you wanting for more. Even as a complete novice to the game's world I quickly found myself swept in the politics and intrigues of Budapest vampiric society.  I loved where the glossary was placed, so not to break immersion and still offer people like me an easy way to research terminology.
This visual novel is a small gem that now I find myself wanting more and more of! 

Thanks so much for playing ♥ I'm glad the glossary worked and that the narrative was intuitive enough that someone who doesn't know anything about VtM could still understand what was going on and have fun with it. 

(+2)

Sorry for being less eloquent, but still: this slaps. Really captured the VtM atmosphere and the sprites are A+.

(+1)

Eloquent or not, thank you so much for reading and playing this game. I'm really glad that the atmosphere worked for you, and that you like the art. Our artist did so much great work and I'm happy to see it paid off.

(6 edits) (+2)

Brilliant. Gorgeous backgrounds and sprites. Smooth natural prose and dialogue. Crisp sound quality. In sum, they make for an eerie and haunting ambiance anyone familiar with the franchise will find spot-on in the most satisfying way.

I most enjoyed the representation of the two would-be Mawlas: Tamas, the Nosferatu; and William the Toreador. I found them both to be true-to-clan, yet also original in their representation.

Tamas was my favorite sprite--his Bane manifests as an owl-like face with a glass eye. Rather than a typical, more bleeding heart, Nosferatu, I found him to be brazenly pragmatic. Akin to a Ventrue, especially when you add in his Haven and attire. Yet, there is something of that Nosferatu mercy in the way he conceals you while he can so you go unbranded, the way he doesn't exploit blood bond, and the way he is utterly honest. "I use you, you use me, we both get what we want."

William remains a token Toreador, with regards to seductiveness and being artistic, but is less stereotypically flamboyant. Neither is he as vain, opting against the Blush of Life in private. Auspex was the perfect decision for a Discipline focus for a non-combat game.

TL;DR: I adore it. Best of all, it manages an immense amount of lore woven seamlessly into the narrative so that I never felt like I was playing a tutorial. The scope is perfect, deciding on a guardian given the simple crime of being. The take is fresh, sympathetic Thinblood subservience within the Camarilla. I was delighted to play and am going to immediately replay to see the other route. Bravo, guys. Thanks for this addition to the World of Darkness. I truly felt like my crescent was waning.

(+1)

This was an incredibly kind comment. I'm really delighted that you liked the game this much and that the mawali worked for you. 

We wanted to deliver something that felt like the clan for them, but with a slight twist (William in fact never uses the blush of life, not even outside; there's hints in his scene about the reason why. In other words, he's got a certain loresheet). Recognisable without being overdone. And I'm very glad that it seems we succeeded.

Likewise for the lore, we really tried to bake in a lot of it in small references, without trying to instruct the player. Thanks again for playing and for this lovely comment. ♥