Some positive news have come out from the team at the Modern Visual Arts Laboratory (or M-Vizlab for short). As a team of just three people, they have been working on the localization, writing and coding of a visual novel known as Lucy: The Eternity She Wished For; which they originally released in Korea during 2010. Citing it as being highly praised for its story, M-Vizlab have been at work on redoing ‘Lucy: The Eternity She Wished For’ for the international market with “greatly improved graphics” and a “streamlined storyline”.
While it has some backing from the Korean market, there were two hurdles potentially facing the visual novel effectively reaching the market: getting past Steam Greenlight and the success of its $6,000 Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. Both issues have posed no challenge at all for the small team.
After just six days on Steam Greenlight, M-Vizlab was able to celebrate having received enough votes from the community to ultimately be “Greenlit” for release on Steam whenever development and localization has been concluded. Also, with eighteen days to go of their Kickstarter campaign, they have managed to raise $7,960 CAD and are just about to reach the $8,000 stretch goal which consists of a bonus scenario and brand new conclusion (Which was created for the original game but could not be released). These numbers include one backer who pledged at least $1,000 and three backers who hit the $500 tier.
Below is a brief synopsis of the visual novel, which as with most VN’s will be highly text and storyline driven:
The story takes place in the near future and the player plays as a nameless protagonist, a high school boy, who discovers an android from a dumpsite. As the story goes on, he finds out that Lucy is very different from the other androids on the streets. With its highly elaborate emotional expression module, Lucy is almost impossible to distinguish between a robot and a real human.
Although these crowdfunding numbers don’t come anywhere close to what Sekai Project has raised for major VN titles such as CLANNAD ($541,161), the numbers that M-Vizlab have achieved to date are impressive, and I personally look forward to seeing how the storyline turns out to be. For more detailed information and to possibly pledge some funds towards the crowdfunding campaign, you can visit the Lucy: The Eternity She Wished For Kickstarter page HERE.
