Nova-box are no strangers to making narrative games. They have been doing it for over ten years and have built a strong library over that time.
After the Wane is their latest title, where we join dancer Lena, who’s trying to make it in the city while also dealing with love and other problems that young adulthood brings.
I was instantly fascinated by the game as soon as I laid eyes on the amazing art of the game, and after learning more about its narrative, I had to find out more about the game and its development. Thankfully Geoffroy and Nico from Nova-box were more than happy to answer my questions.
Can you give a little introduction to yourself and which roles you play at Nova-box?
Geoffroy Vincens (GV): Hello, I’m Geoffroy Vincens, the writer. I took care of most of the text and the branching narrative.
Nicolas Fouqué (NF): Hello, I’m Nicolas Fouqué, the art director, also the main illustrator of the game (our team is very small).
Nova-box has been around for some time, concentrating on narrative games. What is it about this genre that specifically calls out to you?
GV: I guess there are several reasons. First off, we’re both interested in storytelling, Nico and I. We’ve been quite avid readers since childhood, and we really love comic books. Since the games we make are our take on what might be an interactive graphic novel, we gravitated naturally towards this genre. Also, since these kinds of games are relatively inexpensive to make, it allows us to experiment much more freely and take risks that we couldn’t afford to take if we didn’t completely self-publish our production, in both the themes and the form of the narration itself.
After the Wane is your latest game and has just been revealed. How does this game fit into the trajectory of the studio?
GV: Well, After the Wane is our sixth release, but it’s also the third installment of the series we started with Along the Edge in 2016, followed by Across the Grooves in 2020. All three games feature a female protagonist at a turning point in her life, in the midst of an identity crisis that you, the player, are asked to help them navigate. All three games are independent, so you can play them in an order you want, and all fit in the loose genre of urban fantasy, with a measure of eeriness and magical realism for good measure.
For anyone who missed the reveal, what is After the Wane?
GV: After the Wane is a visual novel set in France, where you follow Lena, a dancer who’s just arrived in the capital to kickstart her career. She’s also in search of her lost mother, a dancer too, who gave her up for adoption at birth. Throughout the story, you’ll be confronted with several mysteries, you’ll meet a bunch of colourful characters, and you may try to find love (if you’re so inclined), all with the constant chatter of a voice in your head that comments on your every move.
One thing that really caught my eye was the dancing elements. Why choose to base the game around this?
GV: Well, I was interested in exploring dance as a sort of magic ritual. It also fitted well with the story I wanted to tell, which questions the notion of embodiment, identity, and performance.
I also suspected it would be something that would match very well with Nico’s art style, and I’m glad to report that he was indeed very inspired by this subject.
The trailer hints at many subjects that feature in the narrative, but near to the end it shows signs of dark, witchcraft elements. I’d love to know more on why you decided to bring these darker tones into the narrative.
GV: Stories need a bit of tension to pick your curiosity and pull you in, don’t they? While a good part of the story is quite grounded in everyday life, we like to inject a healthy dose of whimsy in our narratives, and this one doesn’t deviate from this habit. While it’s only hinted at in the trailer and in the demo, you can brace yourself for some weirdness as you dive in through the story.
The art style of the game is frankly beautiful. Nico, how did you end up using this style of art for the game?
NF: Since the game is a part of a series and I wanted to stay true to what we’ve already established in our previous titles Along the Edge and Across the Grooves, I had a good starting point from which to branch for this particular project. Since our protagonist is a bit younger than her predecessors, I adapted the style to reflect that with a sketchy and lightly stylised line alongside a bold and colourful palette.
For the animated scenes, the challenge was that I had to produce hundreds of images on my own, so I had to choose a style that would be realistically achievable. Therefore, I went for sketchy animations that would be more evocative than clinical, based on real dancers’ performances, captured to keep the movements realistic. The goal was to emphasise the magical character of the movement, as if the undulating watercolours and vibrating lines were coming to life.
Did you at all have another style of art you were going to use?
NF: One of the main themes of the game being dance, I knew I would have to find a way to show movement. In the pre-production phase, the first concept-arts were based on the use of chronophotography, which superimposes a whole sequence of time on a single frame, encompassing the whole of the movement in time and space. The results were quite convincing, and you still find some of it in parts of the game.
However, once I had each of the chronophotography frames pencilled, I tried to animate them. Realising it worked just fine and would not be that much more costly to go for these rotoscoping animations than the chronophotography I was initially envisioning, I decided to follow through with it.
For the rest of the game, I was aiming for a more stylised style but had to stay coherent with these animated scenes, which tend to be more realistic due to the rotoscoping method I used to create them.
What processes did you have to include to get the desired effects in the visuals?
NF: The art style also developed in sometimes surprising directions thanks to our collaboration with our dance performers. We always start with a text draft of the scene, which provides a general direction. Sometimes it’s abstract and poetic ideas; sometimes it’s more narratively entwined with the story and, therefore, more descriptive and down-to-earth.
We come with this text material as an initial brief for the dancers. Working on it and insufflating their own sensibility, creativity and art language, they always have beautiful, inspiring ideas that elevate the scene, making it look lusher and more meaningful, sometimes pushing me to completely overhaul my initial vision. Then, we capture it on video, using a fixed frame shot so that the movement is very easy to understand visually.
I then select the frames to draw from the video capture and finish by exporting everything in After Effects, where I add background animations and other special effects.
The soundtrack also sounds beautiful and really lifts the game in the trailer. What can you tell us about the music and its composition?
GV: We’ve been working for the better part of a decade with Illustrason, a duo of French music composers, and we’re big fans of their approach and how it elevates both Nico’s art style and my prose. They both come from what we call “musique à l’image” in French, meaning they specialise in sound illustration with an emphasis on sonic landscapes and a solid understanding of cinema and documentary scores. I suppose it’s quite evident when you hear their music, and that’s something that, we believe, matches very well with our artistic intentions.
What have been some of your biggest challenges during development of the game?
GV: Well, “it’s not our first rodeo”, as they say, so we were quite prepared. However, the challenges for us are always the same: making do with tiny budgets and very little margin for error, managing both our time and the scope of the game, and of course, anything related to marketing and communication, which has never been our forte. Fortunately, Antonio (Davisseau) has helped us a lot on this last front since he joined the team about a year ago as our marketing and communication person. He’s a wizard.
If you could describe After the Wane in one word, which word would you use and why?
GV: It’s quite unfair for the project to try to condense it in one word, but I’ll try.
Let’s say “anamnesis”, which is the process of rediscovering your true, inner self. And I’ll leave it at that if you’ll allow me, hoping that would pick your interest while ending this interview on a mysterious note.
After the Wane releases on November 10th. Play the demo and wishlist right now on Steam.
