If you haven’t found the answer to your question, we invite you to our Discord, on the #baduknovel channel you can informally chat with developers and other subscribers.
What does the name mean?
Ishi no Ki can be loosely translated as "Spirit of Stones". The meeting of the main character and Atsumi took place after he picked up a stone for playing Go. It sounds beautiful and is easy to remember.
What is Go?
The game of Go (also known as baduk) originated in ancient China about 2,000 years ago. It became popular in Japan and then spread throughout the world. The goal of the game is to occupy more territory on the board than the opponent by forming groups of stones. Learn more
Why a visual novel game?
It's simple - we love Go and visual novels.
When reading a visual novel, you make decisions that affect the development of the plot. What path the hero chooses and what fate awaits him depends on you.
We want not only to introduce readers to this game, but also tell an interesting story, after the end of which you may look at the world around you and at yourself a little differently. Well, perhaps you will love Go as much as we loved it.
How much will the game cost?
The purpose of development is to popularize the game Go, so the game will be officially free. But you can always support us. The release date of the game and its subsequent development directly depends on the amount of support.
Do you need to know how to play Go to complete the game?
In the case of our game - no! You will have the opportunity to solve simple problems in the game. But we will not distract you from the main story - all tasks will be available as additional content on the player’s phone.
Will there be an option to create romantic relationships with characters in the game?
Unfortunately, no - we love romance, but we are afraid that in this case it will interfere with the development of the plot. However, if someone creates a mod with elements of romance, we won’t mind :)
What engine is the game created on?
We wanted to use RenPy, but realized that we needed to add other mechanics to the game - an interactive game board and a mobile phone. So we settled on Unity. There were attempts to write our own engine in pure OpenGL / C++, but we quickly realized that this was irrational.
That is, it will be easy to make mods for the game?
Not to say it’s easy... Plot scripts are written in XML format, which is less convenient than py scripts. But we will provide up-to-date documentation and source code.
What distinctive features will the game have?
For now we are planning to add two “features”: Smartphone and Go board. Perhaps something else will appear during the development process.
Why do you capitalize "Go"?
There are no grammatical prerequisites for this. We just want to. The game Go has many names. Japanese "Go" is the most popular, but there are many overlaps with "CS Go", "Pokemon Go" and others. In China this game is called "Weiqi", and in Korea - "Baduk". Unfortunately, these options are not so popular.