A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Available in English and Українська.


Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a traveller...


Our protagonist, a mysterious traveller, wanders the far-off land of Desservir searching for patrons to buy their wares.
Upon hearing about a large annual market in the village of Castella, the traveller decides to set up a stall and try their luck.
Life, however, is not so easy.
After being double-crossed by a goblin and left in the middle of the cold, wet moors to die, the traveller almost gives up hope.
That is, until they stumble upon a mysterious church in the middle of nowhere, and meet the two nuns who attend to it.
What are these two nuns doing on their own, and why is there such a melancholy atmosphere in the air?
The traveller has only one windswept night to uncover these mysteries and learn the truth.


  • This VN has choices and multiple branches
  • The script is around 40k
  • Since it's a yurijam VN, it focuses on yuri (GxG) relationships
  • Custom sprites, backgrounds, and OST
  • Written by the author of AsphyxiaStrawberry Vinegar, and Emmeline Burns



Writer/programmer: Ebi-hime
Artist: Melowbee
Composer: yuzuki
Extra songs were by the band Hungry Lucy.
My Beloved is licensed under BY-NC-SA.
Pulse of the Earth is licensed under BY-SA.
Ukranian translation: AleksaPsi
Translation editing: MaryLDevis
Correcting: Lacki23

Updated 14 days ago
StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux
Rating
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
(63 total ratings)
Authorebi-hime
GenreVisual Novel, Interactive Fiction
TagsAtmospheric, Female Protagonist, Lesbian, LGBT, Meaningful Choices, Multiple Endings, Romance, Yuri
LinksSteam

Download

Download
Once_on_a_windswept_night-pc.zip 150 MB
Download
Once_on_a_windswept_night-mac.zip 116 MB

Development log

Comments

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The atmosphere of this visual novel is absolutely amazing. The characters are so well-written and have a lot of depth. The soundtrack is gorgeous. I enjoyed exploring all the endings and getting the final scene felt cathartic.

(+1)

Loved this all the way through! Comedic, tragic, heart-breaking and heart-mending all at once, fantastic story coupled with interesting 'meta' elements

The art is nothing to scoff at either! Felt well suited to the story within stories 

Great work :)

(+1)

Thank you very much! I'm glad you liked it!

(1 edit) (+1)

Just wondering, is the story and title a reference to "If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino?

Also, I enjoyed the game a lot! "Meta" elements in visual novels always make me happy

(+2)

The title is indeed a reference to 'If on a winter's night a traveler'.
Thank you, I'm glad you liked it!

(13 edits)

Cried as hell on this one. The thing about fear of unrequited love was such a classic, and yet I totally fell for it. I don't think I had this intensity of crying since a big while. I'm a fan (less of the ending but... Guess I would have been gloomy for some time if it had been different).

I loved the traveller demeanor too.

Thanks again for this stunning story ; wasn't a fan of the concept of nested story, and the fact it started "slow", and then... Totally fell for the writing, I don't know what magic it is, it just works for me.

Also the soft piano piece ? Great stuff, sometimes it seemed like it was a perfect fit with the dialogues and it gave me chiiils.


I'll be sure to check all your did now, I must !

Oh, thank you very much! I'm glad you liked it! >_<

This is probably my most 'experimental' VN, the vast majority of my other stuff are linear KNs without any branches. I had fun playing around with the narrative a bit more than usual!

(1 edit)

I'm kind of happy you'd dare to take risks like that, even if my first thoughts were "waat the hell, a story in a story in a story ? Come on !". At the end it works and stands out because of that.

Unrelated but Lycoris's first vibes reminded me of Monika from Dokidoki, I really though she tried to glance at the player at first !

Thank you! Any similarities to DDLC would be a coincidence, since I think this VN was released before DDLC, but I can see they share some traits haha

I had read it on Steam. A great story, and I love the concept of some dialogs variations depending on your name chosen. 

(1 edit)

Mate! I don't know if you are reading this but this is such an amazing way to tell a love story. Bloody hell with the ending! I god damn cried!! Such a good bloody story mate! You must have an amazing imagination! I'm really sad that they didn't get to fall deep in love when they were alive and had to wait all that time... Gosh even ---- forgot her memory... I've never been on such a unique roller coaster of emotions before

10/10!

heck, I accidentally skipped through whatever the bit before the final repeating portion was

(6 edits) (+1)

It's very nice game with interesting story and beautiful artstyle but it's not a yuri game in typical meaning of it. There totally nothing about dating and desire.  It's about the purest kind of love. The biggest possible love feeling. When you love somebody by all your heart. Some kind of  soulmate and the most important person in the whole world. Your deepest feelings and your "obsession". It's why this game is unique and beautiful.

Especially when your are going to see all the good endings. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I really loved the way you set up the narration in this one, with the stories within stories and the intricate use of the engine. It kinda reminded me of what Christine Love also does with Ren'Py. I think it complements your writing style pretty well and I'd love to see you present stories in a similar fashion in the future (although I haven't played all your VNs yet so you might already have done so :x ).

Thank you u///u

The use of the engine isn't really that 'intricate' haha XD; I probably couldn't do some of the complicated things Christine Love does with Ren'py as I'm not particularly good at coding.

I haven't done any other visual novels like this, and I'm not sure if I will in the future, but it was a fun experiment.

i had to sign up on this site so that i could say to you that this is one of the most beautiful stories ive ever experienced. thank u so much for making this. this and strawberry vinegar are my favorite visual novels of all time.....and the funny thing is, i only just found out their both by the same person.

u

r

AMAZING

Thank you very much! I'm glad you liked Windswept - and Strawberry Vinegar u///u
I think they are pretty different, haha... ;; But they were both a lot of fun to work on!

Really enjoyed playing through Once on a windswept night a few times! The art, music and story are amazingly good (also I greatly enjoyed Asphyxia). Thank you for submitting this to the yuri-jam.

No, I should be the one thanking you! I'm glad you liked it u///u
And thank you for checking out Asphyxia, too!

Bit of a random question but when you give Lycoris your name can she give different responses according to the name or was it just a hilarious coincidence that she made a comment about Wonderland after typing in the name Alice?

Also a second question: I know I'm missing stuff since Lycoris has made that pretty clear but how do I get from the story before that to whatever I'm missing? I've gotten the good and bad endings for both Daffodil and Madeleine as well as the bad ending from leaving early. I'm really not sure what choices I could make that I haven't made yet. Lycoris made a comment about not lying but I've tried that and it just ended with me back on Madeleine's path again.

The game has a pretty big variety of unique responses for certain names. You also get unique responses if you name the MC after characters from my other VNs, some other popular VNs/anime, and some meme-y ones.
As for the second question, do you want me to write a walkthrough? I can if you want. If you've read both Daff and Maddie's routes then getting the third one should be relatively easy.

Oh, is that so? That's a really neat touch.

And yes, I'd really appreciate it if you would do that. Unless completing both routes unlocks new choices to make or something (which I haven't noticed after replaying the entire story two more times after completing both their routes) I'm really not certain what to do to advance at this point.

(+1)

Hi! I finally got around to making that walkthrough you wanted!
I don't know if you still need it, but you can find it here!

Ah, I think I see where I went wrong. Lycoris makes a comment on one of the bad endings that a good ending can only happen from telling the truth so after that I hadn't told Daffodil that the food was good. I think that's probably why I was having trouble getting it. Thanks!

Really glad you wrote that. The part of the story I'd missed was fantastic. Though there are a few errors in the writing I noticed for this part that feel big enough to point out:

On the line ""Don't lie to me, my number one not-fan. I can tell!" said the poet", the poet should be the dancer. Also for "Wh-why did you make me wait...?" it feels like the name is switched around.

I can't finish this :( . It's a shame since it seemed so good at the start. Even though the character in the story is referred to as 'they' it feels so much like i'm playing as a man I can't get into it. It broke the immersion for me.

I would really, really recommend you continue on. I promise you won't regret it.

I can't reply to this without spoiling the story, but I'm sorry you feel this way.

This is amazing and so in depth and compelling. Wow!

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it!

(5 edits)

I haven't reached the end of the story yet, but it is quite a beautiful one. have reached the end of the story and it is AMAZING. Anyhow, I think I found a glitch regarding one of the choices.

KINDA SPOILERS, I GUESS, SO DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ YET

So, when the traveller gets to choose between lying to Daffodil and telling the truth, I chose to tell the truth the first time around. The next time, I decided to lie to her, but I got hit by an "An exception has occurred" error. I don't know anything about Ren'Py, so I have no idea what it's saying. I just pressed Ignore and everything seemed to work out alright, but, who knows, maybe it messed up something in the background.

Should probably post the traceback thing

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:

File "game/script.rpy", line 3121, in script

File "renpy/common/000window.rpy", line 117, in execute_window_show

trans = eval(p)

File "game/script.rpy", line 3121, in <module>

NameError: name 'dissolv' is not defined

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:

File "game/script.rpy", line 3121, in script

File "C:\Users\xxxx\Downloads\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\renpy\ast.py", line 1696, in execute

self.call("execute")

File "C:\Users\xxxx\Downloads\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\renpy\ast.py", line 1714, in call

return renpy.statements.call(method, parsed, *args, **kwargs)

File "C:\Users\xxxx\Downloads\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\renpy\statements.py", line 144, in call

return method(parsed, *args, **kwargs)

File "renpy/common/000window.rpy", line 117, in execute_window_show

trans = eval(p)

File "C:\Users\xxxx\Downloads\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\renpy\python.py", line 1670, in py_eval

return py_eval_bytecode(code, globals, locals)

File "C:\Users\xxxx\Downloads\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\Once_on_a_windswept_night-1.0-all\renpy\python.py", line 1665, in py_eval_bytecode

return eval(bytecode, globals, locals)

File "game/script.rpy", line 3121, in <module>

NameError: name 'dissolv' is not defined

Windows-8-6.2.9200

Ren'Py 6.99.11.1749

Once on a windswept night 1.0

LOVE THAT LINK TO YURI GAME JAM 2016 BY THE WAY! Even if it is a joke, I'd say it kind of gives some nice insight into her character.

SPOILERS END HERE

.Thank you, I'm glad you liked it u///u
This is a very simple problem haha. I mispelt one of the transitions as 'dissolv' instead of 'dissolve'. Ignoring this won't have any negative impact on the story and it won't mess anything up.
I just updated the game so this shouldn't be a problem anymore, though.
Thank you for telling me!