Soviet Games announced over the end of the year holiday season that Love, Money, Rock’n’Roll is currently still heavy under devleopment and they have plans on getting the visual novel up and out at some point in 2018.
In the Steam community update they informed the gaming audience that the Unity-powered visual novel now has a playable demo available with multiple endings and features 40,000 words. Additionally, the team has gone back to make adjustments to the game’s presentation so that the choices are more poignant and that the visuals standout in equal measure to the story they’re trying to tell, hence their conversion to Live2D models even for secondary characters.
As explained in the post…
“[…] the new demo is worth playing just to plunge yourself for extra two days into the atmosphere of the Eighties and rock’n’roll, to keep getting familiar with the story and the characters, to listen to the new tracks and to see the new art!
“The way of handling sprites has been significantly changed — in this version, we tried to make use of everything Live2D has to offer, as well as of the talents of our artists and animators! Not to mention, every sprite is animated now, secondary characters included.”
The game follows Nikolai, the son of two Soviet engineers. He gets wrapped up in a conspiracy while also attempting to navigate the sometimes confusing and heartbreaking reality of teenage romance. The game is set against the backdrop of the 1980s, and features 3.5 hours worth of music, multiple endings and four different romance paths.
You can get a glimpse at the art and some of the characters with the trailer below.
The full game will feature more than 100 backgrounds and 100 different event Cgs, along with a 300,000 word script, all put together over the course of the last two years.
Soviet Games managed to get the game crowdfunded back in 2016 via a campaign on IndieGoGo for $52,000.
If you’re curious about the game you can grab the demo for Love, Money, Rock’n’Roll either from over on the Steam store page or by picking up the free demo from the Itch.io page.