Tetralogy of Night Conversations

> *"It tells about a collection of narratives that hope to spark conversations on love—and by love, we don't simply mean the romantic kind. We believe that, to understand the nature of love, we need to look at its different types and how we, as human beings, express them."*
> - Dr. Joachim Emilio Antonio
>
>

### Creator(s)

Frederick C. Borromeo (via **Studio Moonchalk**)

### Release Date

* April 10, 2022 (original)
* Dec 25, 2022 (remastered)

### Download

Itch.io

**Tetralogy of Night Conversations** is a 2022 kinetic novel game developed by Frederick C. Borromeo, with his production studio under the name **Studio Moonchalk** (formerly **Moonwriter's Tale**), using the RPG Maker MV program.

Considered as a "pseudo-remake" of *Project Love and Cafe,* consists of four different stories in a single game set in the 2010s, based on an anthology theater "*Love Cafe Project*" by Joachim Emilio Antonio, the second adaptation of Antonio's plays after the short film version of *The Dust of Your Place* directed by David Olson.

Before the development of theater-based video game adaptation, Borromeo pitched the rights from Antonio via Facebook. By experimenting his own, before sole-develop and originally titled **Project Love and Cafe** by himself for over two and a half months, without his programming and screenwriting skills, including a crunch time of eight to twelve hours with a part-time schedule of two and three days a week.

The remastered is slated to release on December 25, 2022.

## Gameplay

*Tetralogy of Night Conversations* is primarily a story-driven game with semi-anthology chapters using the RPG Maker game program, used only most of the original assets. Unlike many RPG Maker games, there are no battle, inventory, party, and puzzle systems due to much lacking a role-playing element, which resulting that element converts into a slow-paced cinematic experience and visual-novel style autorun event system to emphasize the storyline.

## Synopsis

### Act NO. 1 - Stay Healthy

At 7:00 PM, a college student named Sophie, who reads the newspaper in the library alongside with Will, a Sophie's friend.

### Act NO. 2 - Delicate Night

At 9:00 PM, Matt stopped studying from college so his twin sister, Ari, could graduate soon. But tonight.

### Act NO. 3 - Breakup Storm

At 10:00 PM, stuck in the same waiting shed on a stormy midnight after a couple breaks up only to find themselves.

### Act NO. 4 - Depressive Freshmen

At 2:00 AM, a young woman wearing a cosplay who contemplates suicide on the rooftop, but it was saved by a former college student. In order to retreat to the park with her, only himself to ask her to stop killing herself or befriend her.

## Characters

* **Will** - A 17-year-old "Century Historical and Literature" class-rep highschooler.
* **Sophie** - A 18-year-old "Visual and Media Arts" honorable highschooler. She was reading a newspaper about food's toxicity and nutritious.

* **Matt** - A math prodigy who was working on his studio. He's a fraternal twin brother of Ari.
* **Ari** - A fresh graduate young-woman who is a fraternal young twin sister of Matt, suggested at him that she's getting married with her fiance, Jesse.
	+ Ari's character was the inverted version of Antonio's original character, "**Arie**" as a male.

* **Benedict** - (nicknamed **Ben**) A civilian who is Danielle’s on-and-off boyfriend.
* **Danielle** - (short for **Dani**) An arrogant woman who is Ben’s on-and-off girlfriend.

* **Damien** - A dropped-out senior college student who attempts to stop Chisato from suicide. Originally named "**Dom**".
* **Christine** - A young woman with wearing a gothic schoolgirl as a cosplayer. For a reason, she tries to contemplate kill herself, but possibly wanted to stay with Damien on the park bench. Originally named "**China**".

## Development

### Drama in RPG Maker community

After his negligence of trial-and-error game development, Borromeo in a brink of chronic tiredness and depression towards in the RPG Maker community, almost every day interrupting development on his works due to his disrupting mood swings and verbal abuse on his friends via direct message in free time due to his diagnosed with ADHD.

### Pre-production

Despite this, he decides to finish his examination and performance task overall of the first semester, but he notices the page "Drama Analysis" from 21st Century Literature. He found the title **The Dust in Your Place**, made by Antonio, who also wrote the short film adaptation of the same name.

He was first interested in video game adaptations after he oversaw Antonio's works, and he decided to make it and gave permission to Antonio for adapting the stageplay to the game. Antonio accepts, allowing to experiment him with his game, and Borromeo's decision to publish the game as an alpha demo and update into cinematic experiences as a full game into Itch.io and RPGMaker.net for completely free as possible.

The game was **Moonwriter's Tale**'s (now **Studio Moonchalk**) first video game adaptation and its feature-length debut, as primarily a solo-developed the game himself, following his experimental and underwhelming game jam short projects over three years as a teenager, before it shelved without reason.

Began developing in Jan 19, 2022, he solo-developed himself for two and a half months included a crunch time of 8 to 12 hours sometimes but almost every day during schooltime.

### Writing

The game is originally consisting of five separated stories from the play (except exesanonymous.com) as an anthology at the same time and almost all were scripted by Antonio where the play was based on, while Frederick C. Borromeo and his writing partner Erika in the studio were fashioning some script in every act including cultural references and more scenes including prologue in the game. The game was written entirely in English, and it will add Filipino language as an addition.

**NOTE**: In decision of adding multiple languages was omitted in the final version.

During its development, the title of last two acts (Newspaper Dance and Stray Cat) were gradually changed due to much confusion for the audiences.

### Mechanics

The game development uses his own game mechanics from the previous shelved games such as visual novel message style and a "Call Menu" system, which it enables freely to pause or save/load the game during the dialogue (except the choices and movement route)

The choice-timer feature itself drew inspiration on Telltale Games and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. It features some limited-time and choice notification system; if the time runs out or optionally press to skip the choice, each one of the main characters remain quiet, although it does not affect any choices.

> **NOTE**: A position of choice-timer feature was omitted in the final version.
>
>

### Themes

*Tetralogy of Night Conversations* deals with the themes of friendship, on-and-off relationship, and suicide; depicts two people having conversations with each other, mostly like in the original work by Antonio.

## Release

### Pre-Alpha

The first act was released on Valentine Day of 2022 (as an alpha demo), which contains 100% a complete story and it's playable for more than 20-30 minutes but it needs more improvement and additions soon like grammar issue, sound effects, music, and camera controls. The rest of acts are under development.

### Post-Alpha

Another release as "The Game Jam Edition" which contains an almost-completed first act and a demo of the second act.

### Closed-Alpha

Similar to its previous versions, which contains an almost completed first and second acts with issues and opening credit updated.

### Pre-beta

Another update with a demo of last three acts.

### Post-beta

Another update without beta-testing. Almost finished every act, but some writings need to improve soon due to stress lately, though he's not ready to fix it now or later. Until v2, he's able to fix the update each day if they have feedback.

### Release Candidate

The final and complete version of the game is now on set to release on April 10, 2022.

## Reception

### Pre-release

During the game jam competition, the demo received praise by some players for its slow-pacing and cinematic innovation, visuals, humor, and story with faithfulness to Antonio's script from the stageplay; although almost criticized the cliche dialogues due to its grammars.

Studio Blue, one of the RPG Maker Web's streamers, playing the post-beta version of the game (begins at the first act and ends at the first half of second act) and stated that he likes the core concept, sense of humor, and faithfulness to the stageplay, though some characterization and writing drew occasional criticism.

## References

1. ↑ Development - LOVE + CAFE by Moonwriter's Tale (en).
2. ↑ When I was in the development of my game, I did change the title of the last two acts because I believe they don't understand or are confused about the title. (Feb 24, 2022).
3. ↑ Themes - Tetralogy of Night Conversations by Studio Moonchalk (itch.io)
4. ↑ Post by yozhikisblue in PROJECT: LOVE + CAFE jam comments (en).
5. ↑ Post by BagelMaster5000 in PROJECT: LOVE + CAFE jam comments (en).
6. ↑ Post by Luca H. in PROJECT: LOVE + CAFE jam comments (en).
7. ↑ Post by angients in PROJECT: LOVE + CAFE jam comments (en).
8. ↑ Post by Guanomancer in PROJECT: LOVE + CAFE jam comments (en).
9. ↑ Post by stipes in PROJECT: LOVE + CAFE jam comments (en).
10. ↑ Studio Blue, one of the RPG Maker Web Streamers (22 Mar 2022). RPG Maker Games Critique with Studio Blue: PROJECT: LOVE + CAFE.