In the narrative RPG Selling Sunlight, you are a wandering merchant whose face got stolen by the Sun. To get your identity back, you’ll have to explore a strange, hand-painted world, befriend other travellers, trade goods and information, and conspire against the Sun Himself.
Will you ask for His pardon to get your identity back, or defy Him?
Selling Sunlight is a role-playing game with no fights, a lot of bees and many, many words, focused on interpretation and atmosphere.
We want to make an experience that is like chamomile for the soul, for we think the world desperately needs more games like this right now. Games where nobody wants to murder you, where people with different cultures all live together, and where everything will eventually be okay.
(Being made by a Failbetter incuBEE, though, of course this game also features giant spiders made of ice, withering plant-people, fish that are also books, and pyromaniac prophets with a small sun instead of their head. But it’s a cheery game, apart from the occasional fire-related accident, really.)
[color=#e53e00]oh! If you need any persuasion to visit. I am the person talking in the video. It’s me, awkward as f___. Laugh at my embarrassment at hearing my own voice! LAUGH BECAUSE IT WILL BE THE LAST YOU EVER… oh wait, sorry, mustn’t reveal identity as eldritch being, forgot about that.[/color] edited by babelfishwars on 9/19/2017
This looks wonderful! And I love the idea of a relaxing game, one aiming for excellent writing without necessarily going down the well-trodden dark and twisty path.
I completely understand not having the resources to make a Mac version at present, but would backing now also grant me a copy of the Mac port should one be made down the line? I will see if I can run the demo but first I must beat my Windows partition into submission.
Anyway congratulations on coming so far with your game and best of luck for the kickstarter!
Developer here!
Thanks for your support, delicious friends.
[quote=Passionario]I have no intent to play this game, but I still support its creation and recognize that its existence will make the lives of others brighter.[/quote]Oh, so it was you.
I’ve seen the Number. It was appreciated.
Also, to answer this question:
[quote=Màiread]I completely understand not having the resources to make a Mac version at present, but would backing now also grant me a copy of the Mac port should one be made down the line?[/quote]I’m happy to confirm that if we ever gets to release a Mac version, Steam should automatically add it to your library!
(I want to stress again that we can’t make promises about Mac/Linux versions yet - we simply don’t have the resources to focus on other platforms at the moment.
We hope to release them at some point, but please do not pledge to us based on that hope. We don’t want to disappoint anyone.) edited by Bricabrac on 9/20/2017
[quote=Zrayz10]Neat! Could you make a post promoting the Kickstarter for Cultist simulator since it’s made by Alexis Kennedy?
I’m somewhat offended by the suggestion that our thread here isn’t doing an adequate job of promoting CS :P
Anyway, Selling Sunlight is an absolutely wonderful little game and I urge people to back it. CoseBelle is a new development team and it’s their first game. They don’t have much name recognition, only clear talent and a well thought out plan. What they’re proposing is incredibly unique, if they don’t do it then nobody will. This is what Kickstarter was made for.
[quote=Anne Auclair]Anyway, Selling Sunlight is an absolutely wonderful little game and I urge people to back it. CoseBelle is a new development team and it’s their first game. They don’t have much name recognition, only clear talent and a well thought out plan. What they’re proposing is incredibly unique, if they don’t do it then nobody will. This is what Kickstarter was made for.[/quote]I repayed your kind words with a Surprise Package, delicious friend.
Also, we’re now 73% funded! Thanks to everyone for your support <3
I’m in! This sounds wonderful and looks beautiful.
You can give Alexis Kennedy and Anne Auclair equal credit for intriguing me with the teasers for your game. (But credit goes mostly to the great description on your Kickstarter page, of course.)
Most games set after the end of the world are pretty grim affairs, centered around devastation, war, and scavenging for scraps. Very rarely do you see stories where the end of the world touches off a kind of renaissance, a pouring forth of new creation. This is what struck me most about the Selling Sunlight demo, this sense of constant transformation and experimentation. Everything is very fluid, cultures are changing or being created out of whole cloth (literally with cloth, in the case of the Rainbow Tribe’s festival, where social relationship are remapped with colored fabrics). Perhaps the greatest symbol of this rebirth is your mask, once a no doubt terrifying punishment - divine disapproval and complete social ostracization, who would want that? Now, properly exploited, it gives you a major social and commercial advantage, the perfect poker face, allowing you to be whoever you need to be to close the deal. The supreme curse of a highly settled and insulated society becomes just one more way of living life in a highly mobile and cosmopolitan one (which is not to say you necessarily like the mask, but it no longer works as it once did).
This renaissance is what provides the demo story its conflict. There is a palpable tension between those who choose the stability that comes from rooting themselves in a set place or social role, and those who have thrown themselves headfirst into creative chaos and individual freedom. The long settled and socially conservative craftsmen of Green Hamlet are very wary of the disparate Rainbow Tribe’s annual festivals, which despite bringing in considerable business (cloth, food, wood, all local staples), are perceived as a threat to their town. This wariness is more than simple parochial paranoia; the society of the Rainbow festival is the mirror opposite of that of the Hamlet, one where people fit in by regularly remaking the community as opposed to regularly remaking themselves to fit the community. The festival disrupts the carefully regulated town by seducing the Hamlet’s young people (you see the consequences of that) and gives cover to troublemakers (you have something to do with that too). Yet the festival is held at Green Hamlet for a reason, the Rainbow Tribe needs the town and its people, just as the town’s businesses need the tribe (however much they pretend otherwise).
It’s in gaps like this that your character is most at home. As a respected member of the Merchant’s Guild and a Faceless with no set place or social ties, you are the ultimate intermediary and negotiator, perfectly positioned to help and profit.
. edited by Anne Auclair on 10/9/2017
