Ebon Light

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand. The game is not in development? Is it a finished product? And if so, are there any plans to add more (I just saw that the version 2.0 was added 4 hours ago)?

Beautiful game so far! Thank you so much for creating it and I will definitely donate once I finished it. However just a little note, this is going to sound so silly but maybe you can consider it. I'm a woman with a big nose myself (I know) and I always notice that women are portrayed with tiny, delicate noses and guys have bigger noses. So far most of the girls have small, delicate noses and all the guys had broad, bigger noses. Maybe mix it up? Guys with smaller noses, girls with bigger noses. But I'm still at the start! Sorry for this but I thought I could put it out there. Thank you for everything!

I made an account just to comment on this page and intend to drop a very small donation when I get the chance (broke college student) because this was such an amazing game to download for free! It feels a bit like stealing somehow; I got so many hours of enjoyment from the game! It's evident that you put a lot of time and care into this project.

First of all, you have 'show and don't tell' down pat which is super refreshing. It puts the player right into the character's shoes because the information is more of a slow trickle or has to be discerned through clues, much like life in the real world often requires of you. Right off the bat, there's also the sense that things can always go terribly wrong and that the main character's position is precarious. You are immediately invested, irritated with, and interested in the main character's plight. Madness, elves, political intrigue, death, the high seas? What's not to like?

The world is well fleshed out and unique. I have to wonder what Ghalaians do for fun after that roller coaster of anxiety we were strapped into together haha. No, seriously, are puppies a thing outside of target practice in this world? Because they need them.

The characters all have clear voices, motivations, and goals. All of the guys are interesting in their own ways and it's honestly nice that they don't unrealistically fall in love right away as can happen in some of these games.

The level of interactivity as well as customization is probably much more complex than what you would find in traditional visual novel games or even ones that are at a much higher price point. There's a range of realistic reactions for every situation and I never felt shoehorned into an option.

The artwork is beautiful!! The characters are all beautiful and so are the backgrounds! I love, love, love the beaches in particular! The waves and sky are just so pretty. They feel very story-book esque to me somehow. I can't believe you drew everything and then wrote the story? And you programmed this, too, right? Just wow.

Here's another stereotypical girly thing that you never get to do in these games - customize your outfits. I freaking loved this! The outfits, the hairstyles, the eye color. I loved being able to buy a colorful outfit after living on emo elf island (I say this lovingly) for so long. And the outfits are actually cute! And the hair options are actually cute!! Take notes, Dragon Age~

Also the possible character progression from scared bystander to powerful woman in control of her destiny who made friends and a home in a strange land despite the odds was immensely satisfying. It was fun to start off as a hostage and then later be the one calling the shots as an equal.  

My first and only romance route so far has involved Vadeyn(sweet cinnamon roll that he is. He was hard to ignore and was also the only one clearly anti-kidnapping lol) but Duliae is honestly very intriguing for someone I had pegged as an actual sociopath at the start and was resolved not to trust. He just seemed like he would sell the main character's soul for a cornchip or something but as the story progressed somehow I found myself trusting him and even relying on him. And it would be interesting to get into Lacaega's head or just to tease him the whole game to see what happens. Haron seemed interested in the MC as more of a science experiment but I bet that notion would dissolve if I went down his route any further. Interesting how the narrative changes first impressions like that. There's always more to learn as you go along.

I sat there and agonized about so many decisions. One of the final options in the game at the end (no ensuing spoilers) actually made me feel as though I had been punched in the gut and I found that I felt like crying after choosing it. It may have been the genuine pain and confusion that you managed to evoke and it really did pack a punch. It was genuinely a heartbreaking scenario and the reaction was pretty visceral.

Rarely do I play games where choices are /not/ clear cut and require so much thought. You allow for a lot of nuance and shades of gray. For example. (SPOILER HERE >>) I've never actually seriously mulled over straight up murdering so many people simply because a voice in my head told me to or promised it would leave if I did. See, when you put it like that it sounds like the clearly crazy evil character option to pick, and yet? It didn't seem evil at the time, just a way to survive amid the confusion.

Anyway (phew!) here's hoping that you write more in the future!! This game was absolutely great and you deserve continuous praise for your hard work. You are a talented storyteller and seem like a generally lovely person!

My life is empty now that I've finished this game ._. Seriously though, such an amazing, immersive world and so beautiful. I'm really looking forward to whatever possible sequel comes, to the point that I'm greedy and can't even wait LOL. I read on tumblr that you don't plan on putting in a Cuthintal route, but if you were willing to ever reconsider I would pay top dollar ;_; If nothing else, I would be interested in seeing something like this in a sequel with different characters. 

Anyhow, I was so fortunate to be able to play this game. Thank you for the hard work and thank you for the amazing experience.

Amazing work on the game!! 

Loved all the routes (can't decide is my fave is Lacey or Ernol), love the art, the characters and the variety of choices, especially when it comes to MC's personality (love that her appearance is customizable too, the clothes are great!)

One thing I noticed is that the red Kalixin clothes don't prompt any responses from the LIs. Every other color is fine, but the red skips over their reaction

This game is fabulous and I'm really picky so that's saying much! I also love the theme song when you're in the menu. Is there a possibility that we can download the music? I hope to see more games in the future by Underbliss! I will definitely download them so keep up the good work ;)

abandoned studying for my exams to play this game... no regrets. i ended up with vadeyn and absolutely loved it, although i was totally bummed ecarae wasn’t a love interest. 

First of all this a fantastic game, you've done a great job! I love every character, especially Ernol, have you ever seen a man so beautiful you could cry?? Vadeyn is a super close second. But who am I kidding? They're all charming.

But I have to ask, how many endings are there, not including death/bad ends??

Is it one per love interest? :)

I've recently played through all the routes, and I just have to say Ebon Light has been wonderful start to finish. I didn't find myself becoming disenchanted with completing the other routes or rereading parts of the story like some VN's make me feel, and that was such a breath of fresh air.

From the different plans you can choose, the variety of personalities with the LI's, and molding the MC through dialogue choices I was always finding ways to get new little snippets into lore or characters I didn't have before. I loooove lore btw so the compendium existing at all was GREAT.

The LI's are just *chef's kiss*  amazing! I definitely have favorites, but they all pleasantly surprised me and kept me engaged and excited to romance them and see their perspectives and comments on events. Ernol has 100% stolen my heart and he can keep it. <3

All in all, thank you for all your hard work with bringing this game to life!!! It's an experience that will stick with me for quite a while. ^v^

Absolutely love this, 
the gothic style, the intrigue, the range of characters and the super fleshed out lore,
however as silly as it may seem i got really hung up trying to find a translation for the elvish used in game, particularly the pet names, yet i cant seem to line the phrasing up with D&D / Tolkien dictionaries, please would you enlighten me as to the meanings? (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

I have a question: how many ends there are by LI, please? 

... Calipoa is my favorite... Her character is so likable, and your friendship so fun and natural feeling. I like the romance paths too of course.. but I liked Calipoa more. Is there an ending where I get to go dragon hunting with her?

This game is SO GOOD! I just finished a romance ending with Lacey. It was happy and I am satisfied. In one of them I didn't want to get married, but stay partners, and in another I told him that we were going to have marriage, babies and puppies. Both scared him. 

I feel bad because with the exception of Lacey, I have a hard time telling apart the pale male elves with black hair. I mix them up a lot. I hope by playing this game more I will see their individual beauty. 

I found out today the itch.io has a feature that lets you know how many hours you have played a single game and I seem to have spent 67 hours from the past few days playing this game lmao. i adore the LI's so much and the story is so much fun. Thank you so much for this amazing game!! Laceaga's character is also super fun lol. 

Um I was curious when you click on the characters what does the blinking heart mean because some have different places?

For some reason, the full game isn't available. I only have the demo. 

I played one route so far and I would like to say, Your work is amazing! It had me engaged!

Is there any walkthrough? Also, I don't know if the hair growing transparent at some points is a glitch or intentional?

I enjoyed this game very much. But I am also a little sad because I must return into the real world. I was happy to see that the game didn't force me to make certain personality choices to get the route I want.

(Haron's route) I was also happy that there was no edgy trope with the LI "betraying" the protagonist like Japanese games love to do, after the ghost man Ecare's sow-doubt-in-hallway scene. (Sanan's route in Hakuouki).

I enjoyed the fact that all LIs support, love, and care for the MC in their routes. Even the golden weasel was pure even though he seems like a freak. Cute and wholesome. Truly a blissful experience.  I feel blessed by the deity of pure love.

I loved the demo and I'm really excited to play the rest. Can't believe this is free! I've never played a VN with your art style but I really like it. Thanks so much! <3 

I’m only one route in (surprise, it was Lacey) and I just  want to say THANK YOU and CONGRATULATIONS for making what is now my favorite VN ever!!! It’s like all of my VN prayers were answered in one game, being able to actually choose MCs personality, being able to do uncute unfeminine things and not be punished by a bad ending... I am SO excited for the rest of the routes and I really encourage everyone to pay what you can for this amazing labor of love 

I literally LOVE this game!! After playing the demo and interacting with Vayden I  HAD to see the development through till the end! It was 100% worth the wait and I can't imagine how hard the dev worked on this for and I am so grateful for all their hard work. So far I've played through Vayden's route (absolute favorite), Laceaga's (a very close second), and Haron's. I can't wait to play Duliae's and Ernol's! This script was fantastically written and allows the player to personalize every part of their experience and this is exactly the type of game I LOVE playing. I was immersed from beginning to end, and I can't wait to see what games follow from Underbliss!

It was ABSOLUTELY an amazing game!You guys need to make films,books whatever, anything.You deserve so much!!!OMG I love your creativity.I just signed up to comment on this.I wish I had a lot of money and meet you guys!!I am looking forward to your next project

This is one of the best VNs I've played in a while, and the fact that something of this quality is also free is still something I find difficult to grasp. The setting, story and characters had me completely captivated. And oh, the feels. 
Thank you, Ahnna.

p.s.: Lacey's route was hilarious, absolute fave <3

I love Haron so much!

He's so cute and caring!

He made me blush and giggle so much, with his flirting! 😚

@ Laceaga; The Office, Season 2 episode 5 14:45

Oh boy where do I even begin? There's so much so gush about that I cant even handle it <3 English isn't my first language so I'll probably run out of vocabullary for some things but bear with me please XD

I think I'll start by thanking the game creator, Ahna. When I played the demo I was SO amazed by the game complexity that I was reading my purse for when it came out. I mean, its only obvious it'd be paid right? It must've taken so much hard work and time to desing all those characters, all the routes (and jesus there were SO MANY OPTIONS ICANT EVEN) and all the amazing dialogues that it seemed only fair. But imagine my surprise when I saw it was FREE O.O Jesus we dont deserve u Ahna ;-; I gave a bit of money and I can only be sorry I couldn't give more to such a talented game designer like her. Anyway, thank you so so much for this. I had a REALLY fun time. Life hasn't been very kind to me lately but this made me smile a lot, and I rlly needed that.

SO, back to the game.  If I had to say what were the things that made me love this game so much I'd say there's 3 reasons: character costumization, dialogue options, and the well blended romance. Tbh it took me a while to notice this game because it had, at first, a pretty dark and gloomy feel to it. I'm a sucker for romance so I thought " nah its probably some dark story with some equaly dark, boring, expressionless characters who probably wont romance for shit" but boooooooy, how wrong I was. I aint gonna lie, the costumization option got me lol I can't help it, I just really aprecciate creators who go out of their way to help players create their own experience. And GOD she added so many costumization options <3 I loved that we could choose our character's personality type! When I saw that I could CHOOSE an outfit I almost screamed lol

But the BEST thing ever, the thing that REALLY got me hooked were the dialogues. They were SOOOOOOOO fun, interesting and exciting to read! Considering it was ALL done by a SINGLE person, I dont even have words to describe my amazement. I like to try out all the dialogue choices and I was not dissapointed! The story got more and more interesting by the second and I was always sweating like a pig thinking " shitshitshit what if I messed up". The death endings mostly made sense, everytime I died I just laughed at myself like "lmao ofc you'd die u dumb b*tch" so we really have to think carefully. I never knew whom to trust, and it was fun figuring out the best course of action. The game its really long too, almost like reading a book! Whenever I got that dreaded feeling that the "To be continued" or "The end" would come, the game just kept going, to my utter happiness.

And let me just say this: Ahna maybe an spectacular job with the romance option. Okay,maybe I'm getting ahead of myself cause I just romanced one guy for now but STILL. I mean, the game had a REALLY dark feeling to it, with all the dark eleves and all, but our character kinda brightened up things and so the romance just felt right most of the times. 

The only thing that left me juuuust a tiny lil' bit sad was that there weren't many images featuring our character given all the events happening in the story, but that is completly understandable since Ahna was doing everything by herself not to mention she was runing on the clock lol Her art is rlly captivating too, very dark and very different to what I'm used to, but I liked it! Sure I think it needed a bit of work, not that I'm a drawing expert or anything, but I'm sure her artstyle will only improve with time. But really thats just a minor issue.

aNYWAY, I loved tis game and TOTALLY recomend it to whoever likes VN's with romance options. Even if you're not rlly into the dark stuff, I assure you you'll love this one! Ahna is such an amazing person, always updating us on her progress on social media, and giving us this amazing game for free! I will deffinetly support her and keep track of any games she plans to launch on the future! (COFCOFCOF can we have a sequelCOFCOCOF)

Hey there! First let me say I love this game so much!! ♥♥ and you've done such a great job!

Your character writing is phenomenal, I read a lot of VNs and not many of them succeed in making the characters feel truly alive but!! here!!! they are ALL their own person and feel so tridimensional, even the secondary ones have their own opinions and personalities (I love love love Saffron and Chandler!!); the world feels real and populated it's insane (in a good way!!! 😅); the care you've put into building this world is simply incredible!! The compendium is also very well written! not to mention the work you've put into the UI.... just.. so well done;;;

The romance is top-notch, the way you've interwoved it in the main story is amazing and feels very natural. I just finished Lacey's route and it's!! so good!!! ♥♥♥ He might be my fave!

I'd like a clarification on one thing only if possible: I understand you can get practically every outfit and start a new game with the ones you purchased already unlocked, but is there any way to be able to hear the comments of the LIs for every outfit without resetting the game? Because, for what I understand, once you purchase all of them the scene goes as if you don't buy anything and skips the comments.

Anyway, let me say again I love this game very much and that the wait was more than worth it!!! Great work!!!! and thank you!!

I can't believe this game is for free! It looks amazing =) Thank you so much for all your hard work.

I heard about this game for the first time yesterday, I just finished my first route a little bit ago (Vadeyn - such a darling cinnamon roll (ღ˘⌣˘ღ) and I had to say this game is fantastic! I'm even enjoying reading the compendium which is unusual for me. The storytelling is top notch.  Thank you for this amazing game !

Hi! I've played through all the route and it was so worth the wait \(owo)/ I loved playing through all the guys routes - Ernol and Lacey are def my faves. Skylar giving my mc igon that I could actually put on was adorable <3 Thanks so much!!

I haven't finished with my first playthrough but I really want to tell you that the writing on this is one of the best of this genre. I cannot wait to delve into all of the characters you've developed and yeah. I chose Lacey as my first romantic interest. Who doesn't love an arrogant bad boy?

I haven't been waiting as long as some but I was so excited to play this game. Wonderful distinctive artwork, immersive worldbuilding, intriguing LI's and side characters who are larger than life. Even the way you start the game itself is notable – it's got such immediate impact. The music and sound effects were very well put together, building the atmosphere even more.

Because of the customisation, the range of dialogue choices and the dark fantasy, it feels like you're more influenced by single player RPGs than 'typical' otomes and since I often feel romance is lacking in RPGs even when included, you combined two of my favourite things. My personal favourite LI was Ernol, whose slow-burn into an intense romance gave me all the feels but all of the routes are worth playing. Plus I really appreciated the extra content you put into the Duliae romance if you selected certain actions which answered a few questions – but I won't go into spoilers here.

Essentially this game should not be free. I don't review much. I rave review even less. I hope you take a return trip to Gha'alia one day but I'll keep a lookout for anything you do in the future.   

The game doesn't look bad but the sprites were drawn a bit carelessly - most of the characters look strange. Especially Dulie - he looks like a freak or a victim of bad plastic surgery.

I also was a bit disappointed with the romance in the game - it didn't stir up almost any feelings in me.

I undestand that this game is free to play but the creator could work a bit more on the quality of sprites and the romantic part of the game.

Best game ever, can't even think of anything to complain about in light of how much I love it. I'm so happy it's finally here, well worth the wait. I may or may not have cried tears of joy every day since it was fully released. ♥♥

Congrats on the release it was well worth the wait!!! Both the art and the writing is fantastic and the amount of choices for the mc is amazing. I just finished my first play through and I already can't wait to dive back in! Thank you so much for all your hard work <3

asjdfjfjajd its installing now and im so excited im shaking

Loving it so much so far, to the point that it's 5 AM and I just dragged myself off the game to go sleep haha. Quick question, though - is there a recommended route order? I find myself always craving structure when it comes to VNs, as much as I love the option of choices, and prefer at least having a set path as far as who I romance. Dev suggestions are appreciated <3

This game was WELL worth the wait !! I always knew it would be but it definitely proved itself !!

First off, I've played all the routes and surprised myself: I played Lacey's out of a grim sense of obligation and curiosity about playing an absolutely feral MC and I ended up liking both Lacey and the feral MC the best (sorry Haron... and my basic decency). She was the protagonist which I felt I built the best, with the perfect balance of madness and control. Lacey broke me down which was a SHOCK: I ended up loving the battle couple dynamic and totally falling for the banter between the two of them.

Ernol and Haron tied for me, weirdly enough: a very INTENSE set of brothers, and I need to run through their routes again now that I understand how to not get at least one of their grandparents merced 😅

The MC was another delight: I usually take VN MCs with a grain of salt, especially if they have a somewhat set appearance, assuming that their development is partially set in stone and that especially in a VN of this complexity, I might not be able to pick every reaction I would think realistic... but I absolutely could. Better yet, all the reactions seemed grounded in the situation: there wasn't a big red EVIL button I could slam to let everyone in the room know that this was the playthrough where I was gunna be a dick, but I could tell people to leave me alone and I could tell people I was scared.

There are a few crash errors, and I'm sorry I didn't keep track of them all (I play mostly at night when I'm only pseudo coherent), but I know that it fails on "It was a lot of trin" (or something to that effect) when shopping for clothes with Duliae, and during Ernol's route when approaching the island against after destroying the sea monster telling him something to the effect of "I won't let you make that choice" (I'm so sorry, apparently on my later playthroughs I forgot that I made saves where there were errors and saved overtop of them) trying to find what I think is an MC sprite (one referenced 'butter/MC' so I'm not sure if that was a typo in the code?) Besides that, I think it was Lacey who had an issue at one point where the MC referred to him as "[lacey]" which I assume was a referential variable meant to decide between his full name and nickname (if it helps, my MC would refer to him by his full name rather than "Lacey"), and I believe it was also Lacey's route where there was a... I don't know how to refer to it unfortunately, but it looked like '%s'.

And i don't know if this was a bug or not (or if it really matters to you, but just in case) but it's technically possible to purchase an outfit in the store and then rollback to the store again and have the full trin to unlock another outfit and repeat until you've unlocked all outfits. I'm not saying I did this, I'm just saying that my MC looks super great and the outfits were an incredible touch. Once I figured out that you could change your clothes in the Compendium, it was OVER for me. 

I understand if those aren't strictly helpful, but I tried 😅

Anyway, I've been following the game for a while and I'm THRILLED that it's finally been released! I devoured the routes in the first two night it was released, and I'm excited for my more purposeful (read: metagaming 😂) reruns. The art and writing are so good and it's so atmospheric and fun and just the thing I needed to buoy my mood !! Great work !!