After the Wane was an interesting demo for me to preview, mainly as I know nothing about ballet. While I may not know my pliés from my pirouettes, I do know a pretty game when I see one, and the striking art style used in After the Wane was enough to entice me.
You’re introduced to Lena, a young ballet dancer who’s new to the city and trying to find her place in it. You can’t help but feel a bit sorry for her, she’s clearly not had the best luck and has stretched her savings to the limit to try and stay in a city that she hopes will let her realise her dreams of becoming a professional dancer. The demo covers the first act of her story, following her as she meets various different characters, including a mysterious male dancer, new friends made through your part-time job, and my favourite, Lena’s kindly landlady. She’s a bit of a busybody but her heart’s in the right place.
In typical visual novel fashion your only real interaction with the game is thumbing through text and making the occasional choice. It’s hard to say for sure at this point but some of the decisions seem like they could make fairly big impacts to Lena’s story, potentially choosing who she interacts with and where she visits on the next step of her journey. There are smaller encounters too, like when your landlady knocks on your door and invites you for a spot of tea. As a Brit, turning down an offer of free tea was clearly not an option, and I’m glad I joined her as it opened up an interesting conversation about Lena’s prospects in the city, and gave me a chance to get to know the landlady a little better.
The visuals are one of the highlights in After the Wane. Conversations show you face-to-face with your companion and you’ll be able to admire the character designs, which almost felt a little bit like old school Disney characters to me. Where the game really comes to life is the dance sequences though. Each time you press A to move to the next line of text, the visuals spring to life in a rotoscopic style. There’s almost a rhythm to these sections, with an animated flourish following each line of text and it’s really beautiful.
After the Wane is an interesting game and the demo sets up several mysteries that had me intrigued. Fans of interactive graphic novels will definitely want to give this a look, regardless of their familiarity with ballet.
After the Wane is coming to PC via Steam.