Winter With You

Winter With You is a short Japanese-style kinetic visual novel about Christmas, with a story that takes 3–4 hours. On Christmas night, Naoki plans to surprise his girlfriend, Miyuki, with flowers and a restaurant booking. At her office, he finds her cheating on him and runs away in anger. In Central Park, he meets Yume, a young guitarist who also has no one to spend Christmas with. Her cheerfulness distracts him, but running away from his problems is not a solution.

The characters

Miyuki is Naoki’s 23-year-old childhood friend. They have known each other since he was 11 and began dating in high school. Usually energetic, she becomes shy when alone with Naoki and feels embarrassed when he shows her affection in public. She worries that she is not interesting enough for him, and feels jealous of how much he and Yume have in common.

Yume is a 16-year-old guitarist from a small town who moved to Tokyo to escape her parents’ custody. She argued with her father over her passion for guitar: he wanted her to take lessons as a child, but she refused and only wanted to return to it at 16, which he considered too late. Fun-loving and childishly open-minded, she admires Naoki.

Story presentation

The game features two girls with Japanese voices and English voice-overs, awkward situations, more than 12 CGs, six music tracks and five backgrounds. Character sprites are animated, with multiple outfits and facial expressions, lip-sync, blinking eyes, and body and hair physics.