Literature has long been valued for its ability to stimulate imagination and construct immersive new worlds for readers. But what if we don't need to imagine, and can instead be a part of the literary work ourselves? To create this experience, we decided to turn one of our favorite texts this semester, Roman Fever (1934) by Edith Wharton, into a visual novel.
A visual novel is an interactive storytelling format that combines text with simple visual image, and often allows readers to go through the story by making choices as if they are playing a certain character. Compared to other forms of role-playing games, visual novels emphasize character development, atmosphere, and reader immersion rather than fast-paced or complicated game mechanics. Edith Wharton's Roman Fever is particularly ideal for adaptation into a visual novel due to its confined setting, dialogue-driven tension and grand revelation, which are all common elements of visual novels.
In this project, we will adapt Roman Fever by reconstructing its narrative through self-written branching plot and dialogue, while keeping its iconic character design, atmosphere and setting. The final presentation will be supported by AI-generated visual images, and assembled and presented using Canva, where we can integrate text, visuals and the interactive progression.