Villainess x Reborn (Demo)
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
You’ve died…and yet?
After falling victim to a speeding truck while playing an old otome game you once loved, you find yourself cast in the role of the one and only villainess.
It’s hard enough trying to navigate old, twisted relationships and new, blossoming ones — but with the original heroine on the loose and the pressing mystery behind why you’re always fated to die at the year’s end, you have a tough road ahead of you to navigate.
There’s no one who can save you but yourself, after all.
Currently, this demo includes:
A portion of Act I’s narrative, from your awakening as the villainess to news of your first major ball
There are three total acts planned, with Act I serving as your introduction to the world of Villainess x Reborn. Meet the characters that will form the basis of the game’s relationships and perform your role as the newly isekai’d villainess of Doki Doki Full Blossom, an otome game you once held a fondness for. All of this is, of course, made complete by beautiful art that brings the once charmingly two dimensional setting to life.
- Choices with varying outcomes and high replayability
Depending on the choices you make, the narrative and characters react accordingly, creating subtle and enormous consequences that change with every replay of the demo. Discover new sides to once beloved characters from your childhood, choose how to behave as a villainess — or don't, and carve your own path through the story.
- Engaging and varied minigames
Villainess x Reborn contains a variety of minigames. Set off to catch fish by the river, balance books as you desperately dodge bombs, practice your ballroom moves with a rhythm game, navigate a twisted maze while avoiding other nobles, or defend your honor in a card-based social battle simulator.
What should I look forward to?
- An exciting original story that serves as both a critique and love letter to the villainess genre
Just as there are important concerns to address in the well-treaded path of a villainess story that Villainess x Reborn hopes to speak to, the game itself comes from a place of love for the genre itself. We want to talk about these issues, but more importantly, we also want to make a game where you can be the villainess and actually have a good time too! Look forward to more choices, more branching paths, and more poignant dialogue and narration that captures the role you’ve been forced into.
- Stats management and 2.5D exploration, in addition to visual novel segments
The full release will feature strong elements of stats managements, personal and with other characters, that will impact the way the narrative unfolds. Alongside this, explore environments in 2.5D and get to know the ins and outs of Villainess x Reborn.
- Cooler, newer, and more polished minigames
Our programming team is always hard at work coming up with new and exciting minigames to unveil to the world. What’s next; Cooking Mama? Minecraft? Poptropica? Papers Please? The possibilities are endless!
- More sprites, more backgrounds, more CGs, more art
And just as our writers and programmers are putting the hours away at their keyboards, so is our art team with their tablets! Look forward to more art assets that will help enrich your gameplay experience, one masterpiece at a time.
- A genuine labor of love!
We love villainesses and we love your feedback too! From YouTube gameplays to scathing reviews, we want to hear it all. Let us know what you liked or didn’t like, and we’ll do our best to get back to you — eventually.
TEAM LEADS
Lea Sioson (LemonInk) - Art/Writing Lead, Creative Director, Narrative Implementation
Branden Bohrnsen (brandenmb) - Programming/UI/Sound Lead, Systems Engineer
PROGRAMMING
Oscar Su (DubiousDuck) - Minigame, Sound Engineer, Game Design
Ethan Truong (retrokopoko) - Minigame, Technical Art
Leil Cheng (lconfusion) - Minigame
WRITING
Katherine Song (saiyohara) - Writing, Editing, Marketing
Samuel Vansomphone (Ottomowha) - Writing, Implementation
Katie Cope (KC1327) - Writing, Editing, Creative Direction
ART
Joice He (theresonlyjuice) - Creative Direction, Sprites, Game Design
Olivia Fong (olive.bitez) - Backgrounds
Catherine Di (Rynndi) - Illustrations, CGs
UI/UX
Taylor Che (tayylortots) - UI/UX Artist
SOUND
Jon Wake (grokgrokgrok) - Music Composer, Sound Designer
Download
Install instructions
*Please note that this demo was completed for a deadline and is still actively being updated and pruned for bugs! If you run into any issues, please feel free to comment and let us know where the issue occurred, what device type you’re playing on (Mac/Windows), and any other details. Thank you so much for the help!
Common bugs/issues we are aware of:
- Game doesn’t load on certain integrated graphics
- Some text takes two clicks to show
- Poor performance
Development log
- Reduced Size and Bug Fix15 days ago
- Third time's the charm17 days ago
- Some updates18 days ago
- Revised builds19 days ago
Comments
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Bugs and errors I found when playing through - contains spoilers:
The 'I don't want this' dialog option has no content, it seems. Music stops as he stares at me. Happened 3 times now...maybe it is just from my end [Mac].Error 2: It seems that I cannot press no again as well. I am in the part where I decide what kind of a villainess I would be, was looking at the second to then change my mind but I cannot go back.
Error 3: It stops after Maverick telling us to go to our room. That is upsetting. If I repeatedly tap on it, it replays back to Cecilia talking to her father.
It is not to say that I hate it or plan to ditch the game, I will still stick through. I hope that the issues gets resolved quickly.
Hi Mike thanks for playing our game and giving us feedback!
From the errors that you described, I suspect the version you played is not the latest build.
Please download our latest version (should have a timestamp that says "15 days ago") and check out this devlog as well as this one to learn about how to clear your save files if your game crashes!
Please let us know if you have any questions or if the errors persist. Thanks!
It is the updated version, I checked and updated it before I made the comment…I’ll uninstall it completely and reinstall it, perhaps that would fix the issue I’m facing.
Tried running the game on windows, but after showing the godot icon, the screen just went blank? The music was playing, but I couldn't see/interact with anything on screen. Not sure if this is a problem specific to my pc, but can you help me figure out how to fix this?
Thanks for trying it out! I think it might be a compatibility issue since our game is experiencing some performance issues.
We are working on releasing a compatibility patch that will solve this issue across different hardware. Please stay tuned to our updates!
The game looks very promising and the main heroine looks fantastic! The plot is something I have been dreaming about, since reading so many mangas about villainess.
p.s. Please, tell me that we can date Hermes! please! please!))
We're so glad to hear it! As fans of villainess stories wanting to pay homage to the great and facilitate discussions on the...less great...aspects of the genre, we're dedicated to giving players an experience that will be both indulgingly familiar and excitingly unique, as any good villainess story should be!
...And let's just say, Hermes definitely has some versatility in the role he plays through the story... ;))
For some reason, the game window always shows up in the top left corner of my PC. I am unable to drag the window around and the top options such as - or x are out of my reach. Is this intentional?
Thanks for letting us know! I just fixed it so this will be resolved in the next build.
WOWWWW
I'm loving it so far! The writing and art are spectacular.
I may have encountered a bug after the protagonist looks back to see where Cecelia lives, the dialogue box seems stuck on "false". Also, just a bit of feedback, it took me a while to figure out where the "back" button was for the settings because I'm not used to looking for it in the bottom right corner. Secondly, partially because the icons for Save and Load are the same, by misclicking an empty Load before Saving, I accidentally restarted and lost all of my progress which was a bit annoying.
I am super excited to continue to support this game!!
Hi Kenzie!! Thanks for your feedback. I agree that the save and load buttons were confusing so I just made them show the text for now (we'll put new sprites soon). Good to know about the settings screen as well. We appreciate your support!!
Please provide windows build, I'm really curious about this game
It's up! Thanks for checking us out :D
Is this just me or when I try to download it, for some reason it only has the mac file and no windows files for the game?
Windows build is up! :D
Really nice game. I love the idea and the art is nice.
We definitely get the creepy feeling from "the god". And I disliked the former ROs (are they still ROs by the way ?). It really shows how you can like some characters and when seeing more sides from them disliking them. It was well done.
I love the start and I'm curious on the developement you will choose.
A couple issues :
1/ The games lagged a lot. £It was difficult to play some of them.
2/ We can't save so it's impossible to test other choices.
3/ We can't reread the history. When you click on it it disappears and advace in the dialogue at the same time.
4/ There was no Hermes image. Too bad because he is definitely my fav' character at the moment ! If he is a RO I will definitely pursue him ah, ah, ah.
5/ I have no idea why but I can't get past the dialogue after coming back from the party ? It's like I tried every texts and it doesn't work so at first previous choices were freeze and I had to restart the dialogue without those choices then no choices at all anymore ? Is it a bug or the end of the demo ? I'm really confused. Please tell me I went to the end and not broke the game.
Hey! Thanks for playing our game. The demo is supposed to "end" after that scene but it bugs out; we'll be adding the remainder of Chapter 1 ASAP. Your save data will carry over and you'll resume in that scene with your data restored.
We're working on improving performance and adding saving and loading in the next build, so we hope you check out what's in store! We've fixed the Hermes bug and will upload that shortly. We hope to make these changes within the next 12 hours.
Thanks for your feedback!!
And just to add onto our lovely team lead, thank you so much for your comments and feedback!
Absolutely, for the former ROs we wanted to have players see new sides, good or bad, to characters that otherwise tend to get glorified. I don't want to spoil too much of the story, but let's just say...the former ROs aren't exactly in a position to be love interests at the moment.
But on the contrary, we have quite the plans for Hermes, and you'll absolutely be able to see more of him in the future. Glad to see you liked him so much!
looks like a great game but i cant really open the game on my pc :(
hey! I'm sorry to hear that. Could you ensure that the .pck file is in the same directory as the .exe, and let me know if any errors show up on launch? Also, the game may take a long time to load upon first opening it, so could you try relaunching and waiting up to a minute and letting us know if that works? Sorry for the wait, we are still trying to figure out how to make the game run on all hardware!
I try to open the file and it freezes and doesn't open :(((
Had to open task manager to close it.
Hi,
The initial launch will take a while and even appears to be frozen. Could you try relaunching and waiting for up to a minute? Let us know if that works. Thank you!
I tried to open it again and waited but this time a box popped up saying
"The instruction at 0x00007FFB2E741C27 referenced memory at 0x0000000000000050. The memory could not be read.
Click OK to terminate program"
Hi,
We think that it might be a RAM issue. We are working on improving the performance of our game and will release a patch to address that soon. Please stay tuned for our update, thank you!
Hi,
We have released a version that improves the performance of our game. Please check it out if you are interested!
I'm sorry to report back with bad news but it stayed on a black page for hours this time and didn't do much when I tried to interact with it. 😥
Hello! I really enjoyed what I could play of this game, but I did experience a few issues, and noticed things that I would like to see in a future update.
1. I could not scroll through the text history, after trying to move the slide bar for ages nothing happened.
2. The text would sometimes disappear and then never show up again, so I wouldn't see anything until I could make a choice
3. A Save and load Feature would be nice
4. Once the text tab disappears, there is no way to get it back
5. I see no way to replay the demo from the begining
6. I understand if not, but can I please romance Hermes?
Again, I really enjoyed it and am excited to see what happens next
Thanks for playing our game! We're adding saving and loading in the next build, and fixing a plethora of strange text bugs. We'll also fix the log not scrolling easily. Thanks for your feedback, and I think you'll be satisfied with where you can go with Hermes. :)
I downloaded the newest version, but now I can't play past the end scene of breakfast with the brother, all I get is the sky backdrop and the word false. I also noticed that parts of the god conversation are missing along with the maid changing scene in the morning.
I am encountering this as well!
Hi,
We have just released the newest patch earlier today. Did the same issue happen in this patch?
Now a different issue is happening, where the game immediately opens on the morning of the ball, and I'm not allowed to progress past the conversation with the brother right before the ball.
I love the idea, however theres some problems with the game(keep in mind that I simply cant play to the end of the demo-the ball):
What its good:
Concept
Writing
Characters desings (the ones that I could see)
Major issues:
Backgrounds and characters images not loading
Game crashing
Unnable to play the mini games (loading images/crashing issues)
Repeating scenes and not let me choose the same dialogue alredy choosen-If this was supose to be a game mechanics is a bad one
Minor nitpick:
I particularly dont like the option : choose your type of villainess(meek,close the original,innocent,etc) for two reasons:
1.This choose does bassically nothing (dont lock dialogues,characters still treat you more or less the same,etc)
2.The type of villainess the player chooses portray is better demonstrate on the rest of the dialogues/choices, if you wanna the palyer see how theirs villainess is progressing why not put a personality bar in the game ? This way feels less constriged.
Thank you so much for playing our game as it is right now, and I appreciate that you've taken the time to leave your thoughts! The description you may have been looking at earlier is a little outdated, so the scene you're stuck at is our current endpoint for the demo. This was also made during a time crunch for a deadline, and the dev team is actually a bunch of uni students in finals week right now so it will take us some time to fix these issues, but we plan to release the rest of the act (ballroom scene included) after we've worked through a few of the bugs you mentioned. This game is also being built from the ground up in Godot, so we're taking baby steps in things like statistics and gauges. The bug with repeating scenes is absolutely an issue that we're aware of, and we're doing our best to fix that too.
As for the villainess type, thank you so much for leaving feedback on that too.
1. The main purpose of allowing players to choose is to let them have a say in what kind of "villainess" story they want to tell, and these tend to be the common archetypes! They mostly affect narration, but there *is* a big role they play that actually changes what dialogue options you get and the outcomes for it — except this is during the ballroom scene, which is unfortunately inaccessible at this moment. We're working on that too! There are also many changes that you may not notice until on another play-through, but we plan to expand this choice as well.
2. The personality bar is an interesting addition, and we will definitely consider it. We're also working on changing how characters react to which type you choose, so hopefully that is more to your taste then.
But besides that, if possible could you please also let us know which minigames didn't work so we can fix that as well? Thank you so much! So sorry that the version of the game you played isn't at its full best — we hope you'll enjoy the next version once we patch out these issues!