The Final Song

Navigate through the poignant moments and choices in this immersive interactive story, to create your own unique song, interwoven with the emotional theme of the tragic history of The Siege Of Leningrad...

This is my very first small text indie-game with elements of visual novel, based on the emotional theme of the Siege of Leningrad, created by myself and a help from numerous freelancers, who generously lended their art, music and voices to this project.

INSTRUCTIONS:

WHAT IS THIS PROJECT?

This game is an educational institute project made as a final work for a Media Communications program at Higher School of Economics (Saint-Petersburg campus, HSE).

Please, leave as much feedback as possible, it is greatly appreciated. You can leave feedback in the comments below or contact me directly

To contact me directly: [email protected] / [email protected]

WHAT IS THIS PROJECT FOR?

This story is focused on the emotional theme of a historical event - The Siege Of Leningrad. This project is inspired by historical events, people and places. This project is NOT A DOCUMENTARY, but rather a work of FICTION. All coincidences you may encounter in this project are purely coincidental, the project in no way tries to cause disrespect to such an important historical subject. The project uses homages to some historical details and images to better build an emotional connection between the player and the story. The main goal of the project is to convey the emotional atmosphere of the Siege of Leningrad. My hope is that you, dear player, under the impression of this short story will want to familiarize yourself with the real history of the Siege of Leningrad, it would be the best possible outcome for this project!

WHAT IS THIS STORY ABOUT?

This story starts with an unknown woman finding herself in a city under a prolonged siege during winter. Not knowing her purpose yet, she clings to the only thing she can find on herself - a postal bag to deliver letters to people in the city. She is a messenger, but of a different kind, as she soon realizes...

Her journey lies through a place in a situation most dire, where people survived in the impossible suffering for multiple years. She soon finds herself with desire to SING to these people, perhaps to soothe their pain, or perhaps to soothe her own? Under circumstances such as these, art seems to be one of the things that continues to bloom no matter what, and only YOU will decide what her SONG will be like. Throughout the game you will have multiple choices, where you'll decide what to FOCUS her SONG ON. In the end, her FINAL SONG shall become YOURS...

HOW TO PLAY?

After you've read the text passage on each screen, you should click on the the last text line, which will be highlighted in Yellow Color. Sometimes there will be multiple lines highlited in yellow - these are the CHOICE intersections - you can only pick one of the two presented.

You can START THE GAME by pressing the next yellow line down below. (the one that says START YOUR SONG)

ADDITIONAL INFO: On some screens there will be embedded files you can listen to or watch (The files contain Music for specific scenes, and Songs that the character sings at CHOICE intersections, it is recommended you listen to both when prompted for a bigger immersion). You can do so right on the screen by pressing play button, or you can click the links beneath the embedded files to go over to Vocaroo/Youtube to listen to the files there.

I hope you will establish a strong and cincere emotional connection to this story, and the historical event it was influenced by.