
Factsheet
Developer:
Cyanide Tea
Based in Dallas + Melbourne
Founding date:
November 9, 2011
Website:
cyanide-tea.net
Press / Business contact:
contact@cyanide-tea.net
Releases:
Break Chance Memento
Description
Cyanide Tea is an indie visual novel production team made up of Lorelei Nguyen and Stephanie Moss, two women on opposite sides of the globe united by their love for immersive story-telling.
History
Early historyOriginally, Lorelei approached Stephanie to commission her to do the art assets for Break Chance Memento in mid-2011. Some months later, the two of them ended up hitting it off and forming a permanent visual novel production group: Cyanide Tea.
Ristorante Amore and The ElevatorAs work on Break Chance Memento continued and the game grew far past its original vision, Cyanide Tea took frequent breaks to work on and release a number of free/pay-what-you-want visual novels. The first of these was Ristorante Amore, a slice-of-life story with a big twist. RisAmo was developed in just one month for the game jam NaNoRenO and was subsequently released on April 1, 2012. This game was followed up by The Elevator, a short and suspenseful visual novel about a jaded old detective. These two visual novels really established Cyanide Tea as a group and NaNoRenO became an important yearly event for the team.
Further developmentIn 2013, Lorelei and Stephanie split up for a little while to pursue other projects; Stephanie did the art and UI for fantasy visual novel Witch/Knight for NaNoRenO, while Lorelei co-created and wrote SPLENDIDEST OTOGE, a game about dating a tiramisu, for the Pulse Pounding Heart Stopping Dating Sim Jam. After finishing those two games, they reunited to release Nachtigal, a short game with more of a horror lean than their previous works. A few months later, they once again participated in NaNoRenO and released Taarradhin. Nachtigal and Taarradhin had darker themes and explored player choice and consequences more than their previous visual novels. Taarradhin went on to win the English Visual Novel of the Year award from visual novel review website VNs Now.
Returning to BCMIn 2015, Stephanie and Lorelei teamed up with others to concept and create The Blind Griffin for NaNoRenO. 2015 also signaled a full-force return to work on Break Chance Memento. Applying all of the things they'd learned while working on their smaller projects, Lorelei and Stephanie worked on and improved upon the project that brought them together. By the end of the year, it was finally ready for release at last. BCM is their first commercial release.
Projects
Logo
Awards & Recognition
- "English Visual Novel of the Year (Taarradhin), Best Artist, Best Writer" - VNs Now Best Ofs 2014
- "Best Romance (Ristorante Amore)" - VNs Now Best Ofs 2012
Selected Articles
- "It's an engaging premise with some strong writing [...]"
- Tom Sykes, on The Blind Griffin, PC Gamer - "The story caught me immediately, the characters all eventually grew on me and it looks and plays very well."
- JP, on Break Chance Memento, VNs Now! - "[Stephanie's] art is vibrant and expressive, and [Lorelei] deserves some sort of digital high-five for taking such a tired old genre and putting a new spin on it."
- Dora, on Ristorante Amore, JayisGames
Contact
Inquiries
contact@cyanide-tea.net
Twitter
twitter.com/cyanidetea_dev
Facebook
facebook.com/cyanideteadev
Website
cyanide-tea.net
presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) - also thanks to these fine folks