the head well lost

When Francis matched with Rai on a dating app, the fact that he's half of the electronic pop duo DRYDEN should have been the most shocking part. Despite the hiccups that naturally occur when a quiet librarian and an internationally famous music producer collide, they hit it off and eventually decide to meet up. The moment Rai takes off the futuristic helmet he’s known for always wearing, he reveals to Francis his biggest secret: he is actually a Dullahan, a mythical being who has no head.

While lugging around her own emotional baggage, can Francis make a relationship work with this nice young man who also happens to be a headless pop star?

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Characters

Francis Lin: a 29-year-old librarian, part-time barista, and full-time cat mom. She's gone through some trials which have made her rather cynical and reserved.

Rai Brennan: already a sought-after producer and pop star at the age of 26. Confident, hard-working, and sweet, this guy is the whole package...minus a head.

Vergil Onassis: famous and beloved 27-year-old pop singer. Rai's childhood friend, he oozes sensuality and charm, but is also prone to wild swings of emotion.

Misty: the oldest of Francis's three cats. A taciturn, a-little-too-intelligent Siamese cat who bosses the other two around.

Creme: the cuddly, somewhat easily frightened Himalayan. According to Francis, she is the Sweetest Cat Ever™.

Phaeton: the youngest cat of the trio, what this Cornish Rex lacks in fluff and fur, he makes up for in attitude and side-eying.

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Features

• Over 100,000 words
• 9 different endings
• A heavily electronic, hip-hop soundtrack
• 3 very cute cats — as you progress, unlock special scenes from the cats' POV
• the majority of the most emotionally-charged scenes occur at Waffle House

We are aiming to release the head well lost later in 2021. Please look forward to it! You can track the development progress here. As of May 2021, the art and UI are finished, while the script and coding are at 90% completion.

Please Take Note:

the head well lost is a commercial otome game with one character route which takes place over the course of about a year. Francis and Rai start dating fairly early on in the game. Thus, unlike many other romantic visual novels, the maintenance of the relationship is the main point, not the pursuit.

Due to the nature of Rai's job, he and Francis are not always together. This is especially true for about the first half of the game. As a result, a good chunk of the story occurs through text messages and phone calls.

WARNING: This game contains erotic textual content. These scenes are toggled off by default. Unless you opt-in, these scenes will all be fade-to-black. This game is recommended for ages 18+ mainly for that reason. Also because 15-year-olds may not enjoy or relate to Francis's rants about rent and various other quarter-life-crisis topics.

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A lovingly crafted, singularly focused otome game from L³. Writing and programming by Lore, character and CG art by Adirosa. The cats were drawn by Ameliori.

A few credits: rpavich, Jess Pac, Shinsuke Ikegame, and Pinnacle_College from Flickr and Nicolas Raymond for photos used for background art. FoolBoyMedia and davidferoli from FreeSound. All the emojis used in the game were designed by Twitter and are free use. None of the aforementioned endorse this project, we just used some of their stuff.

The text messages are a modified version of this system by Nadia Nova. 

We've compiled the songs used in-game here.  If you use Spotify, you can use this playlist to listen. Please note that a few tracks were edited for pitch/speed/to remove whomp-whomps and thus will sound different there.