Flagship Project

VantaPsy: Soul Snatcher

To lack; To want a soul.

Persona meets Disco Elysium in a perpetual-night city where your personality shapes combat, relationships, and the mystery itself.

Investigative JRPG Social Simulation Ren'Py PC: Windows / macOS / Linux
Download on itch.io Get in touch about publishing

Overview

A city folded in on itself

Sengetsuki is a coastal town of stacked concrete terraces and ageing infrastructure, locked in eternal night since the airship Nightjar crashed nine years ago. The player takes the role of a Soulless protagonist racing a generous but very real death timer, while investigating the disappearances attributed to a rumoured killer: the Soul Snatcher.

The map plays like a metroidvania, folded and layered rather than sprawling. Investigation, dialogue, combat, and exploration sit in the same space at once. A conversation can unlock a location. A location can change a relationship. Nothing in VantaPsy happens in isolation.

Story

What's actually going on

Within Sengetsuki, the Soulless are treated as incomplete people, written off as a biological certainty and a social sentence. Soul Snatcher follows that assumption all the way down, and asks what a soul actually is: a possession, or something earned through choice, connection, and responsibility.

Dual protagonists, Zuki and Luna, split the early game between two very different ways of facing the same loss. Six main endings wait at the far side of the investigation, depending on how much the player chose to notice along the way.

Characters

Who you'll meet

Full bios and art live in the Compendium in-game. Here's the short version of the people you'll actually travel with.

Zuki character art placeholder
Canonical Protagonist

Zuki Sapha

The Soulless Sleuth

Soulless. Curious to a fault, bad at reading rooms, worse at understanding why anyone would cry over a clue. The investigator at the centre of the mystery, determined to uncover the truth before Frallation takes them.

Luna character art placeholder
Alternate Protagonist

Luna-Bright Sapha

The Weary Sentinel

The older sister who reads every room and carries every responsibility. Moody and bitter with a heart too pure to truly let go. Playing the 'mother' until combat lets inner fox free.

Vixpsy character art placeholder
Fairy Companion

Vixpsy

The Asymptotic Echo

A Pixpsy who has carried her memories for longer than anyone should, the world's history sitting in her like sediment, waiting for a reason to surface. She can recite almost anything except where she actually came from.

Rakia character art placeholder
Party Member

Rakia Sapha

The Gambler of Grief

The youngest Sapha sibling, treating grief like a problem that can be solved through ritual, superstition, and exactly the right amount of risk.

Nathalia character art placeholder
Party Member

Nathalia "Naxin" Nura

The Passionate Pugilist

Loud, chest-puffed, and built on the belief that anything can be solved by hitting it hard enough, ghosts being the one exception she can never quite punch her way past. Uses strength as armour until the story asks her what strength is actually for.

Xiro character art placeholder
Party Member

Xiro Xeraphina

The Auto-Mechanical Heir

Heir to Xeraphina Auto and Zuki's childhood friend. Performs competence so well that even he sometimes forgets he's performing it.

Ezra character art placeholder
Party Member

Ezra Zealous

The Reckless Hacker

A hacker-rebel leader investigating the Soul Snatcher from the outside, carrying a debt he never agreed to and can't quite set down.

Aysha character art placeholder
Party Member

Aysha Salinte

The Archivist of Desire

A researcher with no clear memory of how long she's actually lived in Sengetsuki. Joins the party to get closer to the mystery everyone else is chasing.

Kiara-Koto character art placeholder
Party Member

Kiara-Koto Najma

The Polyphonic Performers

Two sisters with a tangled, complicated history, recruited late and still working out what coexisting actually looks like for them.

Screenshots

From the vertical slice

Development

Where the project stands

Vertical Slice

The prologue mountain section is fully playable, demonstrating exploration, combat, investigation, and dual protagonists.

Core Systems

Combat, dual inventory, trait system, social affinity, the phone, map, and save systems are implemented and being tested.

In Progress

Hospital section content, remaining backgrounds and sprites, and the calendar / Frallation timer system.

Download

Play the vertical slice

A demo build covering the prologue mountain section.

Download on itch.io