Umineko: Letter to the Golden Witch
A downloadable forgery
When Eiserne Jungfrau's head inquisitor Dlanor A. Knox finds herself in possession of a mysterious game piece for the Rokkenjima game board, she decides to visit the Golden Land to deliver it to Beatrice in person.
When summoned, the piece takes the form of Etna Alighieri, a young woman with no obvious connection to Rokkenjima or to Beatrice, and furniture of a witch whose name she has forgotten.
Can Etna complete the task left to her by her long-gone master? Can her bond to that master ever be repaired, or is she destined to disappear entirely?
Letter to the Golden Witch is a love letter to Umineko, as well as a story about fanfiction, writing, and our relationships with the stories we love.
Umineko: Letter to the Golden Witch is a full-length, in-engine Umineko fan episode, in the form of a mod for the MangaGamer release of Umineko When They Cry - Answer Arcs (available from Steam/MangaGamer/GOG storefronts). It is a complete story, with a full game board and set of closed rooms for readers to solve.
Q) Can I read Letter to the Golden Witch if I haven't finished Umineko?
A) Letter contains spoilers up to and including the final scene of episode 8. You should only read Letter if you've finished Umineko!
Q) I don't own the MangaGamer version of Umineko. Is there any other way to read Letter?
A) At the moment, there are no plans to port Letter to any other version of Umineko due to the effort required in porting the PONScripter game script to other engines. However, a YouTube playlist can be found here!
Q) How long is Letter?
A) Letter is just a little bit shorter than an average Umineko episode, with a word count of around 107,800. It should take 8-12 hours to read, depending on your reading pace.
- "Letter to the Golden Witch" concept, script and development by Erin
- Original Visual Novels "Umineko no Naku Koro Ni", "Umineko no Naku Koro Ni Chiru" by 07th Expansion, published by MangaGamer
- "Etna Alighieri" character sprites by Zappa (email)
- Other custom assets by Erin
Umineko: Letter to the Golden Witch is purely a fan work, and has no association with 07th Expansion, Ryukishi07, or any other creators, publishers or rights holders involved with Umineko or the When They Cry series.
All content belongs to those rights holders unless otherwise stated.
Additionally, Letter to the Golden Witch was created according to 07th Expansion fan work guidelines. No content belonging to other rights holders such as BGM composers is distributed as part of this work.
Download
Install instructions
Letter to the Golden Witch requires a clean install of Umineko When They Cry - Answer Arcs (Steam/MangaGamer/GOG).
Note for 07th Mod Users
If you are using 07th Mod or any other mods, back up your Answer Arcs directory and create a fresh install with no mods by re-downloading the game from your chosen storefront before installing Letter.
Installation
- Back up your Answer Arcs install.
- Extract the mod files directly into your Answer Arcs directory, such that the 0.utf in the game zip overwrites the 0.utf in the Answer Arcs directory, and the other demo folders are merged with the folders in the game files.
- Open the "saves" folder and delete "global.sav" if it is present.
- If you own Answer Arcs on Steam, disable Steam Cloud saves for Answer Arcs in the Steam game's properties menu (right click -> Properties -> General -> Disable "Keep games saves in the Steam Cloud for Umineko When They Cry - Answer Arcs").
- Exit Steam before launching the game. If unintended progression occurs, refer to the note below.
- Launch Umineko5to8.exe.
More detailed instructions are included in the readme.
Note: For owners of the Steam release of Answer Arcs, it may be necessary to have Steam closed when opening Letter due to issues with save file syncing, even if steam cloud save is disabled.
If the game opens with an unexpected level of progress (IE. Tea Parties, Music Box available before you have unlocked them), exit Steam and restart the game.
Development log
- Letter to the Golden Witch is out now!Oct 27, 2023
- Release Date AnnouncementOct 25, 2023
- Development Update (August 2023)Aug 01, 2023
- Development Update (Oct 2022)Nov 01, 2022
- Development Update (August 2021)Aug 26, 2021
- Development Update (April 2021)Apr 23, 2021
Comments
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I took a peek in the script and saw the comment about tips. What exactly is the problem you are having with it? I managed to swap the character text, image and icons and can control what characters show up on the tips screen at any given time. See: https://imgur.com/a/0WxyWXB
Oh wow, I wrote that comment literally over two years ago, I didn't expect someone to actually respond to it! It's been a long time since I tried to wrangle the tips code but I remember my main difficulty was in getting the new assets (button, sprite, description) to show up without simply replacing the existing ones.
If you have Discord, could you hit me up at "it_is_erin" to go over your process for this? I'd be immeasurably grateful for the help!
Thank you so much for writing this.
Hi, today i found the existance of this fangame, but I'm having a problem with the save function. I have done all the steps but when i save and then load any save file it always start after the initial part with Dlanor and the phrase: "This.... is a curious fragment".
Is this a known issue?
It's not the end of the world but having to always fast forward every time i close the game is a bit annoying.
Thank You, so far the game is really getting me on the screen.
This isn't a known issue but I'll take a look into it, thank you for letting me know!
Probably you have already noticed but I found out that in the save1.dat file (or any other savefile) are stored the actual read lines, and I found only two possible outcomings:
1) if you save before the end of the part with Dlanor and Gertrude (doesn't matter the line) and you load that save it always start from the begging as if you have started the chapter from the main menu;
2) if you save after the initial part with Dlanor and load it will always restart from the line: "This.... is a curious fragment".
Right now it's probably a non-issue because it is a demo and 99% of the readers are not going to save and they will just read it in one go.
By the way I really liked and I'm really looking forward to the complete release.
It's already been a while since I've read this. I expressed my appraisal to my friend who had recommended this to me, but not to you directly. The way you've managed to match the 'feeling' of Ryukishi's works and delivered a strikingly similar atmosphere is very impressive. What I was most impressed by was the prose; it's simple, yet very strong in description. It might seem silly to fawn over something like that, but still. The characters also seemed very consistent: the very first scene where Battler and Beatrice are playing togethere felt very authentic, as if it were straight out of the original games.
Very much looking forward to the final release.
Oh I am so going to read/download this when the full visual novel comes out. Keep up the good work on the novel!