#monthly-update

Hello everyone, happy July! I hope that it's not too hot where you are (and perhaps you're playing visual novels indoors where it's nice and cool~ 🤭)

Before I get into my dev rambling, I'll mention that I recently started a mailing list! Since there are usually several months between my releases, I thought it would be convenient for players to be notified whenever I release a game or major update without monitoring my socials. You can sign up for it here!

As you probably know, I released a game last month for Otome Jam! The demo of "My Husband is a Stranger" is now available to play on itch.io! You can find it here!

It's a psychological/drama/romance visual novel about a sweet marriage that slowly rots into a nightmare. It has a customizable protagonist (including skin color) and different font options! The game will take place over the course of 7 days; 3 days and 23k words are available at the moment (around 2 hours of playtime). Please read the content warnings, and take note that the final game will contain horror and thriller elements, in case that's not up your alley!

So… this month I basically did everything that was needed to finish up the MHIAS demo! This included:

-Drew 4 CGs -Drew 19 smaller illustrations -Fixed one of Morgan's sprites and added sprite expressions for both sprites -Made 7 time of day variations of 5 different backgrounds, plus alterations to some commissioned backgrounds (there are 45 backgrounds for the game at the moment! Wow!) -Coded in the entire script, including visuals, audio, and dialogue formats -Put together achievement icons and implemented the achievement system -Implemented BGM and SFX -Coded in the settings and archives -Implemented the gallery -Implemented blinking -Learned how to use Ren'py's particle system -Fixed the Web build so that it works on mobile devices, added a notification to the Web build informing the player of performance issues -Implemented the icon and loading screens for PC, Android, and Web -Finished and styled both the itch.io and Steam pages -Wrote the developer's note -Beta testing -Various bugfixes

Whew, it ended up being a lot! I also made achievement icons and implemented the achievement systems for both Project R and the Karamu trilogy, finalized a few commissioned assets for Project R, and set up the mailing list that I mentioned at the start of the devlog.

Lastly, I was interviewed by the very kind people at Otome.com about MindMindMind! If you're interested, you can check it out here:

It goes without saying that I'm… a bit tired! As much as I loved working on the MHIAS demo, it's also easily my most ambitious title yet. It has the most art assets out of any of my games (over twice as many as any of my other titles). It's also the first time I've worked with Ren'py (pretty proud of myself for going from complete novice to workable game in around two months!) and the first time I worked with an artist for a custom GUI (among a dozen other things).

So I took around a week break from development. Now that that's over, I plan to slowly ease back into the swing of things. My main focuses this month will be the MHIAS script (I plan on finishing it completely before I release the next update) as well as the art assets for Project R and the Karamu trilogy. I'd also like to make some headway on the Android port for MMM this month since I don't have any imminent game releases looming over my head.

Thank you to everyone who's following along, and see you next month!

What did I do this month?

During the first couple weeks of September, I mainly focused on The Perfect Woman, which I released in mid-September! I finished the last CGs and did some polish work, including adding the ending gallery, before getting the game beta-tested. I also made the itch page and a couple of promotional posts. After the release, I spent a few days de-compressing (new game releases are always a bit stressful, for some reason 😂) and did some of the usual stuff: adding the game to IMDB, updating my socials with the new release, etc etc. I also spent some time responding to everyone's comments; they were very kind and thoughtful, thank you to everyone who took the time to play 🙇‍♀️

In addition, I worked a bit on cleaning up my code base. I've mostly been using "The Deepwater Witch" as a base (since it was the first game I made in Godot), which wasn't the greatest because it lacked a lot of key features, such as VA and a customizable protagonist 😂 So every time I needed to add those features, I had to code them in again. So I made a clean slate codebase that implements all of the features that I would need. I added in localization functions, as well as the ability to add a customizable protagonist. I also started implementing Steam achievements and a togglable virtual keyboard (for mobile devices or Steam Deck). On the scriptwriting front, I wrote ~15k across a few different projects (the ones that I soft-announced in my most recent Project Roadmap)! I also commissioned a new Karamu logo, since I plan on expanding the project.

And during the second half of the month, I was traveling! While I was gone, I collected quite a few photos to use as background references and visited a few locations and museums to do research, but I was out and about too much to do any serious dev work 😅 (I did come up with a couple new game ideas while I was in transport 😂 but it'll be a while before I tackle them…)

What's going on next month?

Now that I'm back and well-rested, for the rest of the month I plan to continue scriptwriting across three projects (the three unannounced yandere projects from the Roadmap - which I will probably announce on my Patreon sometime soon! I'll wait to announce them on my other socials for when I have sprites and some CGs done 😂) I'll also start doing character design and background sketches for those projects, as well as background work for Hanasu, the last part of Karamu.

And for everyone who's following along with my weekly updates on Patreon, I'm back from my trip, so they will resume next Sunday! Thank you for your patience 🙇‍♀️

Thank you to everyone who's following along, and see you next month!