#prettydreadful

Many things were said, and I don't feel I can add more.

The Gazette have always been a huge part of my life, and the news about Reita-san left me devastated.

When I first planned to make my little game, it was The Gazette who inspired me greatly (and now you can see familiar faces as the game characters). The character that was inspired by Reita-san is a cool supernatural detective. He wasn't meant to be introduced in the Demo (but later in the main game). Yet, after everything that's happened, I felt the need to show my respect to such a great person.

I didn't want to rush to make things properly and animated the character with great love. And I hope he'll steal people's hearts when it'll come to the whole game.

Thank you for inspiring me to go on, Reita-san!

P.S. I created the art on top many years ago. It's just a low quality photo of a real drawing, and I decided to keep it as it is to represent the time passed.

Of course, it’s one of my favourite genres of a game, as I grew up playing Syberia, Nancy Drew and recently I was fascinated with Fran Bow, Sally Face and Spiritfarer. Point and Click Adventures seem relaxing, almost like reading a book but with an opportunity to interact with the game world and various NPCs. You don’t have to worry about your character’s health bar, abilities upgrade and many other things which might require your concentration and reaction speed.

Yet, another reason is that I suck at coding. (^_^;) Several attempts to learn programming were pretty unsuccessful and disappointing. And I started looking for alternate ways.

Actually, my first real game build was a visual novel made with Ren’Py. I was really simple and worked well, but I realized that my art skills were far below the appropriate level for such a genre.

That’s when I “got acquainted” with Unity and found a marvelous asset pack called Adventure Creator. It’s basically created for point and click adventures and offers you simple tools of visual scripting to make your game come true.

My first attempts to make a location and a character who can walk, speak and interact with the world were pretty lame (even with the help of tutorials). Yet, with every scene, every NPC, and every detail I feel more and more confident.

The updated Demo is out now!

Re:do can see strange things around him. Ghosts, monsters, dead people? He is eager to ignore everything just to fit in and feel "normal". Yet those things are not eager to let Re:do go and stay unnoticed. How much longer can this lie go on?

Please, enjoy the demo, if you haven't played it yet! (^ ^)

Every bit of support is highly appreciated. Please, wishlist the game if you like it <3

P.S. A little spoiler for the upcoming location of the main game (^^)

I’d love to make a game about everything I like and everything that inspires me to create.

One band that inspired me. Five members… well, here are four of them. The fifth one is definitely going to be an inspiration for one more character - he is on the way.

Am I ready? Absolutely not. Every day I have to fix more and more bugs which increase like a damn Fibonacci sequence 🫠 I have to blame the unintended 5 endings for this😈

Yet, I cannot delay the release because life makes its own rules (probably I’ll tell this story after it’s all over).

I hope I won’t have to cut any content I have left planned (it’s not much but still…).

This post is a bit chaotic, but it’s perfectly good for this platform I believe 🙃

Please, support the game with wishlists on Steam if you’d like to know how this story ends 👻

「Pretty Dreadful」 is going to Steam Next Fest in October!

Yep, I’m still alive.😅 And I’m bold enough to say that the game is 85% ready. Why 85? Let me say that some days and nights in the game matter.

Four endings are also on-route. Initially, I was going to try for two, but ended up with twice as many.

I hope, the game will be accepted to the Fest without any issues. And if things go as planned, I’ll soon be able to announce the release date as well.

P.S. I’m still not good at social media, though I realise it’s the only way to let people know about my game. Well, the time is yet to come.

Please, check out the demo and add it to your wishlist! <3

And of course I thank everyone who's added 「Pretty Dreadful」 to their wishlist. Lots of love to you, wonderful people!

___

2025年10月

Steam Nextフェスに行きます！

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

This year has been pretty hectic (which becomes quite a usual thing these days). Nevertheless, I’d like to make a short overview here.

I’m happy to share that the demo of my little game got about 200 wishlists. I know it’s not a huge number, but it makes me happy anyway. If all those 200 people came into my room and said “I’d like to play your game”, I would be in a pleasant kind of shock. (o^ ^o)

Thank you everyone, who noticed my game!

(If these characters remind you of someone, I'm happy you can understand the reference. You may also find some interesting spoilers for the game in this art. (^_~) )

The development is moving slowly but steadily. I believe that 2024 was a harsh year for many people out there. I’ve personally been through several crises (unfortunately, the last one isn’t over yet).

Mind the difficulties, I don’t want to become one of those developers, who for some reason abandon their project (though I respect them all and their decision).

Honestly, I’m not very good at blogging. I’d like to share many things I’ve already made for the game, but I don’t want to spoil things either (^^;). I’ll think it over and try to find some balance.

I’m sure everyone has their struggles and crises to overcome this year. So, I’ll try to focus on good things and make a list of good results. That’s a good thing to motivate myself to go on and encourage someone else not to give up on their dreams (I hope).

(I'd love to spoil new this location because I worked on it a lot, and I hope you'll find it pretty)

1. Left quite a toxic job environment,

2. Started taking care of myself and my health,

3. Added 11 locations, 6 new NPCs, 3 monsters and numerous minor things to the game,

4. Learnt lots of new things which help me build the gameplay faster and better,

5. Finally restarted learning Japanese and have a significant progress in it. (I went to a Japanese Language school back in 2017, but had to stop my journey in learning the language. I’m happy to finally be able to continue from the point where I had stopped)

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I know this is the blog about the game developenment. Yet! I’d like to share more of my interests here, since they are often connected to the game anyway. And, they can tell you more about me as a person/game developer. (^ ^)V

As a little experiment, I’m going to start with using my newly acquired Japanese skills. It will encourage me (and maybe someone else) and show that it’s never too late to pick up the hobby you once loved again. (Also, I humbly hope to make some basic Japanese translations in the game for its release.)

こんにちは！

名前はナタリです。よろしくお願いします🙇‍♀️

2017年からゆっくり日本語を勉強しています。そしてこのブログに日本語ときどきできたいと思います。

自分でコンピューターゲームを作っています。

コンピューターゲームがあまり上手じゃないですけど、毎日ゆっくり頑張ります！

今年はちょっと難しかったですね。。。

I made a lot of talking (in writing ^^;) about the things I improved in the Demo of Pretty Dreadful, but I almost abandoned my YouTube channel.

So I thought it would be nice to actually show the update. For those who haven't played the game yet, it's a good chance to see it live (whether it meets your expectations or not).

Please, check out the latest Devlog and subscribe to my channel if you like it. I don't have a clear plan right now, but I'm definitely intended to update it more often and share the development of the whole game (^_^).