As you can see from the title, this past week, I’ve been primarily working on the credits sequence for GENBA no Kizuna, so I figured we could delve into that topic a little more today. There are essentially two parts to the credits: the credits themselves and the “epilogue” scenes interspliced with them, just like it was the case in SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair or how you might know it from the Ace Attorney games.
Apr 13
Weekly Update #506: Quick Progress Update & Mystery Gamedev Website
Last week, I talked a bit more about the connection between SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair and GENBA no Kizuna and how, even though there is a chronological order to them, you can really play them in any order you wish. So, if you want to learn a bit more about that, be sure to check out the respective post linked above!
As for today, I’m just gonna leave you with another quick update, as I’m once again incredibly busy. My work on the credits, extras and bad ends for GENBA continues and I really wanna try to wrap it up soon, so that we can finally hand the game over to beta-testers. The biggest hurdle right now is overcoming my perfectionism, since I wanna keep tweaking various things a bit more… “orz
Anyway, I’m aiming to finally have the bad ends fully done by tomorrow evening, so maybe that might be a topic to delve into a bit more next week. But for now, I’ll just get back to work! Well, almost… I want to highlight something as you could already tell from the title: the newly updated website for our Mystery Gamedev Community! It’s still a work in progress, but now features a database containing mystery games (nearly 200) which you can search for by various means (keywords, release dates, demos etc.).
As of right now, only games available on Steam can be discovered, but itch games will eventually be added as well!
So, if you’re itching to delve into some mystery games, do check it out! And if you want to discuss said mystery games or learn more about how to make your own or even partake in a mystery game jam, head on over to the Mystery Gamedev Discord which is close to reaching the 300 member mark, so yeah… it’s grown quite a bit since it was established last year!
Now, with all that said, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3
Apr 06
Weekly Update #505: Which Order…?
I’ve talked about the differences and similarities between GENBA no Kizuna and SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair before, particularly when it comes to the feel of both projects, how we approached them or how the mysteries and characters are handled (which you can read all about here). However, I haven’t properly addressed yet how exactly the two projects tie into each other and how they are connected in terms of their plots. And since I’m currently working on the GENBA stuff that really highlights its connection to SHINRAI, I figured it’s a good time to finally tackle this topic and answer an important question:
In which order should you ideally play them?
Mar 30
Weekly Update #504: Another Quick Update
Alright, since today was pretty busy and it’s a bit late now, we’ll unfortunately have to settle with another super quick post today.
And I figured I might as well take the opportunity to direct you towards a couple other, lengthier posts we’ve published recently.
With GENBA no Kizuna nearing its completion, we have started to get into some release-relevant topics, the two major ones discussed so far being:
Mar 23
Weekly Update #503: Quick Progress Overview
Last week, we’ve unveiled GENBA no Kizuna‘s theme song “Dig Deep”, so if you haven’t heard it yet, be sure to check it out here!
We’ve provided a lengthy preview in the post, while patrons can even check out the full song! I’m really happy with the result and think everyone working on it did an absolutely amazing job, so I just had to highlight it again!
And since we’re already on the topic of highlighting things, I’d like to do the same with another new fan art that was sent to us recently, once again drawn by “Ryuu-chan” who… drew us another adorable Ryuu-chan, together with a very beautiful Amber!
(The way they look at each other, hnnnnnnnngh…!!)
Mar 16
Weekly Update #502: GENBA’s Theme Song
As you may have seen me mention every once in a while, our composer Solo Acapello and I have been working on a vocalized theme song for GENBA no Kizuna for quite some time now. And given that this song has finally been completed, I thought it’s about time I finally talk about it in more detail! In fact, I have just published a new post over on Patreon, in which I delve really deep into how the song came to be, what the process of working on it was like and, of course, you can even listen to the full 4:23 minutes of it and read through the lyrics!
I also wanted to give non-patrons an idea as to what the song is like, though, so here are the first 1:40 minutes of it:
Mar 09
Weekly Update #501: Quick Progress Update
As you can tell from the title, today, I’m just gonna type up a really quick update, since there’s a lot to do! If you’ve checked out last week’s blog post, you know that our goal for this month is to get GENBA playable from beginning to end after all! And tomorrow evening, I’d really like to send another zip package over to Natsu, so that she can code the next couple of scenes!
As such, I’ve been very busy refining the script and whipping up a few more art assets that… were kind of a last minute idea.
It’s nothing too major, so they didn’t require tremendous amounts of time to take care of, but did temporarily slow my process.
I think it was really worth it, though, and makes a particular (very spoilery) scene all the more special now!
Speaking of art assets, Kaleido‘s GENBA sprite update is finally done as well! I’ve uploaded a preview to Patreon the other day and the final version will soon follow, so keep your eyes out for that! And another thing you can expect to show there up soon… is our theme song, because that one has been completed now as well!!
I will dedicate next week’s update to it and also prepare a preview for non-patrons, so please look forward to that!
The result is absolutely amazing in my ears and I really can’t wait to share it!
But until then, be sure to have a really good time and, as always, take care :3
Mar 02
Weekly Update #500: Reminiscing & Plans For March
Good gracious Cretaceous! That’s right, we’ve reached a total of 500 weekly update posts!! Though, of course, if you add all the special announcements, the total number of posts is even higher than that. However, 500 is the number of Saturdays I’ve now spent typing up progress updates for our visual novel projects and that… is pretty crazy to think about, haha.
Feb 26
Steam Dinos VS Robots Fest
Today begins another Steam Fest, this time celebrating games that primarily revolve around dinosaurs, robots or even both!
And, of course, with our upcoming murder mystery visual novel GENBA no Kizuna being heavily dinosaur-themed, it’s part of the event as well! So this is a great time to head over to our store page, learn a bit more about it and maybe even add it to your wishlist!
After a development journey that felt like it lasted for 66 million years, GENBA is finally lumbering closer towards its completion, which is why I’ve also started to discuss various topics more in-depth, which might be of interest if this project managed to pique your curiosity. If you’d like to know more about how it compares to our previous murder mystery SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair, for instance, you can read all about that here, and if you’re wondering about the pricing, I’ve just published a very lengthy blog post regarding the matter, delving deep into all the thoughts and considerations that go into choosing a price for an indie VN like this.
You can expect to learn even more in the coming weeks as we continue wrapping up the project and prepare for its release, so keep your eyes peeled! But until then, we hope you’ll have a pterribly rexellent time this week, hunting down some other roarsome dino-related projects on Steam! I certainly know I will!
Feb 24
Weekly Update #499: Pricing
As mentioned in last week’s blog post, there are a couple of topics I’d like to discuss as we slowly edge closer to the completion of our next murder mystery visual novel GENBA no Kizuna and therefore its release. One topic I’ve already covered is how exactly it compares to our previous project SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair. So, if you’d like to know more about what you can expect from GENBA, how it differs from SHINRAI and in what ways the two of them are similar, you can read all about it in this post right here!
Now, as you could already tell from the title, today, I’d like to get into the topic of pricing. It’s something I’ve been asked about before, which has been on my mind for a very long time now and which is, of course, a very important decision factor for potential buyers as to whether or not they’re going to get our game (or at least when they’re going to get it).
Let me start off by stating that a price has not fully been set in stone for GENBA yet, so I still cannot give you a precise number! However, I do know a price range which I’ll get into later, so that you’ll at least get an idea as to what you can expect. That said, the primary point of today’s post is more to delve into the various thoughts and factors that go into the decision-making process and why it’s so difficult to pin down what a project like ours should actually cost (the secondary point being that it sometimes feels as though, especially as an indie dev, you kinda need to justify why you’re charging any money at all in the first place…).
But without further ado, let’s jump right into the topic at hand!
