Jurassic June was a rather busy month with many things to take care of within a specific amount of time. Thankfully, July is going to be a bit more relaxed though, with no fast approaching deadlines for half a dozen of things. That doesn’t mean I want to take it easy, however. On the contrary, there are still a lot of things I want to work on, so let’s talk about these today!
First off, I’ve been very focused on the writing for Withering Without Hope during the last few days of June and I want to keep at it for a little longer. Ideally, I want to finish the first chapter this month. So far, I’ve made some pretty good progress and enjoyed myself quite a lot. But the really difficult scenes are still lying ahead of me and there are a lot of details I still need to figure out. Still, I’ll definitely continue working on this and patrons can look forward to getting another glimpse at the script very soon!
Originally planning to publicly show it during Jurassic June, I also want to finally get back to the main hall background for GENBA no Kizuna and finish the shading. With so many other things of slightly higher priority to take care of (and getting into an unexpected writing mood for WWH *cough*), I sadly wasn’t able to do so yet. Afterwards, I’d like to get back to working on the sprites variations for Rei and Shinketsu, so we can code the next scene as soon as possible.
Within the next few days, I’ll also give our composer the details on the next track, so if you do support us on Patreon, you can look forward to listen to it some time later this month!
Now, speaking of Patreon, just as I mentioned in last week’s update, I’d like to talk a little bit more about it in terms of content. Recently, I have unlocked the postings featuring the design sketches for GENBA‘s suspect characters to the public. I did this since they have been around for half a year now and because we do actually not have any publicly available posts on there. So the idea was to show potential supporters what they can actually expect in terms of content.
I will eventually unlock other postings as well. I’m still deciding which ones and when. There are certainly some that will stay locked for a very long time to come, though, like script excerpts or BGMs. At least until the games are fully released. But when it comes to WIP-artworks, assets and designs, and probably even the special blog post category, I will eventually end up making them public after a certain amount of time has passed. At least a couple of months.
I will also update the overview description on Patreon soon as well. I think it’s about time for that.
Anyway, in case you might be interested in supporting us through Patreon, I thought that it would be helpful to give you a list of what exactly you can currently find on there in terms of content, so here we go:
- 3 Special Blog Posts (1 showing off unused SHINRAI artwork & talking about visual clues, 1 about our beginnings as visual novel developers and another about the origins of Himatsu, featuring an excerpt of her original introduction scene)
- 9 BGMs (1 unused track from SHINRAI, 1 track from its sequel WWH & 7 tracks from GENBA)
- 7 Script Excerpts (2 for WWH comprising the prologue, the rest from GENBA, up to the halfway point of the 1st chapter)
- 7 Design Sketches (the 4 unlocked ones for GENBA & 3 for WWH, featuring 2 characters each)
- 35 Monthly Art Postings (including the polls, many WIP-glimpses & final artworks in high resolution)
There are a whole bunch of more WIP-postings including early glimpses at backgrounds, detailing the process how I usually go about BG-creation, showing Kamen’s and Taiko’s updated WWH appearances and so on and so forth. As for future content, as mentioned before, you can look forward to a new part of the WWH script and a new GENBA BGM this month, but I’m also planning to finally continue talking about our previous VN projects, which were never finished and ditched in favor of SHINRAI. I’m going to show off some of their assets too, since there are a lot of them. Other than that, it might be time for some more WWH design sketches and, of course, the summer-themed monthly artwork!
So yeah, that’s more or less the plan for July. August is definitely going to be a lot busier again, so I really want to use this month to work on the things I want to work on right now, rather than the ones I have to take care of because of approaching deadlines.
Now, before I wrap this up, I’d like to direct you to AquosBoost’s YouTube Channel. They have recently livestreamed SHINRAI and uploaded the entire playthrough there. If you’ve been curious about our little VN or just want to witness someone else’s experience, please head over and give it a look!
I’d also like to use this opportunity to thank everyone who has recently left us a Steam Review. It takes time and effort to write a proper review, so this is greatly appreciated and it helps us out a lot. I’ve said this many times before, but it is very true. With each and every review, our visibility on Steam is raised and more people find out about our game. We’re now back in the Top 150 Visual Novels, for example, which are decided by the amount of Steam reviews and the balance between positive and negative reviews. We’re also getting very close now to having 50 reviews in total which, at least to me, is kind of a milestone I’ve been waiting to reach for a while. So yeah, thank you so much!
As always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3
