We’re currently hard at work to finally make the second chapter of GENBA no Kizuna fully playable and, after wrapping up Keiichi‘s route last weekend, Shinketsu‘s is now following suit and nearing completion as well!
Despite a much shorter word count, it still takes quite a bit of time and effort to code, due to the higher level of interactivity compared to Keiichi‘s route. Natsu has been very diligent, though, and should be done with it within the next couple of days.
In the meantime, I’ve been working on Rei‘s route, fixing up the script and DPA entries and making some hard decisions.
There was a particular interactive segment I wanted to implement towards the end of her route, but after thinking about it some more and talking it through with Natsu, we will ultimately abandon the idea. The reason simply lies in a lack of utilization and purpose.
Originally, when I first came up with the idea, it was intended to be a recurrent gameplay feature, but at this point, there are only two quick instances in which it would truly make sense for it to be utilized. Adding an entire gameplay feature that will only be used for three minutes throughout a 10+ hour visual novel simply makes no sense, and I don’t want to shoehorn it into further parts of the game, either, so yeah… as much as I loved the idea, I’ve said goodbye to it.
On the plus side, at least that means we are saving quite a bit of time, as I don’t have to whip up a new interface now and Natsu won’t have to figure out how to code it, haha…
I might bring back the idea in a future project, however, so for now, I still don’t want to elaborate too much on it, sorry!
Anyway, that aside, Rei‘s route is taking shape as well and I hope to have a zip package ready for Natsu soon!
She actually already sent me a test version of Keiichi‘s route, by the way, although I sadly haven’t found the time to properly play through it yet. I might save that until after all the routes are done and I can check out the whole thing.
That said, I did record a little preview of the route selection screen with a quick peek into the start of Keiichi‘s route, so if you’re curious about that, you can check it out here:
Anyway, time for me to get back to work, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3
