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Aug 05

Weekly Update #470: Plans For August

Can’t believe the year’s progressed this far already, but welp… here we are at the start of August again! And as you should know by know, it’s a month that holds very special meaning to us, since it’s the one in which we released SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair all the way back in 2016, so… a whole fricking seven years ago! Holy crap!

As always, we naturally want to celebrate this occasion and while we do have stuff to announce and share, things will work a little differently than in previous years. A good example of that is the fact that there will be no anniversary sale this time around, the reason being that, in just a couple of days, Steam’s Visual Novel Fest is going to take place!

(Although, looking at their trailer, it’s heavily debatable whether this really is an event to celebrate “visual novels”, but I guess we all know about the platform’s troubled history with the medium, so honestly… who’s really surprised?)

Now, since SHINRAI will be discounted as part of said event, there will be no dedicated anniversary sale later this month, so…
If you’ve been planning to purchase the PC version of our little murder mystery, you’ll get your chance this upcoming week already!

In tandem with the Visual Novel Fest, we’ll also have a little announcement to make, regarding something that’s been going on in the background for a while. It’s not directly tied to our projects per se and more about mystery VNs in general, but you’ll understand soon enough, so definitely keep your eyes peeled for the VN Fest announcements we’ll be posting here on the site and on our social medias in the coming days!

Anyway, anniversary sale aside, there’s another little thing that’s sadly not gonna happen this year. Since I just didn’t have the time (or rather wanted to invest it into different things), there’ll be no anniversary artwork, even though I so badly wanted to draw one…

It’s a big deal to me personally, but maybe you guys won’t even really miss it, who knows? w

But with that stuff out of the way, what are we gonna do this month? Well, first and foremost, we’re gonna continue work on GENBA no Kizuna, of course. After having been occupied with other things for the last couple of weeks, Natsu is finally gonna return to her coding duties, so that we can finally, at long last, finish up that final investigation phase and make it fully playable!

We’re really sorry about the delay, but as always, things have not gone entirely according to plan and there have been some private life matters popping up recently, which simply had priority. We’re definitely getting very close to finishing up this lengthy part of the game, however, to the point that (as I’ve also mentioned last week) I’ve started dipping my fingers into the script for the grand finale! And as I’d like to remind you, that one will thankfully be a significantly shorter chapter and barely need any new assets. Sure, there are a couple CGs to depict some important moments, but the backgrounds are all done now, we’ve essentially got all the sprites (minus a few more facial expressions perhaps), the DPA stuff is almost all done and well… it’s overall really going to be a matter of writing only, so I truly feel like the pace will drastically increase once we can fully commit to the end. But I guess I will share more details on all of that later this month.

So yeah, that’s the plan. Starting from August 18, I’ll also be on vacation again for a whole month! So that will also hopefully play into the development picking up speed again. I actually haven’t had any vacation yet this year, specifically saving it for August/September, so I’m sure as heck looking forward to it, haha.

Anyway, it’s getting late, so I guess I’ll call it quits here. Again, keep an eye out this coming week, Monday in particular.
That’s when the Visual Novel Fest is gonna start! Until then, I hope you’ll enjoy the remainder of your weekend! Take care :3