So, I’ve talked quite a bit about GENBA no Kizuna now. First about its conception and evolution (Part I, Part II, Part III) and then about its development, primarily focusing on all the reasons as to why it took us so incredibly long to finish it (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV).

Today, I’d like to get into the final bigger topic I wanted to discuss related to our new murder mystery release: the reception and my takeaways from it. By now, it’s already been out for three entire months, after all! So, let’s see what players had to say…

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You know, I really thought I had covered all the reasons behind GENBA no Kizuna‘s long development time, but as it turns out, I actually forgot about one! But that’s fine, as this reason also weaves into one of the next topics I wanted to discuss. But before we get into any of that, you might want to check out the previous three parts of this series if you haven’t already: Part I, Part II, Part III.

Ready? Then let’s go!

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In the previous two postmortem posts, I’ve already discussed a number of reasons as to why the development of GENBA no Kizuna has taken so unexpectedly long. The biggest one behind it, however, I have yet to discuss. That’s what today’s blog post will be about, so it’s recommended that you check out Part I and Part II first, if you haven’t already!

Now, this reason can be summed up in a single, very simple word, but there are multiple aspects to it, which I want to delve a bit deeper into, so… here we go!

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Last week, I started talking about the various reasons behind GENBA no Kizuna‘s long development process. Today, we’re continuing from where we left off, so if you haven’t read the previous blog post, it’s recommended to do that first!

But with that warning out of the way, let’s jump straight into the next major reason!

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In the last few blog posts, I talked about the conception of GENBA no Kizuna and how it evolved over the course of its development.
Today, I’d like to start getting into the development process itself, the challenges we faced and the lessons we’ve learned.
And I thought I’d begin by answering a question we’ve been getting a lot over the last few years: why did it take so long?

Development on SHINRAI started in September of 2013 and the final product was released on August 26, 2016.
In other words, it took us almost exactly three years. GENBA on the other hand was only released on August 26 of this year…
so a whole eight years after SHINRAI! How in Pangaea did that happen!?

And it becomes seemingly even more unfathomable when you consider that on August 26, 2021, we released the full first chapter of GENBA for beta-testing! Meaning that it took us “only” three years to complete chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and all the bonus content.
Which isn’t actually that bad. In fact, it seems pretty swift given that GENBA is twice as big as SHINRAI!

Essentially, we finished almost two SHINRAIs in the last three years. So I guess the bigger question here isn’t why GENBA as a whole took eight years, but rather: why did its first chapter take 5 to complete!?

Well, there is a number of reasons for that, so let’s go over them one by one, shall we?

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