It’s already been a little over a week now since the release of our latest visual novel SHINRAI Saku – Blooming Beyond Despair.
And with it finally out, I can also, at long last, start delving much deeper into the project, particularly how it even came to be.
So let’s get right into that, shall we?
- Conception
I’ve pretty much had the idea to write a “fun little onsen episode” for the longest time. At this point, it’s a bit hard to determine when exactly it first popped into my head, but I do remember when I began working on it more “seriously”: December of 2020.
At the time, I was struggling with writing the script for GENBA no Kizuna. There’s a Patreon post going very in-depth on it, available to 1$+ tiers, if you’re curious about all the details. But the gist of it is that my perfectionism got way out of control. I wasn’t satisfied with anything I wrote and essentially felt crushed under the weight of player expectations, deeply scared of disappointing all those who had enjoyed the original SHINRAI so much and were eagerly anticipating our next murder mystery.
This was, of course, in stark contrast to when I first wrote the original version of Broken Beyond Despair all the way back in 2011, purely out of fun and to solely entertain my best friend with a little Halloween story.
Consequently, the entire process of writing had started to feel a lot less fun and way more like a job. A chore even. Plus, a murder mystery is just generally rather tough and demanding to write, because of how much thought, research and attention to detail it requires. So I guess my mental batteries were also drained from quadruple-checking every little thing to ensure that it’d all make sense and that there weren’t any plot holes or leaps in logic.
As a remedy to all this, Natsu suggested to just forget about GENBA for a while, sit down and simply write something for fun, without worrying about anything other than just having a good time. And that was the point I remembered my silly onsen idea and figured… you know what? Let’s do it! I’m just gonna write about my girls in the god damn hot springs!!
And lo and behold, it actually helped! A lot! I had so much fun that my joy for writing returned in general and that, soon after, I could continue my work on GENBA fully refreshed. Naturally, the onsen thing then fell to the wayside again, although I didn’t forget about it completely. I’d still think about it every now and then and, as is usually the case with me, began to see more potential in it.
So eventually, I found myself pondering: what if I do actually turn this into something a little more serious…?
A legitimate story to explore the characters, their struggles and their relationships?
But how exactly it grew from its initial roots into something more complex will be the topic for next time!
Until then, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, as always, take care :3
(PS: If you’ve played Saku on Steam, please consider leaving a review! Not just to help indecisive players make a decision on whether they wanna give it a try themselves or not, but also because getting to 10 reviews grants the game an official Steam rating and boosts its visibility, which in turn will also draw more attention to our other projects. So yeah, getting to 10 reviews soon would help us a ton!)
