The year of the snake is slowly coming to a close. As a matter of fact, today is the very last Saturday of 2025! So, following our annual tradition here, it’s time to take a look back at the past twelve months and the major occurrences throughout!
First of all, I gotta say, it’s kinda wild that, for the first time in so many years, I won’t be talking about our progress on GENBA no Kizuna.
It’s still hard to believe that the finished product has been out for over a year now, that it’s actually being played by people, and that we have since moved on to a new project!
- SHINRAI Saku – Blooming Beyond Despair
After a rather slow and relaxed transition into it during the last two months of 2024, the first one of 2025 marked a true gear shift, as I fully dedicated myself to finishing the script. Over the following months, we then made much progress on a variety of art assets and, just in time for the original SHINRAI‘s anniversary, managed to publish the store pages for its little follow-up on Steam and itch.
Rather than a full-fledged sequel, SHINRAI Saku can be considered more of an “additional epilogue episode” that delves deeper into the aftermath of Rie‘s Halloween party, how the survivors have been doing ever since, and how they’re trying to return to a normal life. Since I’ve talked in more detail about all of that in the initial project announcement post, the Steam announcement post and even the more recent reveal of Saku’s final main cast member, I’ll leave you with those links instead of repeating myself here.
Of course, you can also find more info on the Saku sub page which not only features all the character introduction cards, but even a couple of early screenshots!
Now, one thing you’ll find me mention in all those places is that Saku is supposed to be a relatively short project (around 40,000 words, so a little under a third of the original SHINRAI‘s length). Nothing has changed about that, but if you’re wondering how much longer it’ll take now that a whole year of development has already passed… well, we’ll talk about that a little more in next week’s blog post, when we’ll discuss our plans for 2026!
I do have to admit, though, that I was originally hoping to release it by the end of this year, right during the time frame the story itself takes place. But alas, that didn’t work out. I once again underestimated the workload a little. Despite it being a much smaller project and me trying to keep things as simple as possible in many regards, Saku still requires a good amount of art assets that just take some time to whip up. Given the new setting, the much bigger screen resolution and, of course, our art skills improving over the years, we sadly couldn’t really re-use many assets from previous projects, meaning that we essentially had to start from scratch.
There is one additional factor, however, that also played into development temporarily slowing down during the first half of the year.
- Neko No Sentouki
Back in April, I began to assist good friend and fellow game dev Jun with polishing the English translation of her own adventure visual novel Neko No Sentouki. With a behemoth of a script, resulting in around 40 hours of playtime, it was a time-consuming yet incredibly fun experience throughout which I’ve grown deeply attached to the project myself. It released on the 1st of May and you can read more about my involvement and personal thoughts about it in the Neko release announcement post I typed up back then. That didn’t quite mark the end of my assistance, however, as only one of the two character routes was fully released in English at first and it actually took until the end of June for the other route to be completed as well.
Neko is a wonderful story and even though I might not be its creator, it’s still very near and dear to me, so I’d like to ask you to at least give the store page a look to see if it might be up your alley! Coincidentally, it’s even discounted right now as part of the Winter Sale, so this is a great opportunity to join Aiko and Hikaru on their wild emotional rollercoaster of an adventure!
Now, while it’s true that my work on Neko resulted in a bit of a slowdown regarding Saku, it also brought with it an unexpected solution for one of our new project’s biggest challenges!
- Crescendo
The soundtrack for Saku had been giving me quite a bit of a headache since the start of the year. Unfortunately, Solo Acapello, the composer for GENBA no Kizuna‘s music, was incredibly busy and therefore couldn’t take on another project. He told me this early on, but I was still holding out hope that, eventually, he might be able to hop on board after all and so I waited… until we reached the point in development where I couldn’t postpone work on the music any longer. And when that time came, Solo still had to decline, which left us in quite a bit of a pickle. For a while, I was considering to simply re-use the music of the original SHINRAI, but I wasn’t really happy with that idea. Music is incredibly important to me and I wanted to have something tailor-made for Saku, that would better fit its new setting, themes and overall vibe. And that left me with only one choice: I had to find a new composer.
Thanks to Neko, though, this search didn’t take very long! Because it wasn’t just Neko‘s characters and story I had fallen in love with, but its music, too! On top of that, its composer turned out to be good friends with Jun as well, which gave me the feeling that I could trust them with this task so very important to me. And so I approached Crescendo who… excitedly agreed to take on the job!
If you wanna know more about the details as to how exactly it all came to be, or learn more about the new musical genius on our team, I’ve typed up a lengthy blog post about Crescendo as well! Funny enough, she’s also made a murder mystery VN of her own, which happens to be on sale right now as well, so please give the store page for Toumayhem a look, too!
And if you’re curious what her work on Saku is gonna sound like, well… she’s already finished three amazing tracks which you can find samples of on our YouTube channel, while supporters of her Ko-fi (3$) and our Patreon (5$) can even listen to everything in full!
So yeah, funny how one thing led to another. In the end, I can definitely say that I’m incredibly happy to have become a part of Neko No Sentouki, for more reasons than one!
- Xolf
Unfortunately, though, 2025 wasn’t all excitement and fun. It was actually off to a pretty devastating start as, back in early March, I was sadly made aware of the sudden passing of a long-time supporter and very good friend. On February 22nd, Xolf, one of the kindest people I’ve ever had the joy of meeting, unexpectedly left us. Xolf not only financially supported many indie VN devs in general, he also helped out as a proofreader and, as part of NoBread Studio, actively worked on VNs himself. I’ve dedicated a blog post to him, which you can find here, but I still want to take this moment to once again express my gratitude for all that he’s done not only for Gosatsu Visual Novels, but for me personally. During one of the saddest, most difficult times of my life, he was there for me to help me keep going and put a smile on my face. Even as I’m writing this, I can’t help but tear up again. He’s dearly missed and I’m not the only one his absence has left an impact on. As you might imagine, our good friend Nayru from NoBread Studio was hit even harder by the loss of her teammate and friend. She recently posted a little update and I’d like to ask you to not only check it out, but maybe even send some love and support her way.
Ten months later, it’s still a hard fact to accept. There are many moments in Saku that always made me think “I can’t wait to hear what Xolf’s gonna have to say about this” or “I’m sure he’s gonna love seeing this“. But unfortunately, I will never actually know now.
Nevertheless, I still want to work as hard as I can to create something that he would have thoroughly enjoyed and that would have put a smile on his face, too.
- Final Words
It’s always difficult to move on from or end on such a sad note, especially when we’re about to head into a new year, which I’m sure all of us would like to begin with a lot of positivity and energy. And given Xolf‘s fun, kind and caring nature, I’m pretty certain he’d want us to do that, too. So let’s be sure to make good use of these last few days of 2025 in order to start off 2026 on the right foot.
Both Natsu and I certainly hope that all of you can use this time to thoroughly enjoy yourselves, rest up and tackle the new year with as much blazing vigor as the fire horse that represents it in the Chinese zodiac.
Thank you so much for reading this far, for your interest in our endeavors and for your continued patience and support regarding what we’re preparing to share with you next. Until 2026… please take very good care of yourselves!
