August, alongside December, is always the busiest month of the year for me. Even though this time, we (sadly) aren’t releasing a game, there’s still been quite a lot of stuff to take care of, and that won’t really change until the end of the month, either. Nevertheless, I’ve still been able to get some writing done.
In last Saturday’s update, I mentioned how I managed to finish the intro scene for the second investigation phase, reaching the point where you can decide which character you want to continue as. I wasn’t quite sure whose “route” I was going to start with, so I kinda ended up working on all of them.
At the very least, I wanted to get the intro scenes for all four routes out of the way and reach the moments where the interactive segments start. In Keiichi’s case, for example, this meant writing the scene where he meets the witness, all the way up until the point where you can start asking them questions.
Working on all four intro scenes at once probably isn’t such a bad idea anyway, considering they occur simultaneously, which led me to play around a little with this very fact. So I kinda ended up adding a few things that should be interesting to relive through different perspectives.
Let’s say you play as character A and character B acts a little weird. Character A naturally wonders what’s going on with B, but might never find out. You, as the player, can find out the reasons behind B’s weird behavior, however. You just have to play as B next.
And if you decide to play as B first, you can then play as A to learn what A was thinking when B started acting weird.
I might go into a little more detail in the future, but for now, this is all I’m going to say about it. I just think it might be funny and interesting. At the very least, I personally enjoy these kinds of things. They add another sort of “mystery” to the story, since you begin to wonder… “what did character X think about that or during that moment?”
I even had to pause writing this blog entry just now, since I came up with another new idea in this regard, haha.
Anyway, I have to get into the gameplay mechanics next, now that I’m at the more interactive parts. Some of them will require a bit more planning and I should probably start designing the GUI, as well. Hopefully, I can get that done during the remainder of August.
Also, next Saturday, it will actually be exactly one year since SHINRAI’s release! It’s weird how fast time flies by.
Doesn’t feel like a year at all… orz”
In any case, if you’ve been considering to get it, that’s cool. But maybe waiting another week might not hurt. Just saying!
Until then, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and take care! :3
