As mentioned in our last blog post, this past week my task was to finally take care of Shinketsu‘s latest route and I can proudly announce that it’s officially done as well! My part on it, anyway. Now it’s all in Natsu‘s hands to make it playable along with the wrap-up scene for the second set of investigation routes and, naturally, she has continued working on exactly that! In the meantime, I’ve moved on to the next set of routes, which requires a few new assets, one of which I’ve shared a preview of on Patreon today:
A new sprite variation of our grumpy police chief Nobuhiko!
This one will be needed for Keiichi‘s next route, but I think I’ll mainly focus on getting Rei‘s and Himatsu‘s done first, as it’s only a matter of script revisions and proofreading for those. Shinketsu actually doesn’t have one this time, because, from this point onward, he’s going to accompany Rei. Not only do we have one less route for this set, however, the three that are there are also pretty short. Himatsu‘s only revolves around questioning a single person this time, Rei‘s around examining the relatively small laundry room and Keiichi‘s is more or less just an introduction scene to the backyard with no investigating taking place yet. As such, this set of routes will take significantly less time to finish than the previous two. That doesn’t mean it’s gonna be a super quick matter, however, as Keiichi‘s scene requires two new backgrounds, one of which I’ve already shared a Patreon preview of earlier this month.
So yeah, basically, the plan is to get the script for Rei‘s and Himatsu‘s routes done while simultaneously working on the new assets for Keiichi‘s. We seriously are nearing the end of the final chapter now, although… at this point, I really can’t call it “a chapter” anymore. Essentially, each set of routes is its own chapter. So a better way to describe “chapter four” of GENBA is as one really long investigation phase comprised of three separate chapters.
Anyway, that’s about all in terms of a progress update, but before we come to a close, I once again have something else to share with you! First of all, another cute artwork by Jun:
She’s drawn Lexy now as well, so that our cast of suspects can truly be considered complete now, haha.
Once again: be sure to check out Jun‘s Ko-fi linked above as well as her visual novel project Neko no Sentouki! It’s a really fun one!
And on that note, you might also wanna check out the newly released demo for Detective Butler 2 by friend and fellow VN dev Kinjo!
You can download it on both itch and Steam. Having played the first one isn’t required (although I’d say it greatly enhances the experience and given that the first one is a really good murder mystery and free at that, there’s really no reason not to).
Seriously, if you’re into murder mysteries (which you very likely are if you’re reading this) and you haven’t played Detective Butler yet, I’d highly recommend it! You can find the first one here and the demo for the second one is off to a pretty intriguing start!
Now, as always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3
