Good gracious Cretaceous! That’s right, we’ve reached a total of 500 weekly update posts!! Though, of course, if you add all the special announcements, the total number of posts is even higher than that. However, 500 is the number of Saturdays I’ve now spent typing up progress updates for our visual novel projects and that… is pretty crazy to think about, haha.
Not all of these posts can be found here on this website, however. That’s because, originally, we started out blogging on Tumblr, with the first ever post being published on August 14, 2014 (Raiko‘s birthday)! If you click on the link to check it out, you’ll get to see some super early screenshots from when we were still using a different text font and also had a quick menu hidden inside the coffin our little mascot bat is sitting on. To think it’s been almost ten years since then… holy crap.
Anyway, this website here only came to be in June of 2017, so about a year after the release of SHINRAI, with Weekly Update #148 being the first one posted here (introducing GENBA’s main cast). From that point onward, I kept cross-posting for a good while, but eventually decided to focus on our website only, with Weekly Updates #326, #327 and #328 being the last ones shared on Tumblr in a big compilation post (because, at that point, I had grown tired and become a little forgetful about sharing the posts there as well).
I did go on to also share our console release post on Tumblr, but ever since then, I’ve abandoned the site for good.
Although it’d sure be nice to have everything in one place one day, I probably won’t ever bother bringing over all the old posts here, except for maybe some specific ones in which I discussed more general and interesting topics related to VN development and SHINRAI. So yeah, if you’re curious about how things went in the early days of SHINRAI‘s development, you’ll have to venture into the depths of Tumblr to find out!
Looking back on all those old posts, I’m proud to state that, in all these years, there was only one instance in which I was late and posted on a Sunday. Other than that, we’ve always ensured a Saturday update, sometimes through scheduled posts, such as when I was on a trip to the UK, or through Natsu taking over for me, as she did on May 3, 2015.
One other post I stumbled across, which I thought I might highlight here, is one titled “Release Date Soon“. It just really caught my eye, making me think: I can’t wait to make another post with that title for GENBA very soon, haha.
But I guess that’s enough reminiscing! Let’s do talk about GENBA real quick, where we’re at and what our plans for this month are!
As I’ve mentioned in a special Steam update the other day (for the Dinos VS Robots Fest), Natsu has made everything playable right up until the point where you need to pick the culprit and the game splits off into its four different endings. Right now, she is doing some beta-testing of all that, but I’m currently preparing another zip package for her, so that she can code the next few scenes this upcoming week, while I will then begin to prepare the final social phase for her as well.
So, by the end of this month, the entire game will hopefully be playable from beginning to end!
Of course, there will still be more things to tackle before we can actually release it, but I will go into that in more detail in the next few weeks. For now, I wish you to enjoy a pleasant remainder of your weekend! Until next Saturday, take care :3