So, I’ve dedicated this entire past week to going through the penultimate chapter of GENBA no Kizuna. Which was actually my very first time experiencing it in VN format myself! That’s also part of the reason it required so much time, because I had to really get into the nitty-gritty here, testing every little aspect you can think of, in order to ensure that everything works as intended. It might not seem like it, but even something as “simple” as a VN requires extensive testing, especially if it’s of the interactive kind.
Clicking every button, trying out every choice combination, triggering all alt dialogues, presenting every single piece of evidence whenever you are prompted to show something… it’s pretty demanding and tiring work! I’ve been spending eight to ten hours every day, carefully reading every single textbox to make sure no typos linger in the script, and straining my ears to ensure the sound effects and music are playing correctly.
Thankfully, the vast majority of issues I’ve stumbled across are all related to text formatting. Just needed to rephrase things here and there or switch things around for better readability. However, I did also encounter some more serious issues, such as missing choice buttons, sound effect or music loops either not ending or not even starting, or in one case even an instance where, if you pick choices in a very specific order, you get locked from being able to continue the game, ahahah…
It’s nothing that won’t be easy to fix, but it’s still always disheartening when you run into issues like these. I can’t wait for the moment when I can play this chapter again without all the interruptions and just read through it smoothly! And that’s what Natsu will ensure once I’ve sent her the change doc with everything I’ve encountered during my playtest sessions.
And then it’ll be time to tackle the final chapter next. I still have quite a few test runs of the entire game before me, but once I’ve gone through chapter 5 one time and we’ve made sure there are no game breaking bugs, we’ll already hand it out to our beta-testers, too.
That way, Natsu and I can work on polishing up some more minor things, while others can finally experience the game as well.
Two more weeks before Jurassic June ends, so we’ll continue working hard on announcing this beta-test phase before then!
On that note, I’ve actually just shared the special illustration (featuring Amber) for said announcement over on Patreon, so if you support us there, you can already check it out here!
And speaking of Amber illustrations… we’ve also received some fanart again from resident fanart supplier Ryuu-chan!!
As always, I was super happy finding this one in my e-mail!! It keeps just feeling so surreal to me seeing fanart of our GENBA cast, even though the full game still isn’t out yet… which is all the more reason to change that ASAP!
So, with that in mind, I’m gonna get back to testing now! Please enjoy the rest of your weekend and continue having a jawsome Jurassic June! Until next Saturday, take care :3
