Jun 23
Summer’s back and so is the annual Steam Summer Sale! If only the chills of finding a dead body are good enough to help you cool down in the heat, maybe consider grabbing the PC version of our murder mystery SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair this year!
Jun 18
I’m beginning to think that June might be cursed. Last year, at almost the exact same time, I was unable to do a proper update, because of something serious suddenly happening in my private life… and here I find myself in a similar situation yet again, so…
Apologies for the lack of a proper blog post today. If you want to read something fun GENBA-related, you can check out the TV Tropes page for it, though. I only stumbled upon it just a couple of days ago.
Anyway, gotta go, so please take good care of yourselves!
Jun 11
As the title already says, we’re gonna have another very quick update again today, as I still have quite a bit of stuff to take care of and therefore want to return to work ASAP. There isn’t much to report, anyway.
Natsu will still need more time to code the remainder of GENBA‘s third chapter, as mentioned in last week’s blog post, and I have primarily focused on the script again this past week, alternating between polishing the second social phase (which occurs between chapters 3 and 4) and working on Keiichi‘s next investigation route, in which he once again summons our two witnesses to ask them a few more questions.
The first set of investigation routes in chapter 4 is relatively short, so I hope to finish it by the end of the month or even a little earlier.
The way the chapter is currently structured is that players have to tackle four investigation routes at the beginning (one for each character) and complete them in any order, just how it works in chapter 2. Afterwards, there’s a social phase, followed by another set of investigation routes, an intermission scene once those have been completed and then, the rest of the chapter will unfold in a slightly different manner, which I don’t really want to get into yet.
But yeah, as you can see, there is a lot of investigating to be done this time! And I’d like to get right back to work on that, so…
As always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3
Jun 04
Jurassic June is finally here and, as I’ve already announced in last week’s blog post, our major goal for this month is to finish up GENBA no Kizuna‘s third chapter and release it to patrons for beta-testing! All that’s really left now to accomplish that is to finish the coding and then to play test everything ourselves. Since coding is all Natsu‘s task, though, I will already move ahead and slowly start delving into script- and asset-related work for the fourth chapter:
May 28
It’s time to get hyped, because the most important month of the year is right around the corner! That’s right, only a couple more days until Jurassic June! And this time, we’ll actually have something special to celebrate the dinosaur month, since GENBA no Kizuna‘s third chapter is currently getting wrapped up, meaning that more than half of the game will finally be fully playable!
Pretty huge milestone, especially when you consider that last year around this time, only about half of the first chapter was fully done!
Natsu is still busy with the coding and, due to other obligations, will need a little bit longer to fully finish things up, but our plan is to release the third chapter to patrons for beta-testing some time within Jurassic June. I will also share a bunch of screenshots and maybe even some video footage during my own little testing phase, so even if you aren’t supporting us on Patreon, you will be able to see some glimpses of the game’s first “Confrontation Phase”!
May 21
Work on GENBA no Kizuna‘s third chapter continues and, as you can tell from today’s title, we’re nearing the finish line!
After sadly running into some issues with his music programs, causing a bit of a delay, Solo has literally just provided me with the two variants of our “heated case debate” music and, as always, his work is pretty amazing! Just gotta wait for him to do a final mix now and all the music for the chapter will be done! Meanwhile, Natsu has been very diligent in coding the middle part of the chapter, while I’m currently getting the script for the rest of it ready, so that I can send it over to her tomorrow evening, meaning that…
…by next weekend, the whole thing might finally be playable!
Of course, there’s still the testing phase left, so patrons will have to hold out a bit longer until the next demo upload, I’m afraid.
At least we’ll have something pretty neat to properly celebrate this year’s Jurassic June, though!
Speaking of which, I’ll be off from my day job for a lengthy period throughout June and I’m planning to get things started on chapter four as soon as I can. Which I can’t believe is finally about to happen! Last year around this time, the first chapter was still quite a few steps away from being completed… we’ve really increased our rate of tangible progress over the past twelve months, haha.
Anyway, there’s still quite a bit left to do, so I’m sorry that I’ll have to leave you with a rather short update again, but I’ll have more to say (as well as more time to do so) very soon! Until then, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and take care :3
May 14
The coding phase for GENBA no Kizuna‘s third chapter is finally in full swing! Over this past week, Natsu has made the first third of it playable, meaning that, at long last, we now have some nifty evidence presentation sequences in the game as well!
In the meantime, I’ve been busy getting the next part of the script ready for coding, which I’m going to send over tomorrow evening.
That will leave one last part for the week after, so by the end of the month, the third chapter will hopefully be done!
Solo is also currently working on the next piece of music which will be used throughout the final part of the chapter’s debate.
He should finish it real soon, so if you’re a patron, you can look forward to another BGM upload within the coming week!
Other than that, there isn’t much else to report. I’ve been working on some fun art on the side, which I’m not ready to share anything of yet, but you’ll get to see it once June comes around (and if you know me well, you should already have an idea what that means).
Oh right, during my script revisions, I had to consult my trusty GENBA timeline a couple of times, so just for fun, I shared a little (heavily censored) glimpse at it over on my personal Twitter, so if you’re curious, you can check that out here.
Maybe I’ll unveil the whole thing some day after GENBA has been released, or simply add it to the SHINRAI timeline on this page.
Anyway, guess it’s time for me to get back to work now, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3
May 07
That’s right, thanks to Natsu‘s efforts, the next part of GENBA no Kizuna is now coded and fully playable! The “Social Phase” is a rather short (~7,000 words) segment between the first “Investigation Phase” (a.k.a. chapter 2) and the first “Confrontation Phase” (a.k.a. chapter 3), in which the player gets to spend a bit of time with the members of the investigation team, learning a little more about them and gaining a few more glances at their personal troubles and motivations.
This project isn’t called “bonds of the crime scene” for nothing! The characters and their relationships with one another, to me, are just as important as the murder investigation, so, as you can imagine, there will be a couple more segments like this popping up throughout the rest of the story, usually providing you with a set of choices as to how to respond to your fellow investigators, which may or may not affect whether they will open up to you more or not!
I’d love to go into a bit more detail, but aside from the fact that I’m a little short on time, I think that’s really about as much as I want to say about it for now, anyway. So, with this part of the game taken care of now, what’s next? The actual third chapter, of course!
I’ve been hard at work to get the first part of it ready for coding. Tomorrow evening, I’m gonna send it over to Natsu, so that she can put it into the game and make it playable, while I will spend the next week getting the next part ready, so that we can repeat this procedure until the whole chapter is done. Ideally before the end of the month, so that we can provide another demo to patrons soon and so that I can have a fresh start into June with the forth chapter!
Still a lot of work to get there, though, so I’m gonna get right back to it!
As always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3
Apr 30
As you can tell from the title, this week, I’ve mostly focused on getting things ready so that Natsu can return to coding duties and finally get the next part of the game playable! I’m currently still revising and double-checking things, but tomorrow, I’d like to send her everything necessary for coding the first social phase along with the actual intro to the third chapter.
Once again, I’ve been struggling with my perfectionism and it’s difficult for me to feel satisfied with anything I’m writing these days, but at some point, I gotta move on and tackle the next part of the story. It’s already taking much longer again than planned, which is quite frustrating. That said, there are a bunch of moments in here which I am very proud of and which I am excited to see play out in actual game format!
Starting from Monday, I will then continue getting the next part ready for coding for the following weekend. That one is mostly finished as well and only needs some more fine-tuning script-wise, so hopefully, I won’t get stuck on it again for long, haha…
Anyway, there honestly isn’t much more to say than that, so I guess we’ll leave it at a pretty quick update this time.
Gotta head back to work, anyway, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3
Apr 23
As you may have already seen over on Twitter, our composer Solo Acapello was quite a bit faster than I anticipated, so the new tracks I’ve talked about in last week’s blog post have been finished now! If you’re a patron, you can check out both pieces in full length here: Triassic Trial Grounds, Cornered Prey.
For non-patrons, we have also uploaded another BGM sample video to our YouTube channel, so you can listen to a quick preview of the new tracks. The video also contains a third one which hasn’t been publicly unveiled up till now:
