Oct 28
Halloween is just around the corner and you know what that means! It’s once again time for Steam‘s annual Halloween Sale!
You can thus experience our little murder mystery visual novel during the very period of the year it takes place… for only half the price!
So, if you’ve been wondering how you’d like to spend the spooky season this year, why not give it a shot?
Oct 16
Before we delve into today’s progress report, here is another quick reminder that SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair is soon going to be available on consoles! In just about two weeks, as a matter of fact, right in time for Halloween! If you want to learn more about the port and the platforms it’s going to appear on, be sure to check out last week’s blog post, which contains all the important info!
Now, while we’re preparing for this big event, as well as Halloween in general, work on GENBA no Kizuna still continues.
I’m primarily focused on completing the remaining assets for chapters two and three, so a lot of my time this past week has been dedicated to sprite variations again. Both Keiichi and Himatsu now got a “DPA” version, for instance, where they fetch their digital police assistants to double-check or jot down info they gather during their questioning routes:
Oct 09
Yep, it’s official now: the console port for SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair will release on October 29, just in time for Halloween!
The game is slowly starting to show up in a few different places now, so if you own a Nintendo Switch, for instance, you can already check out the official store page and add it to your wish list! Other sites, such as TrueAchievements, which is dedicated to XBOX games, also provide the complete list of achievements, if you’re curious about those.
Now, that brings me to the question… which consoles is SHINRAI actually coming out for? Well, I’m pleased to announce that it will release not only for Nintendo Switch, but also for XBOX One, XBOX Series X/S, Playstation 4 and Playstation 5!
Oct 02
The spooky month of the year is finally upon us again and, as we’ve mentioned previously, it’d serve as the perfect time to finally bring our original, Halloween-themed visual novel to consoles! If you want to learn more about SHINRAI‘s console port, be sure to check out the link above, which contains all the information I can share up to this point.
Not only does this fit with the theme of the game, it’d also be a nice celebration of its initial conception. After all, exactly ten years ago, during the time from September to October, I first wrote down the story of SHINRAI, even if, back then, it was only supposed to be a quick little Halloween tale to entertain Natsu. Never would I have imagined that, one day, we’d release it as a visual novel on PC and, a couple years later, even on home consoles!
Sep 25
As you can see from the image above, we now have another new variation of the lobby background, this time with one of the doors open, giving us a look into the main hall. This one is also used for the flashback scenes in chapter 2. When Himatsu asks Raptor Pack Productions how the incident unfolded, I thought it might be a lot more interesting to actually show it via a glimpse into the past, rather than have the characters in the present describe how things transpired.
Sep 18
First off, I’d like to once again highlight the fact that the demo for GENBA no Kizuna has recently been updated and that patrons can now check out the entire first chapter of the game, which is available for beta-testing to all tiers! We have already received some very helpful feedback, so if you’d like to join in on the hunt for typos and bugs, or simply offer suggestions to improve the experience, you can find the chapter 1 demo right here (and if you’re curious about the changes to our public demo, be sure to check out this post)!
There is, of course, also the fact that SHINRAI is going to come to consoles real soon, so if you want to learn more about that, we’ve delved into a little more detail in last week’s update!
Now, with that out of the way, let’s check in on GENBA‘s current progress:
Sep 11
Before we get into today’s topic, here’s a quick reminder that the demo for GENBA no Kizuna has been updated recently, providing an experience much closer to the final product! If you haven’t checked it out already and you’d like to get a taste of what’s going to await you in our next murder mystery, you can download it right here or, alternatively, over on itch.io!
Patrons can also check out a demo of the entire first chapter now, containing almost twice as much content as the aforementioned public demo! It’s available to all tiers, so if you’re curious or would like to help us hunt for typos and bugs, and further improve the experience through suggestions and feedback, you can find the whole thing here!
Now, with that out of the way, it’s finally time to delve into more detail regarding the final announcement we’ve made in this year’s anniversary post: SHINRAI‘s console port!
Sep 04
It took a little bit of extra work, but the public demo for GENBA no Kizuna has finally beend updated!
You can download it either over on itch.io or through MediaFire. The game’s page here on our website has been updated as well.
With this, the demo is now much closer to what the finished product will be like.
From here on out, nothing else will change outside of the occasional dialogue line, if the later chapters require it, or if we should stumble across any further typos or inconsistencies that have managed to elude us. No further adjustments to the gameplay, assets, story and overall presentation will be undertaken, however. We want to release this game next year, after all!
Aug 28
We are currently celebrating SHINRAI‘s 5th anniversary and shared a couple of announcements the other day, so if you haven’t seen them yet, you can find the anniversary posting here and learn about what’s coming up within the next few weeks and how we plan to tackle the rest of the year regarding GENBA‘s development!
As mentioned there, and as you can clearly tell from the title of this post, the entire first chapter of GENBA is now fully playable and so we have decided to release it to patrons, so that they can help us beta-test the whole thing and hopefully provide us with some initial feedback and suggestions to further improve the experience. This demo will not be made available publicly, not even later down the line. The content of our public demo, which you can find over on itch.io and which will receive a little update next Saturday, is as much as I am willing to share before the full release of the game.
For this reason (and to make up for the recent lack in Patreon content), the chapter I demo is available to all tiers, in order to give us a shot at a few more impressions.
