Oct 28
The end of October is here again, meaning that Halloween is right around the corner! If you’re still looking for something to get you and/or your friends into the right mood, we have just the right thing for you!
Once again, our murder mystery visual novel SHINRAI, which takes place during this exact time of the year, is part of Steam‘s annual Halloween Sale! So if you’ve been wanting to give it a try, or maybe even get a friend to play it, this is the perfect time to do so!
Oct 26
Now that things are finally calming down, after all the stress of the last few weeks and months, I’m finally having more time for VN development again. And as you can probably imagine, I’m pretty happy and excited about that!
As mentioned in last week’s blog post, today I’d like to give you an update on our plans for the rest of 2019, so let’s get right into it:
Oct 19
Alright, let’s jump right into another, very quick progress update! What have I been up to during this past week? Well, first of all, I continued working on the script here and there, whenever I found a moment to spare, planning and writing Keiichi‘s commentary for the first real investigation segment in GENBA no Kizuna.
My main focus was lying on this year’s Halloween artwork, however, which patrons can now get a first look at right here. It features our grumpy little protagonist Raiko, dressing up as none other than Heather Mason, the protagonist of Silent Hill 3 (whose design actually inspired Raiko‘s winter outfit). I’m planning to finish this within the next two days, before finally focusing more on writing again. After all, I still want to finish the chapter I revisions for GENBA by the end of October.
Oct 12
If you’ve read last week’s blog post, you know that I’m currently working on the next background artwork for GENBA no Kizuna, which depicts Ryuunosuke‘s room. I continued working on it over the last few days and just posted another WIP-preview on Patreon!
Slowly but surely, the room is taking shape, with more detail being added. I’ve also had some ideas for the investigation comments and what kinds of things you will be able to find and examine. Even though I sometimes add things just for fun, I want the majority of the examinable objects to tell players a little about the character occupying the room. And I think I’ve found some interesting and fun ways to do that. So yeah, very soon, I’ll finally be able to tackle the remaining writing objectives for this investigation scene!
Oct 05
Life still keeps me pretty busy at the moment, so I haven’t been able to accomplish as much as I would have liked to this week…
Nevertheless, I have started working on the next BG for GENBA no Kizuna, depicting Ryuunosuke Hazama‘s private dino chamber!
Last week, I already talked about how strongly the writing for the next scene is linked to the background art. I can’t work on one without the other, meaning that I have to work on both of these at the same time. So what I’ve been doing thus far is to get the general layout of Ryuu‘s room down, based on the maps shown in-game.
I went about it in a slightly different way this time, though, providing me with a new and very interesting experience.
Sep 28
In last week’s blog post, I talked about the recent progress I’ve made on GENBA no Kizuna‘s script. After finishing Chapter I – Scene 09 (which continues the events of our extended demo and which patrons can fully read here), I have focused on even more writing over this past week and also completed Chapter I – Scene 10.
Once again, if you’re a patron pledging for the 7$-tier, you can read the whole thing right now. It’s almost 2,000 words long.
Sep 21
Alright, unlike last week’s blog post (which kinda blew up as I started talking about the extended demo feedback so far), today’s posting really is going to be a shorter one. Unfortunately, I’ve caught a cold, so I have been pretty lethargic and bed-ridden this past week, BUT! I have still managed to make some satisfying progress on GENBA no Kizuna!
Sep 14
Today will be a really short posting, because there sadly isn’t much to report on. As mentioned in last week’s blog post, I was off to Italy from Monday to Thursday and there were (and still are) quite a bunch of things to take care of now that I’m back home.
As a result, I wasn’t able to really do much progress on GENBA no Kizuna. I spent a lot of time thinking about it, however, and how to handle what’s coming next. We’ve gotten some more feedback which really got me thinking. I guess the content of our extended demo (despite already going through multiple revisions and having a bunch of things slashed) is still in need of more fine-tuning. However, rather than go back and revise it once again right away, I think I just want to continue with the next scenes for now, so that the first chapter can finally be completed. And once that’s taken care of (and we have collected a bit more feedback maybe), I’ll look over the demo content once again to see what I can do about it.
Generally, reactions have been very positive so far. Players seem to really enjoy GENBA overall. There are some recurring points of criticism, however, and I’m getting afraid of repeating the same mistakes we did with SHINRAI. I’m talking specifically about players being discouraged from continuing during the first two hours of the game. I certainly don’t want to create another scenario where most reviews mention how slow the beginning is and that it only gets truly exciting later on.
I mean, I do think that the pacing has greatly improved compared to SHINRAI, but… maybe it’s still not enough.
Sep 07
Let’s start off with another reminder that the extended demo for our next murder mystery VN is finally out! If you’d like to learn more about it and/or even try it out, you can do so by visiting the GENBA no Kizuna section here on our website, or our store page on itch.io.
Yesterday, Khana streamed it on Twitch, which was a lot of fun to watch. Getting her live reactions was also very helpful, so if you have played the demo yourself, or you’re planning to do so, don’t be afraid to hit us up! We’d love to get your feedback, whether it’s in the form of a short comment or even a full playthrough!
Now, if you’d like to know what’s next, please check out last week’s blog post, in which I’m talking about our plans from hereon out!
And with all that out of the way, let’s get into what’s new since then…
Aug 31
Okay, so first of all, in case you might have missed it: the extended demo for GENBA no Kizuna has finally been released!
It can be downloaded either through this MediaFire link, or over on itch.io. For more information on the release and all the changes compared to our first demo, please check out this posting.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s dive right into this week’s update and our plans from here on out!
