Hi all, would you look at that. It's another devlog and on New Year's day of all times! And well, it is a big one, because I'll be going over my outline for what will be happening to this game because I've had ~lots~ of time to think and reflect about it over my break.

So immediately, yet again another month without a new build… Of course being the notoriously busiest month of the year combined with my own creative block it was optimistic to think I'd be able to get a devlog out sooner. But hey, better late than never?

So, a short bit of context of what has been my thought process for a bit: I've kind of realised that I may have released this game way too soon. I had too big of ambitions and jumped right into something of this scope as a small solo dev. For context the time this game's development started: I had not a lot of writing experience (basically just a few months worth and a couple of scrapped scripts) and only about 5 months of real art experience under my belt leading to tons of horrible artwork. This game’s release was simply put: awful. And left a terrible first impression when first impressions are SUPER important.

I've also dug myself into a huge hole because of this. Despite my best efforts, the game is very much not up to par with what I wanted out of it, and I can pick out so many things that went wrong with this game due to my inexperience. Also, because I thought 4 routes and 17+ characters was reasonable for a beginner solo developer… Yeah it is simply becoming too much lol.

Abd because of that, I am kind of dissatisfied with how this project is going in general.

Now, despite this, I've had many people come out in support for this game, and I'm very thankful for that. Without the small community this game has, I probably wouldn't have continued to improve as an artist and writer.

So, what Is happening to this game, then? Well, I don't want to abandon this project, I loved making the vn and doing art and writing and everything. This game has been a huge thing for me in spite of how messy the development was. And, I really liked the characters and world I've created and don't want to abandon them.

But I also know I can't continue development on something that I consider wholly inadequate and overambitious.

I know what went well with this project, I know what went wrong with this project and I also know what needs to improve and change.

That is to say I don't intend on abandoning this project. It will most likely be thrown back into the oven and relaunched at a later date. I have no idea when this'll happen, ideally before May (Tentative) but whenever it does, I aim for it to be a much smaller, higher quality launch (So, rather than the 60k+ work b1 I launched with, expect something smaller, higher quality and less messy. I won't have to relearn how to code or format scripts either which dramatically reduces dev time)

I don't expect the new version of the game to be that dissimilar to what I have now in terms of feel, honestly. The game won't be shifting genres or structure (I.E, Stephen's route still won't be romantic with Eric) and the cast or worldbuilding will be very similar in their personalities and arcs and hell, some parts or scenes will probably be kept. (Like the opening.)

There are three main points that went wrong with PBS that I wanted to address, however:

Firstly: I wanted the unique worldbuilding to be at the forefront of the story this time. Before, I had too many moments where I would downplay or invalidate my own attempts at worldbuilding, instead choosing to structure the game in a more Burrows-esque way in which I have the bulk of it be a typical slice of life with some fantasy stuff thrown in with a horror twist. Not only is this overdone, I realise that this was not the approach I should've taken for something like this, not for a VN where housamo-esque worldbuilding was its whole identity.

The 2nd main point are the routes: 

Vincent's route will be getting the axe, dropping it down to 3 routes and integrating Vincent's route and characters into the core overarching narrative for the game. Not only will this cut down my workload, this'll also address one of the biggest issues I was having during development in that this vn lacked a common plot hook (which made things kind of difficult to write), and that it made ZERO sense to have Vincent's route be its own thing when Vincent as a character held significant impacts on the story as a whole that would've simply went unaddressed in the other 3 routes. 

The way I had planned to do his route was also just way too complicated I feel, Vincent being intentionally written to be a flat character didn't help. 

The final point is that I'll also be massively slowing down the pace at which characters are introduced so I don't run into the issue of introducing 14 characters in the first chapter. (This also means less pressure to get art done, which will dramatically help development time!)

Furthermore, I'll also be reducing how many character arcs are going on at once, yet again I got way too ambitious with the amount of character arcs and plot points going on at once here, which lead to things being too difficult to write. The main problem here is Theodore, who will probably be scrapped due to this. Character bloat is a real thing and I think I got too carried away.

Any character that gets ‘scrapped’ will probably be used for something else at a later point in time.

I can actually share some of the sprites for this ‘new’ project right now, note that as I am showing these now it'll be a while before they get used in game. And anything seen or said here could change at any time.

I already have the new sprite for Chase finished, and new sprites for Raphael, Stephen and William already done. These designs will mostly be their final designs now.

Chase's is obviously not new, and has been finished for a bit now, just hadn't shared it because I was still thinking over my plans. I really like how he came out, though. He has a more distinct identity and since I'll be redoing the plot I won't have to awkwardly integrate him into an already existing story anymore. 

Stephen looks more or less the same just with a revised colour palette to better fit the rest of the cast, I had no intent on really changing how he looked, so I didn't.

Now William will probably be retooled in the new project to be a bit more prominent and kind of substituting for Fergus who will probably be saved for later. A part of that includes improving his design. To say I *love* his new design would be understatement and, I think he perfectly captures my original intent now… His old sprite was kind of awful.

Raphael is the most recent, his new design is supposed to reflect a new direction I will be taking his character in an attempt to streamline him and his route, aka no more farm boy outfit. A frequent issue I had with his route is that I had waaaay too many different plot threads going on with him at once and many of them got resolved or pushed too fast which made it way harder to write that it should be. (Especially the one with the job at the hotel, the story set it up early as a major part of his plotline when I ended up resolving it early and quickly since the point of the route was his relationship with Eric and how it is affecting him.)

So that is that, I hope to keep you posted with updates as I go along with the redevelopment. I am one for transparency after all. 

I know this isn't quite the turn of events I was expecting, but there's one thing I've learnt: that you won't always succeed on your first try. Sometimes you've got to take a step back, re-evaluate and start over. And I look forward to hopefully giving this game a new life again. 

If you have any questions or just want to chat, message me on discord @final_bear or join the server (which, I'll be keeping up.) Otherwise, farewell.

(Also, I'll be keeping the old version of the game up for download, or in case I change my mind, but I feel I'm too far in for that.)