solsdevblog

[solsdevblog]

June 2025 DevBlog

Hello hello everyone!

Welcome to the next public devblog. I've got quite a few fun updates to talk about this month, so let's get right into it!

Forget Me Not 2.0

If you forgot, I've been working on a 2.0 update to The Mysterious Thief; Forget Me Not! This big update includes a bunch of fun new things like:

A brand new epilogue chapter (which features a bunch of new art along with it)

Proper controller support

A revamp of some of the menus in the game (such as the extras gallery!)

This update will drop before the Steam Summer Sale that starts on the 26th, so keep an eye out for another post from me once I release it!

All of this will be free for people who've already purchased Forget Me Not, so no worries about that!

Battle Live Remaster

I've also been chugging along with the Battle Live Collection alongside the epilogue work! Here's an update to the progress graphic from last time:

As you can see, the second part Summer Live is all set! The entirety of its script is written and staged in-game, and all of the assets I needed for it are at the clean sketch phase! Here's some cropped previews of some of the backgrounds and CGs I drew for it:

I also worked on some of the Extras Menu goodies! Here's a look at what they currently look like (still a work in progress).

Next up on the list is the original second chapter, Halloween Live! I'll be starting the rough script for that soon, and am hopeful I can knock out the whole thing at the same speed I've been knocking out the other things too!

What's Coming Up Next

If you remember from last devblog, I mentioned I wanted to take a short break from taking part in any game jams until June. Now that June is here, I can let you all know what the next jam I'll be taking part in is:

YaoiJam 2025!

That's right, I'll be taking part in my first multi-month game jam. The outline for my story is almost done, so as soon as it is I'll be jumping right into the script for it to prep for when the jam officially begins at the end of the month. I'll be sure to keep you all updated during dev!

That's all from me, I'll see you all in the next public blog in August! Oh hey, that's Battle Live's anniversary month. Maybe I'll also think about releasing a build of the first part for patrons, we'll see.

Take care everyone, bye~!

Sol

[solsdevblog]

April 2025 Dev Blog

Hello hello everyone! The past two months have been super busy, and I'm pumped to share everything I worked on with you all in my latest dev blog!

Trans Joy Jam: Spring in Her Step

At the beginning of February I got invited onto a team for the 2025 Trans Joy Jam as a character designer! I eventually also became the CG artist for my team's game: Spring in Her Step!

This was my first time being part of a jam team and it was surprisingly a lot of fun! It also wouldn't have gone as smoothly as it did if it wasn't for the hard work for everyone involved (especially the lead and project managers Amara and Gemmy).

If you're interested in a short, comfy, trans-positive visual novel, you can check it out here:

NaNoRenO 2025: Madame Ro's Curiosity Quiz

The jams don't stop there, though, because in the last week of February all the way to the end of March I worked on my entry for NaNoRenO 2025: Madame Ro's Curiosity Quiz!

I went into more detail about the overall dev process for that in its own devblog which you can read here.

Overall it was a fun experience, and I learned a lot about how to speed up my process while not sacrificing quality! I'm looking forward to future jams I plan to take part in with this new knowledge under my belt!

Battle Live The Idol School Collection Progress

I've also been working super hard on the Battle Live remaster! As you can see from the graphic I put above, Part 1: Battle Live's first draft is completely done!

I'm now working through the rough script for the next part, Summer Live! Once that's good I'll be jumping right into drawing all the new assets that part of the game needs.

I'm really happy with how the overall game is turning out, and it makes me confident in how it'll look overall! Here's a few crops of some backgrounds and CGs I made for the BatLive part.

Other Game / Misc Projects

Along with the games I'm actively working on, I do have a handful of other game ideas I'm noodling with anytime an idea pops up.

My next longer one-shot Deep Waters is one of them, and the rough script for its prologue is half way done! Clocking in at 3k words, I can expect this game to take me a while (although hopefully not as long as Forget Me Not did lmao).

As well, like you may have seen in the Forget Me Not release post mortem blog, I'm also working on a bonus epilogue for it! Right now the outline is 2/3 done, so I can expect to start working on it in-engine around the start of May!

My ultimate goal is to release it in time for the Steam Summer Sale (which Forget Me Not will be part of, surprise haha), so we'll see if I manage to make that goal.

What's Coming Up Next

As fun as it was to do the past few jams (Make Visual Novel Assets, Trans Joy Jam, and NaNoRenO) I'll be taking a break from joining anymore jams until the end of June just so I can focus on my longer personal projects (and to also take a proper break lol).

I do have some jams I do want to join this year though, so I'll be sure to let you all know about those plans in the next dev blog in June! (which is right before the next one I want to join starts).

Otherwise I'll be continuing to post updates and other such news on my various sites such as Bluesky, Tumblr, Patreon, and Itchio!

That's all from me for now, however, so I'll see you all in the next dev blog. Bye~!

[solsdevblog]

NaNoRenO 2025 Post-Mortem Blog

Hello everyone! Now that NaNoRenO has officially ended, I figured it'd be the best time to write up a little post mortem about all the work that went into my entry: Madame Ro's Curiosity Quiz!

Inspirations and Ideas

It should come as no surprise that one of the main inspirations for my personality-quiz game is the other main personality-quiz game, Refind Self: The Personality Test Game. The way the game is presented, and how it tracks your stats to give your final results was super fascinating, and I even got direct inspiration for what possible stats I could track for Madame Ro from it.

I also wouldn't have had the idea to make this game for NaNoRenO if it wasn't for Stella creating her Make Visual Novel Quizes Kit, which was a huge help in figuring out the backend and debugging a lot of issues early on.

As for Madame Ro herself, her design overall was the result of a random idea of a "mysterious entity who wants to quiz the player". I decided to take this idea and try making up a concept, and thus Madame Ro was born!

My original mockup sketch before I started NaNoRenO.

The final big inspiration, and the reason for one particular question in the game, is actually Ekkoberry's past few O2A2 games, Hollow Victory and Holonomy! I got really inspired seeing them use the pydraw functions available in Ren'Py for their games, and I decided to start playing around with them. After some noodling to see how it works, I then thought "how hard would it be to randomly generate a shape?", which then spiralled into the thought of "what if I made a Rorschach Test in Ren'Py?"

The Process of Making Madame Ro

Madame Ro is the first game where I made the entire outline and rough script in Obsidian! I've slowly been getting more use out of this program and I'll definitely be using it more in the future!

As I was working on the initial outline, I did some design brainstorming for Ro herself and the setting the game will take place in.

My original brainstorming canvas for Ro's design

The rough script and rough sketches overall took me about 5 days, which was faster than I'm used to, with the thing that took the longest being thinking up the questions. I didn't want all of them to be too similar to what you'd see in other personality quizes ‒ or just be outright copies of them ‒ so I spent a long time thinking them through carefully.

Madame Ro's personality really started to shine through when I started to think up the demon-aligned questions, and it helped me solidify the direction I wanted to go in with the overall "plot" of the game.

When I was thinking up the stats and results I suddenly had the idea to make the images for the results screens my OCs! It was a super self indulgent idea, and it made that part of the process extra fun.

Some of you may have recognized a certain someone from the Daring result (and you can check out her game here:)

As for everyone else, not all of them will have games made for their stories. It'd be nice to, but for now this quaint little cameo in this project is where the most of the attention they'll be getting comes from.

Madame Ro was also the first time I used music and sound effects from Itchio! I'd been neglecting to use the vast amount of resources available on the website, and made it a point to try and use at least a few things for this game. Because of that I found music and sounds that fit really well with the overall vibe of the game, and I'll definitely be using more things from Itchio in future projects!

How I Made the Rorschach Test

Now let me ramble for a bit about the other main feature of Madame Ro: the Rorschach Test.

As I mentioned earlier, I was inspired by how Ekkoberry used the pydraw tools to add in new "assets" for their O2A2 entries without going against the rules of the jam (for reference, the acronym stands for One Of Any Asset). The way they used it for the second game especially caught my eye, and I immediately wanted to noodle with it.

I have a sandbox project in Ren'Py that I use to practice ideas I might want to use in a future project (something I highly recommend everyone do tbh), and in there I was able to learn exactly how this feature worked and just how far I could push it.

Screenshot from my sandbox game, showing the testing grounds for what would become the Madame Ro Rorschach test.

When I took this into Madame Ro I wasn't really happy with how it looked, and I didn't know why. It wasn't until a sudden brainwave when I realized that it wasn't a symetrical image, and decided to tweak the output a bit so that I could make it more like I envisioned.

The result is as you see in the final game, the Rorschach test which the player will always get as the fourth question.

The "apron" that one of my playtesters Glueblade got on their first playthrough.

I'm super happy with how it turned out, and I'm honestly excited to figure out more ways I can play around with the pydraw tools in future games.

Final Thoughts

This was the first NaNoRenO game I completely finished for the jam (my other attemps being in 2017, the sketch demo of what became Battle Live, and my 2024 NaNoRenO game which got cannibalised by the school version of Locked Room on Rails because they were in dev at the same time haha).

I'm really really happy that I finally managed to get one game out for a NaNoRenO, and this makes me confident I can make even more games not just for it, but for other jams as well!

Along with that, my workflow this month was super good! I used a lot of the new project management skills I've learned to really keep myself organized and on schedule, and because of that I even released the game a whole week earlier than expected!

Whether I join NaNoRenO 2026 remains to be seen, but if I do I look forward to what sort of game I'll end up making.

Thank you to everyone who's checked out and shared Madame Ro so far, and I'll see you in the next game!

See ya~!

Sol

[solsdevblog]

Madame Ro's Curiosity Quiz Released!

That's right! For the past month I've been working on a game for NaNoRenO 2025, and I'm happy to announce that you can play it now for free!

Link to the Itchio Page

Madame Ro's Curiosity Quiz is a pseudo-personality quiz-type game (I say pseudo because it isn't really about assigning you a personality). The key features of the gameare:

3k+ words (about 15-25 minutes per playthrough)

12 questions to answer(6 chosen at random)

5 possible results, showcasing past visitors of Madame Ro's you can learn about

and of course,a strange woman who wants to learn more about you

I'd like to give a special shoutout to my beta readers (who are credited on the page), as this game wouldn't be as polished as it is without their extremely helpful input and criticisms!

I'd also like to thank Stella from Make Visual Novels, as their quiz code essentially kickstarted my idea of making a quiz game in the first place.

I hope everyone has fun playing this game, and feel free to leave a comment saying what visitor you got on your first playthrough.

I'll see you all later, bye~

- Sol

[solsdevblog]

Forget Me Not Release Post-Mortem and Plans!

Hello hello everyone!

It's been two weeks since The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not released, and I'm quite glad with how well the release went!

As of this post Forget Me Not has hit 50 purchases on Steam, and the Demo's been downloaded across both sites over 90 times! For my very first paid release these numbers are very solid, and I have a good feeling that between future sales and any other moments I can promo the game these will continue to go up.

Forget Me Not has also received 4 reviews so far on Steam, which I greatly appreciate! As a reminder, once we hit 10 reviews Steam will give it an official rating and boost its publicity to more people, so if you played the game and really liked it, be sure to drop even a quick sentence or two to help share it to more people!

On that note, I do want to talk about my plans for Forget Me Not from here on out.

There will be some small updates in the near-ish future for any bugs or writing-related issues that have been brought to my attention (I really appreciate that by the way, so don't be shy about pointing that out!).

As well, I do plan on eventually adding proper controller support! This game was made with a mouse and keyboard in mind, but now that easier methods of incorporating controller support exist for Ren'Py, I'll slowly work through adding that. I'm hopeful that I can get that working by the end of the year, but I'll keep you all posted!

For those of you who somehow played this on a Steam Deck, first off how, and second I hope you decide to give this game a quick try again once that's added to see the difference!

And lastly, to touch on something a few reviews have mentioned. Due to the wish for more romance, I'm actually cooking up an epilogue for the game! (Yes the Finale is not an epilogue it's a fifth chapter). I already have an outline made, so once I have time I'll get right to work on adding it in. It'll be a free update, so no need to worry about having to buy extra DLC just to see Desirée and Irina spend more time together.

That's everything I wanted to touch on though, so I'll see you all later. Thanks once again for checking out my funky little game about phantom thieves.

See ya!

[solsdevblog]

Thank you so much for all the attention Forget Me Not's gotten so far!

If you grabbed yourself a copy on Steam, be sure to leave a review because not only does getting to 10 reviews help show it to more people, but I'll host a giveaway for the artbook when we do!

"Truly Twinbells would be a boring, regular city... If not for The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not."

My newest visual novel, The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not is NOW AVAILABLE ON STEAM AND ITCHIO!

This game features:

~80k words (roughly 4 hours long)

The first chapter as a free demo (~16k words, roughly 1h long)

Point-and-click style exploration mechanics

Over 20 CGs and cut-ins

Four chapters, centering around each main character

Two ladies who slowly fall in love

[solsdevblog]

"Truly Twinbells would be a boring, regular city... If not for The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not."

My newest visual novel, The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not is NOW AVAILABLE ON STEAM AND ITCHIO!

This game features:

~80k words (roughly 4 hours long)

The first chapter as a free demo (~16k words, roughly 1h long)

Point-and-click style exploration mechanics

Over 20 CGs and cut-ins

Four chapters, centering around each main character

Two ladies who slowly fall in love

[solsdevblog]

Hello everyone! It's a little late (because I was expecting to be done something) but the next devblog is live!

Forget Me Not Releases this Month!

The most important news, by far, is the fact that after 5 years my phantom thief visual novel finally releases!!! It goes live on the 20th on both Steam and Itchio, along with its artbook, so if you liked what you saw of the demo feel free to pick up a copy!

The art you see above is part of the countdown artwork I'll be sharing the week of release, so look forward to seeing it and the rest!

What I'm working on now

With Forget Me Not finally done, it's time to work on other things! This section will be split up into each one since I'm juggling a few at once right now.

Make Visual Novel Assets Jam (MVNA)

The thing I was expecting to finish to plug during this devblog is that I'm making a background asset pack for the Make Visual Novel Assets Jam on itch! The idea of this jam really caught my interests and was a good excuse to practice background art some more.

Here's what I have cooked so far!

I'll definitely be able to finish this before the end date of the jam, so I hope everyone looks forward to it!

edit: nevermind it's out teehee

Battle Live Remaster

Yeah lol it's finally happening.

One of my main projects for this year is remaking and combining all of the Battle Live games into one collection! The title of it is Battle Live: The Idol School Collection! The key differences between the original versions of the games are:

Brand new artwork and UI

Completely revamped scripts (esp the first three games)

The inclusion of Summer Live! The game I cut out to make Halloween Live on time!

New bonus stories (some of which I plan on being dlc)

The plan for the collection is free base game with paid DLC, so I'll be keeping you all updated! Right now I'm on the clean sketch phase and finished the new script for the Battle Live chapter! Here's some screenshots of what it looks right now:

I'm super looking forward to sharing more progress with everyone!

My Next Oneshot Game

Yeah I'm working on two games at once because I'm a fool lmao.

Along with the BatLive collection, I'll be starting my next Oneshot game as well! No ingame images to share yet, unfortunately, as I literally haven't even started the rough script.

In the next devblog I'll hopefully have more to share, but until then have this UI brainstorming art (hint, the next game is about shark merpeople).

That's all for me so far. I'll see you all in the next dev blog sometime in April! Until then, take care! Bye!

[solsdevblog]

"Truly, Twinbells would be a boring, regular city... ...If not for The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not"

Mark your calendars, because my girl's love visual novel about phantom thieves releases

FEBRUARY 20TH! 🎉

If you're interested in a point-and-click visual novel with ladies falling in love, fantastic heists, and a city that loves phantom thieves, then you can play the demo of chapter 1 on both Itchio and Steam!

You can also wishlist it on Steam to get the release update sent straight to your email!

[solsdevblog]

Whoa hey, guess who finally revived their old, separate dev update blog to post updates on!

Anyways, onto the post itself~

Hello everyone!

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for 100+ wishlists and 40+ downloads of the demo!!! It means so much to see the love that Forget Me Not has gotten so far!

Because of the progress I've made on these last few things I wanted to finish up before release, I can confidently say that The Mysterious Thief; Forget Me Not will release in

February 2025!

There's no definitive date yet, but I'm super excited that I can release it sooner than my estimate of May. I hope everyone's excited as well, and thank you all for the love and attention the demo has gotten so far!

As I mentioned before, the full-game previews will stop now that we're about a month before release, so if you haven't seen them be sure to check them out on my bluesky!

As well, you'll notice the artwork for this announcement! Along with the full game I'll be releasing an artbook DLC at the same time! The artwork for this announcement is a crop of the cover art, and you can see a preview of what one of the spreads looks like in its DLC page on Steam!

That's all for me for now, so I'll see you all later!

[solsdevblog]

Past Post Archive + Introduction!

Hello everyone! After a bit of work I've finally opened up a separate blog to collect and showcase my posts! Posting them on Itchio and Patreon is all well and good, but having a dedicated space for these is something I've wanted for a while. Eventually this will be linked to my own domain, but this does what I want it to for now!

That being said, I will be leaving a link to the past dev blogs (the Patreon versions) so that anyone who wishes to see them can do so easily!

Past Posts

2024 Roundup

Forget Me Not's Demo is Live!

Forget Me Not Demo Releases December 13th!

November 2024 Devblog

August 2024 Devblog

Locked Room on Rails Released!

Late June Devblog

April 2024 Devblog

2023 in Review

July 2023 Public Devblog