#genba no kizuna

[gosatsuvns]

It's the final day of Jurassic June, so to bring it to a proper prehistoric close, here are Ryuunosuke and our two raptor siblings Kira and Toru. The image has been added to our gallery and patrons can download a hi-res version here.

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #176 - A Look Back At 2017 & A Look Ahead At 2018

Tomorrow's the last day of 2017. With that in mind I have decided that, rather than postpone it until the 1st or even wait until next Saturday, I will use today's blog post to take a look back at 2017 and give you an idea as to what you can expect from us in 2018.

So, without further ado, let's see what we have managed to accomplish throughout this past year!

Unfortunately, this year, we don't have anything as big as the release of SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair to look back on. Nevertheless, there are a number of things I'm rather proud of.

At the beginning of the year, I was mostly working on SHINRAI's sequel, Withering Without Hope, updating the sprites for recurring characters like Raiko, Nobara and Henjin, for example. I generally worked on a lot of basic things in order to lay the foundation for our next game. Like the story and setting, planning the layout of the new location and starting to work on its design. If you have read one of our more recent blog posts, you might already know that the events of WWH will take place at the Ginmaku Movie Theater. I'm planning to finish the first background of the game as soon as possible so that you can have an actual first look at it.

Over the past 1 1/2 months, I've gotten back into WWH again and I'm planning to continue working on it over the next few months as well... as opposed to pushing it aside almost completely like I did around April.

Why did I do that, you might wonder... Well, that's because I wanted to focus solely on GENBA no Kizuna, the other project we are currently working on and which we officially revealed in June along with its main cast.

Up until that point, I had referred to it as our "dinosaur project" and by now, you should know why that is (at least if you've kept up with our blog posts over the last six months).

GENBA takes place at the Kaseki Residence, home of a world-renowned paleontologist. As such, it features a dinosaur-themed interior, but this "dinosaur theme" is also seeping into character designs and other things, similar to how "Halloween" was the theme for BBD.

GENBA is going to be shorter, a bit more fast-paced and more gameplay-oriented than SHINRAI, featuring a lot more interactivity. With the police actively involved in the investigation, the story being told mostly through dialogue, as well as the ability to experience it through the eyes of multiple characters, it will certainly feel rather different from our previous VN.

Nevertheless, it is still a murder mystery and it does actually connect to SHINRAI in very important ways. A topic I've talked about not too long ago.

With our focus mainly lying on GENBA for most of the year, we naturally made quite some progress with it. By creating a whole bunch of assets ranging from backgrounds to sprites and even menus, the game's foundation is laid now as well, to the point that we're getting really close to the release of a first demo!

That's really what most of our energy went into this year. We did pull off a few other things too, though.

For instance, after all this time, we now have our own website, which we launched back in June along with the GENBA announcement. It still requires more work and I really want to finally expand the sections for GENBA and WWH as well as add some other things to it, but that will be one of my goals for early 2018.

Outside of that (after an eternal back and forth), we have also decided to launch a Patreon page, which we did back in September. Through this, we hope to get enough funds together to eventually hire more people for our tiny team. At the moment, however, it's main purpose is to help us with covering the costs of GENBA's soundtrack.

Now, you might wonder, what exactly you'll get in return for supporting us on Patreon. Well, here's a quick list of everything you currently get access to:

- 3 character design sketches for the suspects appearing in GENBA - design sketches for Kenji and Misaki, 2 of the new characters in WWH - 3 full-length BGM tracks for GENBA - a look at the full script of GENBA's prologue - the first part of WWH's prologue - a post featuring unused BBD art + talk about visual clues - higher resolution & alternate versions of seasonal artworks + a whole bunch of WIP-looks

Things patrons can look forward to in the coming weeks: the final suspect character for GENBA, WWH's first BGM track, the second part of its script and more character designs. You'll also be able to decide through a poll who will be featured in February's Valentine's artwork. And, last but not least, early access to our GENBA demo!

Patreon is really about getting to see things way ahead of everyone else and being able to influence the stuff we do by offering suggestions. Patrons will be able to help us prepare the demo for its public release, for example.

Another thing I want to use Patreon for, however, is to post more WIP-stuff and other things I've always been way too shy and embarrassed about to share publicly. One big other thing patrons can look forward to, for example, is a post about our very first VN project which never got released. I will talk a bit more about how we got started and share with you some very old assets to give you an actual look at our early work from way back in 2011.

So yeah, if you're curious about those kinds of things, please consider checking out our Patreon page. Your support would be greatly appreciated!

I'd actually like to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone who has supported us thus far, whether it'd be through Patreon or any other means.

Throughout this year, we had some incredible things happen. From something as simple as getting new reviews on Steam to even receiving fan mail, both digitally as well as physically. It still feels strange and very surreal to think that some people actually enjoyed SHINRAI that much. People have even asked about possible merchandise, which is kind of shocking to me. But I guess that will be something to look into in 2018.

One of the greatest compliments I have received this year, however, is that SHINRAI actually inspired others to go forth and make their own stories. That's quite touching to hear and... I dunno... like I said, it's surreal. Sometimes it's really difficult to believe that this isn't just a dream. Because these are the kinds of things I have dreamed about for the longest time. For a big chunk of my life, actually.

Really, I'm deeply grateful for all the support we have gotten. People going out of their way to leave us a good review or even send us a message simply to show their appreciation... things like that truly make me happy and I couldn't ask for more. And they certainly serve to fuel our passion. I hope that all of you will continue to stick with us until our next projects come out, no matter how long it will take!

Which I guess brings me to the final point: what's in store for 2018?

Well, like I said before, our main focus will lie on finishing that GENBA demo. It was already supposed to be released in late November, which didn't quite work out. And although not much is missing anymore, we didn't make too much progress on it in December. Which is mostly due to the fact that December is always a really busy month. Aside of a lot of RL stuff, we had to take care of the seasonal artworks and... I admittedly decided to rather devote myself to WWH, simply because I was in the right mood for it. And while I plan to continue work on WWH, I will definitely get back to that demo now, too.

When will GENBA be finished in its entirety? That's a good question. To be honest, I was hoping to release it in 2018, but it's always difficult to assess whether or not that will work out. I can't foresee what kind of hurdles we might stumble into or how long exactly certain tasks might take. That said, I still want to make it my goal to finish GENBA in 2018.

Please keep in mind though that whenever I set goals such as this (even the demo release for late November), it's more of a way to motivate myself rather than me making an actual promise. Might sound like a lame excuse, but... I know that, even if I don't manage to make the deadline, I will still do my best to actually meet it, resulting in more progress than I would achieve otherwise.

If I tell myself that releasing GENBA in 2018 is impossible, so I'll just say 2019... I will make a lot less progress on it, because I'll have that "there's still time"-feeling in the back of my mind. That's why I think it's always important to set personal goals and work towards them as hard as you can. Whether or not you actually manage to reach those goals doesn't really matter as much as the amount of progress you have made once their deadline hits.

Of course, those goals should still be somewhat realistic, so that you can actually feel as though they're perfectly possible to reach. There is no point in purposely setting completely unrealistic goals. That might actually be more detrimental to your work ethic than anything else. But finishing GENBA in 2018 seems doable to me, so I do want to work towards that. Just don't be mad at me please if it doesn't work out after all, haha.

Anyway, this is starting to get a tad too long, so I should finally wrap this up. I will talk more specifically about our January goals in next week's blog post. Until then, please take care and have a happy new year!

And once again, from both Natsu and myself: thank you so much for your interest in the things we do!

[gosatsuvns]

In order to fully complete the first chapter of GENBA no Kizuna, not only do we need to work on the remaining scenes which were not included in our extended demo, we also need to adjust the content what was included in it. And one example of this is the main hall.

Above, you can see the now final version of it, but for comparison's sake, I'll also show you the old one:

The most eye-catching change is the addition of that giant red carpet. This was really just a cosmetic change prompted by our friend Ezhno. During his playthrough of our demo, he commented on the fact that the lower half of the background looks somewhat plain. So, as a contrast to the dark brown floor, I added a carpet which also fits well together with the red staircases.

Now, all the other changes are much more subtle, but most of them have actual significance to the murder investigation.

For instance, the door in the top right corner originally featured the skull of a Velociraptor, indicating it to be Shiku's room. During the development of the story, I swapped the rooms, however, so that it now belongs to Terano and thus features a Triceratops skull.

Back when we released the extended demo, I didn't have every detail of the mystery planned out yet, but that has changed ever since. Now that GENBA's story and mystery are set in stone, I know exactly what kind of evidence to place where.

Of course, this is a topic I can't really elaborate much on, so I guess I'll leave it at that.

Next up, I'll be working on two variations of this background, which will be used in the remaining scenes of the first chapter. One of them won't show any major differences compared to what you can see above, but the other will contain a couple more pieces of evidence, spread out on the floor, which will be discovered while the police recover the body from those prehistoric jaws...

Speaking of BG variations, though, here is also once again the main hall before the incident occurred:

I also still have to finish up the BG for the 2nd floor viewpoint of the main hall, but the majority of the work is done now. Or, at the very least, the hardest parts are taken care of, so hopefully, I'll be able to share the finished version of it here soon as well.

So, what exactly is left to do now in order to code the next scene into the game? Two things, basically: The "slight" variation of the BG above and the final revision of the script. I'd like to get that done by next weekend, so I can then tackle the scene after that, which we will talk in detail about either next Saturday, or the week after that.

Next week is Halloween, after all, and I have to make some preparations for that as well! So, until then, please have a spooky time and take care! :3

[gosatsuvns]

If you have been keeping an eye on our Twitter for this past week, you might have already seen them by now: the four playable main characters from our next murder mystery visual novel GENBA no Kizuna!

From left to right, we have: the forensic investigator Rei Shirayuki, the two police officers Keiichi Genba and Himatsu Mizu, as well as the medical examiner Dr. Shinketsu Kikai.

We have shared their character introduction cards on Twitter, containing some small tidbits (age, likes, dislikes), which will hopefully give you an idea as to what they are like. If you have missed any of that, simply click on the names above to get linked to the respective cards.

As mentioned in a previous blog post, you will switch between these characters throughout the game, experiencing the story through each of their eyes. Each of them has their own tasks to fulfill during the investigation, affecting the various gameplay elements. For example, only Dr. Kikai will be able to examine the victim's body and determine the cause of death.

There are numerous things only certain characters will be able to do (which we will get into some other time), and only through their combined teamwork will they be able to uncover the truth.

However, as some of these characters are still rookies and it's their first time working on a case together, they first need to figure out how to effectively work as a team. That's the core idea behind GENBA no Kizuna.

Of course, there are many more characters you will encounter throughout the game. Aside from the obligatory victim(s) and a number of suspects, there is actually another member of the police force on the scene and maybe a witness or two. But that is also something we will get into some other time.

The last thing I want to talk about before wrapping this up is... SHINRAI. Or rather, GENBA's connection to it.

If you have played SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair, one of the names above should sound very familiar to you. And yes, it's not a coincidence nor will it be the only connection like this you will find throughout GENBA. This is obviously another thing I don't want to talk too much about for now, but there is at least one thing I can already tell you:

Some time ago, I mentioned that there was something we were working on, which we will end up using in both our new projects. GENBA as well as Withering Without Hope, the actual sequel to SHINRAI. The four characters above are what I was talking about. After all, the police will be heavily involved in Raiko's second case as well.

I will elaborate on this and everything else some more in the future. It will still be quite a while before GENBA can be released, so there's more than enough time to do so. Before any of that, however, it's probably time to finally shed some light on another big, remaining question: what does all of this have to do with dinosaurs? Well, we will get into that soon!

Please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update Compilation

Just realized that I kinda neglected the weekly updates here on Tumblr (sorry about that!), so I'll compile the last few right here:

Weekly Update #328: CG & BGM Progress

This past week, I've focused on drawing the "dead body" CG for GENBA no Kizuna, which is quite an undertaking to say the least. I've made a lot of progress on it, but there's still some work left to be done. It took me quite a while to figure out the exact perspective and angle. Thankfully, being married has its perks, so I got Kuna to take a bunch of reference pictures of me while I was lying on the floor, pretending to be dead, haha. That definitely helped tremendously.

Still, the details are going to give me another headache for sure. We're talking about a guy who got eaten by a T-Rex after all, so there's a lot going on in terms of, well... damage.

Anyway, every now and then, I've also continued working on the outline for Withering Without Hope. And speaking of which, I have just released a new Patreon post, delving into the topic of how Broken Beyond Despair sets up and dictates the direction for its sequel.

If you're curious about the changes I felt were necessary in our recent anniversary update, be sure to check it out!

Next week, I'm planning to make another post talking about the time in between BBD and WWH and what exactly happens there. There is quite a gap between October 30 and December 23 after all...

Now, in other news, I've been working with Solo, our composer, on a new BGM track for GENBA. I've already received a first preview of it and it sounds amazing! Can't wait to hear the full version and share it. This time, we're tackling another investigation theme, specifically for the segments you will play as Rei.

That kinda wraps up this week's progress report. I'll get back to working on that CG now, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

Weekly Update #327: BGs, CGs, Sprites & WWH

After a bit more BG work, I have finally finished a variation for the 1st Floor Main Hall and one for the 2nd Floor Main Hall. That now only leaves one more variation of the 1st floor and all the necessary BGs for the first three chapters of GENBA are done! Hopefully, I can get to that soon, but first of all, I've decided to tackle the "dead body" CG instead, as it is kinda tied to that BG.

Basically, after recovering the body from the Rex jaws, it will be spread out in the main hall and you will be able to catch a glimpse of it on the missing variation of the 1st floor background. At least that's the plan, but I think drawing the CG first will better help me understand what exactly and how much needs to be visible on said BG.

The CG is kind of intimidating to think about, as it is going to be the most difficult to draw by far. As a result, I've been pushing it off for a while now, but I figured, if I get it out of the way now, that'll be a big relief, haha. I've actually started working on it a while ago, doing some initial sketches. You will see almost the entire body lying on the floor. It's going to be an interactive CG too, meaning that players will be able to click all over the body in order to examine it. As you can imagine, it's going to be a very crucial asset towards solving the mystery death at the Kaseki residence, so it will require a lot of attention to detail.

My goal is to finish it by the end of the month, so I have just about a week left, which will hopefully be enough!

Outside of finishing those BG variations and getting back into the body CG, I've been working on some more sprite variations for Keiichi and Amber. Unfortunately, I kinda suffered a setback of sorts by accidentally deleting one of Amber's new sprites "orz Thankfully, I still had the low quality preview I posted on Patreon, so I was able to restore it, even if that was kind of an annoying and rather frustrating occurrence...

I have to doublecheck with the script, but this might be it in terms of sprites for the first chapter, too. In the end, Keiichi only got one new one, depicting him with a somewhat worried expression:

Now, one other thing I've been working on is Withering Without Hope. With the Christmas season drawing near, I'm really getting into the mood for it, so I've been working on the outline for the first chapter. I'd like to continue working on this on the side and hopefully finish at least the entire first chapter outline before the end of the year. The goal here is to have the full script for the game done by the time GENBA will be released.

If you're a patron, you should keep your eyes open, as I'm also going to share some behind-the-scenes info for WWH soon! Been wanting to do that for a while now and just haven't gotten around to it...

Anyway, guess that about wraps it up for today so, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

Weekly Update #326: GENBA Background Progress

Alright, after a bit more work, I have finally finished the background for the second floor of the main hall and, along with it, adjusted the other two main hall BGs. If you want to learn more about my struggles with these, be sure to check out last week's blog post where I talk a little about visual consistency. I've also made a post on my private Twitter, showcasing the differences between the old and the new version of the first floor main hall. As for the second floor, here's another preview for that one as well:

Now, what's left are the variations of these two BGs, which I've also worked on. One variation for each of them is almost done as well, just missing one last detail which I'll take care of tomorrow. That will leave only one more variation for the first floor background, which will display a couple more pieces of evidence. As mentioned last week, once these are done, we're gonna be good on backgrounds for a while. That's because the second chapter will not need any new BGs, as no new locations inside the residence will be visited. As for chapter 3, the mid-point case discussion... that one will take place entirely in the exhibition room featured at the end of our demo. So no new BGs for that one either!

Well, I did mention before that I'm playing with the idea of making one more simple BG for said exhibition room. Since the cast will spent quite a while there, discussing the mysteries (think of the dining hall in SHINRAI), it would probably be nice to get some visual variety. However, as I don't deem this to be an "essential background", it's a bit lower on my priority list. For now, I just want to focus on the assets that are absolutely necessary to tell the story. And when we talk about "essential" backgrounds, there are actually only four left now: the wash room, the back corridor, the backyard and one of the suspect rooms.

Before I get to any of those, I'm still aiming to finish all the assets for the first chapter, though. Which (BG variations aside) now only leaves a couple of sprite variations and two CGs. One of those is going to be very elaborate, though, so it will probably take me a while to get it done. I'll most likely work on it next month and, for the rest of November, take care of the sprites and script revisions.

Anyway, that about sums up the current progress. Time to get back to work, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

[gosatsuvns]

As of last week, we have finally begun to shed some more light on our next visual novel project: the interactive murder mystery GENBA no Kizuna.

In case you have missed it, you can check out last week's blog post by clicking here in order to learn what GENBA is about, how this project came to be, and what you can expect from it.

As for today's topic, as you can already see above, we are excited to introduce the first of our four playable main characters: Keiichi Genba!

The first thing you have undoubtedly noticed is the fact that his last name is the same as the first word of this project's title, so let us start with that first:

In Japanese, the term "genba" (現場) generally refers to a place where something occurs, and could simply be translated as "scene". Like the scene of an accident, for example. When a reporter is "live on scene", they use the word "genba". Just like police investigators use it to refer to the "crime scene". It could just as well mean a construction site, however, or even a factory.

Given the context of this story, it refers to a crime scene, of course. "Kizuna" (絆) is probably one of the more well-known Japanese words, so I might not need to say too much about it. It simply means "bond", as in an emotional connection or link between two or more people. So, just as I stated last week, GENBA no Kizuna could be translated as "bonds of the crime scene".

Now, keeping in mind that "Genba" is also the name of a character within the story, "kizuna" could also refer to him, meaning "Genba's bonds". Which is the main reason why I have decided to write "genba" in katakana/capital letters, rather than kanji, which would attach a specific meaning to it.

You were probably already wondering "Wait, you actually named this character crime scene??", but "Genba" is also a Japanese family name. There are quite a few ways to write it, but the one I have chosen in this case is 玄馬 (rather different from 現場, which is the actual combination for "crime scene", etc.).

While 玄 carries the meanings of "black", "mysterious", or even "occultness", 馬 is the kanji for "horse". This is one of the more common ways to write the family name "Genba", although it's sometimes also pronounced as "Genma". While doing research, I found two people who actually have the exact same written name. Both are named Nobuhiko with 玄馬 as their family name. One of them, however, is Nobuhiko Genma, and the other Nobuhiko Genba. Rather confusing, isn't it? Haha.

Getting back to "our Genba" though, his first name is a rather common Japanese boy's name: Keiichi (警一). While 警 (kei) carries the meaning of "to warn" or "to admonish" and is also the same kanji used in 警察 ("keisatsu", the Japanese word for "police"), 一 (ichi) simply means "one".

So yes, at the end of the day, his entire name is still a pun on his job, haha.

As you might have already guessed after reading all of the above, despite the story being told through the eyes of four different characters, you could still say that, in a sense, Keiichi is kind of the main protagonist. That does by no means mean that the other characters are less relevant or that Keiichi's story overshadows theirs! On the contrary, they will all be equally important. But this is something I don't want to delve too deep into right now.

Anyway, that was a lot of talk about names and meanings (sorry about that... hopefully you found it interesting!). However, there are a few more things to take away from Keiichi's introduction pic. First of all, you can see that he's 23. Or rather was, as the story is once again set in 2010, the same year SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair took place. More specifically, it takes place in June of that year, so even before the events of SHINRAI!

And last but certainly not least, here you finally have a look at Natsu's new coloring style for our character sprites!

As said before, we didn't want the style to change dramatically, but we did want to improve it and this is the result. I'm really satisfied with the way it looks, especially the hair. Let us know what you think about it!

Alrighty, I guess it's time to wrap this up. There's a lot more to say, but this post has already gotten a little long, so... let's continue next week when I'll say a bit more about Keiichi and our three other main characters! You actually might want to keep an eye on our Twitter, as I'll be revealing the other characters throughout the coming week! So please look forward to that!

With that said, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

[gosatsuvns]

Right now, there is a Visual Novel Sale happening on Steam, so we have decided to jump in as well! If you're in the mood for some mystery solving, grab our little murder mystery SHINRAI while it's 50% off

The sale lasts until March 6, 10:00 AM PST. Both the game and its complete soundtrack are discounted, but you can also grab them as a bundle for an additional 10% off. Of course, you can find the same deals offered on itch.io as well.

Feel free to visit the game's page to learn more about it. If you're still not sure whether or not SHINRAI might be your thing, you can also check out our Steam Reviews to get some player impressions!

Buy the game here:

What's that? You've already played SHINRAI, but you're curious as to what we're up to next? Well, how about giving the free demo for our next project GENBA no Kizuna a try? You can download it either here or on itch.io:

[gosatsuvns]

This past week, I've been mainly focusing on the writing for scene 11, the first real investigation segment in GENBA no Kizuna. Here Keiichi examines Ryuunosuke's room alongside Amber, in search of the little grump's medication. Players will also be able to learn more about Ryuunosuke and his grandfather and uncover the first real clues towards solving the mystery death at the Kaseki residence. It still needs some work, but down below, you can find a preview of the intro scene for the investigation:

(I didn't bother to translate the coding instructions this time, so they're all in German, sorry!)

I'll post the entire script for scene 11 on Patreon, hopefully towards the end of the month, along with the other remaining scenes for the first chapter. But for now, I wanted to provide at least a little preview of the work I've been doing. As you might be able to tell, I had a lot of fun with it, especially in regards to writing Amber's lines, haha.

Now, in other news, we've added a new section to the website, containing an official timeline for the events of SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair. This was originally something I did for myself to keep track of all the individual events and the passage of time, while writing the story. After the recent anniversary update, however, I've decided to update it and thought I might as well share it for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing.

This timeline lists every event that was mentioned in the game, which had some sort of time indicator attached to it, from when Momoko started to work on Hiro's Halloween costume to when exactly the extra diary entries were written. There is also some extra info in there, which was never explicitly mentioned in the game itself.

I'll update this in the future and add the GENBA and WWH timelines as well. Once those games have finally been released that is...

(I'd also like to mention here that a very diligent individual compiled a timeline on TV Tropes. I'm impressed by how they managed to even pinpoint some of the exact dates, just by playing the game. I feel very humbled and grateful for the dedication and effort. It's honestly one of the coolest things I've stumbled across in regards to our little VN.)

Anyway, that about wraps it up for today, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #317 - GENBA Continuation

Alright, with the SHINRAI anniversary update taken care of, I'm finally back to working on GENBA no Kizuna! And the first step I took was to go through the demo again, which we've released last year, and not just once but multiple times.

It's been quite a while since I've last played it myself, so I wanted to properly refresh my memory and immerse myself in the story again, before I continue working on the rest of it. This was also a good chance to see for myself how things holds up, now that I've had quite a bit of distance to the project. And there are certainly some parts which I'd like to work on a bit more.

I've gone through all the feedback we've received as well and the only thing people have criticized thus is the internal monologue by Keiichi, which apparently tends to get a bit too much and too distracting at times. So I was paying close attention to that.

For me, it's always a bit difficult to see this kind of issue. At least when it comes to my own writing. Then again, I'm also not the type to be particularly bothered by it when I see it in other VNs. So I've actually been struggling a bit with trying to fix this.

I mean, sometimes, the solution is obvious, but other times it's not. I might go into more detail about this topic and provide some actual examples in a future blog post, but for now, I don't want to spend too much time on this.

I've already made some tweaks to improve the pacing and I've marked some passages I'd like to change, but if I can't come up with a solution right away, I'm just going to skip that part and save it for later. Much more important right now is to fully finish the writing for the first chapter. Once that's done, it's time for some more revisions.

So, tomorrow, I'm going to work on scene 10, which is the scene that continues the events of our demo. It's fully written already, so it's just about refreshing my memory and doing some revision work. Scene 11 will then take a bit more effort, as I will need to write the conversation scenes between Keiichi and Amber, as well as the background investigation commentary, for when the two of them check out Ryuunosuke's room. I hope I can get all of this done by next week.

Anyway, that's about it, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care :3

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #316 - Final Fixes & Plans For September

Alrighty, first of all, here's another little reminder that we have just released an update for SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair. If you're curious what exactly this update entails, you can read all about it here!

Unfortunately, with the release of this update, an issue regarding the Steam Achievements arose, preventing players from unlocking them. The issue has since been fixed, however, so if you haven't seen it yet, there is another small update available on Steam now. After downloading it, everything will work again as intended and you can unlock the achievements during a new playthrough!

Using Skip Mode (Ctrl) and one of the Achievement Guides, it should take you no time at all to get all fifteen of them.

Still, if you have been affected by this issue and completed the game (partly or even entirely) without unlocking a single achievement, we sincerely apologize for the trouble and inconvenience!

While fixing this issue, we also fixed a few more typos and inconsistencies in the script, which I stumbled across during another personal playthrough after the initial update was released. Moreover, the Help button on the title screen now shows in-game info, rather than opening up your browser and linking to an outside source. Outside of that, nothing else has changed, however.

With this, we are done with BBD and thus, it's time to get back to GENBA no Kizuna and SHINRAI - Withering Without Hope!

During the next couple of days, I will need to make a proper plan on how to tackle things, but the first course of action will be to go through GENBA's extended demo again, as well as the plot outlines for everything beyond that, in order to immerse myself in the story and world again. At the same time, I'll be doing some planning for WWH, since working on BBD has sparked some new ideas.

In general, I guess I'll be using September for script-related work, hopefully finishing the entirety of GENBA's first chapter and getting it ready for proofreading. What's missing right now is writing the rest of the investigation (scene 11), finding a solution on how to handle scene 12 (not happy with its structure right now and it's way too complex and long-winded) and general revisions for scenes 10 to 13, which comprise the rest of the first chapter, not included in the extended demo.

That about wraps it up, but before I get back to work, there's one other thing I'd like to share with you. The amazing Kuna has drawn an absolutely amazing Amber (one of GENBA's four suspect characters) and it would be a crime not to show you:

Now, as always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #315 - Post-Update Notes & Plans For The Remainder Of 2020

If you haven't caught the news yet, we've just released an update for SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair in celebration of its 4th anniversary! If you're curious about what exactly has changed, you can read all about the additions and changes to the game here.

Today, I'd like to say a few more words about the update, our new projects and our plans for the rest of 2020!

The Update:

First of all, I need to say that I would have loved to do way more than what we ultimately managed to infuse into this update. Unfortunately, we kinda ran out of time, since we couldn't allocate too much to it in the first place. I mean, it's been four years now since we've released this visual novel and, rather than keep tweaking it, I'd like to focus on our new titles and make sure that those are going to be improved in the areas that players criticized with BBD.

Besides, there are always going to be things that can be done even better and I am quite a perfectionist, so I'll never be satisfied anyway. Therefore, I originally didn't really intend to touch this game again, as I'd like to move forwards and accomplish new things.

I would have eventually made some tiny script adjustments, due to some of the developments regarding GENBA no Kizuna and Withering Without Hope. Both stories have evolved quite a bit from my plans in 2016, after all. But those adjustments would have only been minor continuity/consistency fixes. Like how the place where Raiko lives has been upgraded from a town to a giant metropolis. Thus, the word "town" has been taken out or replaced during the recent update, for instance.

(I told you, I'm a perfectionist... *cough*)

Earlier this year, however, we've been presented with an opportunity I couldn't pass up on. It's something I'm personally super excited about, so I can't wait to finally make the official announcement (which should happen within the next two months, I guess). And it's this opportunity that led us to make an update now, a little bit bigger in scope than simple script adjustments.

Given what we're working on in secret right now, I ended up deciding to also address the bigger criticisms we've received. Unfortunately, in some regards, there was only so much I could actually do about them.

The slow pacing in the beginning is almost always brought up and I did try my best to revise some parts, making them more concise, but ultimately, I doubt there is a noticeable difference. I didn't want to simply erase big parts of the game and I didn't have the time to completely rewrite and restructure things, nor did I really want to. After all, even though most people criticized the slow start, there are also players who didn't mind or even enjoyed it.

But yeah, if it was too slow for you, you probably won't feel any different even after this update.

Still, overall, I do think that we've improved the experience quite a bit. And delving so deeply into BBD's script again was quite beneficial to its sequel, as well.

GENBA & WWH:

After SHINRAI's release in 2016, I immediately started working on GENBA and WWH. One year later, however, I realized that working on two murder mysteries simultaneously maybe wasn't the smartest idea. Not only did it drag out development for both of them, it also complicated things as I was trying to craft two different murder cases, filled with dozens of mysteries, at the same time.

So, I eventually decided to put WWH aside and fully commit myself to GENBA, as this title sets up quite a few things for WWH.

And in the end, it turned out to be a really good idea, because working on GENBA, along with the recent SHINRAI update, has really helped me in shaping the story for WWH into something much better than it was three years ago.

I'm really excited about it and, with GENBA's story fully set in stone now, can't wait to finally do the same with WWH's!

Plans:

For the next week, there is still some post-update stuff to take care of, which I'll probably talk about in next week's blog post. However, in general, I'm going to get back to GENBA now. As mentioned in the update announcement post, I have the perfect release date for it in mind, and I will do everything I can to get it done by then.

Before I make any promises, however, I want to see how the remainder of the year goes and if I can actually accomplish all of my goals. So you'll have to wait until our New Year's post before I will elaborate on any of this (sorry).

Anyway, with GENBA's story planned out and vast chunks of the script written, it's mostly asset work that's left. So that will be my main focus until the end of 2020. Although the first big goal is to get the first chapter fully done (the extended demo only contains about 70% of it), so that will include some script revisions, too.

At the same time, I also want to get a full outline done for WWH, so that next year, I can write its actual script!

As you can see, there's still a lot to be done, but I'm feeling very motivated. I'll further detail some of our plans in our next few blog posts, but for now, I guess I'll wrap this up! As always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #313 - SHINRAI Notebook Update

As the title already states, today I'll be talking about the notebook related changes that will be applied to SHINRAI with the upcoming anniversary update. Since the kanji for some character names have been changed, along with the D.O.B. format on the introduction cards, I had to update the character profiles accordingly:

Those aren't the only things that have changed, though. I took the opportunity to also fix some visual issues here and there, like how the arm of Henjin's sprite is currently cut off on his profile pages, for instance...

The biggest adjustment is the text size, however. I've actually increased it a little for all character profiles, trivia entries, diary entries and clues & evidence entries. I'm honestly not sure why exactly I decided to go with such a tiny text size back in the day. No one ever complained about it, so I guess it's not been a real issue, however, given the main reason for this update (which I still can't talk about publicly yet), I've decided it might be a good idea to increase the text size, even if just by a little.

Unfortunately, due to the GUI and entry format, I was kinda restricted in how far I can go. Because bigger text obviously means that it won't really fit into the designated windows anymore. And the only solutions then are to slash text away completely, or to add more pages to all individual entries. So, in the end, I decided to go with what you can see above, which still required some rewriting and reformatting for basically the entire notebook content in the game.

Content-wise, nothing is going to be lost, though. I just put things down in a more concise manner and, in some instances, even managed to squeeze in some new tidbits! Of course, I also couldn't resist the temptation to add some GENBA no Kizuna and Withering Without Hope connections here and there:

That about wraps it up. Only eleven more days until SHINRAI's anniversary! I'm getting excited but also kinda nervous... Don't want to add any new errors/typos into the game with this update, so some thorough proofreading and testing is still in order. We're getting close to the finish line, though!

Now, as always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

(PS: You might have noticed, but Raiko's D.O.B. is August 14, meaning that... it was actually her birthday yesterday!)

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #311 - More SHINRAI Update Progress

Work on the update for SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair continues, but we're slowly wrapping things up now! If you check out the character profiles on the page linked above, you'll see that they've already been replaced with the updated ones. Naturally, they've been implemented into the game as well, just like all the script adjustments.

Well, almost all of them. During the last couple of days, I've been revising some of the unlockable extra scenes. Not just to accommodate for what's going to occur in GENBA no Kizuna and Withering Without Hope, but also because there were actually some general logic issues in there, that somehow escaped my grasp back in the day. Probably a result of the fact that the extra scenes were a very late addition and therefore kinda rushed...

Kamen's second diary entry about Raiko has seen the most changes, I guess. I've added new segments and rephrased a few things in order to elaborate a little further on her feelings and to properly set up her relationship with Raiko for the sequel.

I'm a lot happier with it now and honestly can't wait to get around to exploring and developing it further, haha.

Anyway, I've also made a decision on how to handle the "checkpoint system" for the final chapter of the game, but I will elaborate on that next time. I'd kinda like to get back to work ASAP, so I'm going to keep today's post brief.

All that's really left now is tackling the sound-related issues, and then we're going to be ready for some testing!

Less than a month now until the anniversary of SHINRAI's release, so I'm excited to have a bit more to offer this year rather than a simple artwork, haha. And, of course, there are some other, big news waiting to be unveiled as well, so please look forward to that!

But for now, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #310 - SHINRAI Update Progress

I've already talked about the changes and fixes regarding the script, so today, I'd like to talk a bit more about some of the others things that will get adjusted in our little update for SHINRAI.

For one, there is the sound. Several tracks inside the game don't loop properly, for instance, which is something we'll fix with the help of our new composer Solo Acapello. There are also long periods of awkward silence, though, with no background music playing at all, so I've been thinking about what to do in those kinds of instances.

One possibility would be to add actual music, but back in the day, I specifically decided against that, because I wanted to have a moment of quiet. So, right now, I actually lean more towards the other solution, which we have already applied in GENBA no Kizuna to avoid the same problem: using ambience noises.

In GENBA, jungle-like sounds can be heard whenever there is no music (they are played over the speakers in the Kaseki residence, something that also has actual plot significance). So in SHINRAI, we could do something similar. Maybe you'll be able to hear the distant howls of the mountain winds, or the humming of electronic devices. I've already collected some sounds and will see what I can do with them over the course of the upcoming week.

Speaking of sounds, some SFX files also don't have the crispest sound to them, so I'll see what I can do about that, as well. A couple of sound effects will definitely get updated or replaced with new ones.

Another thing I've already taken care of is updating the character introduction cards. For the most part, they still look the same, but some things have been adjusted. Most notable the writing for most of the character names. Although the names are still the same, the kanji to write them have changed. I did this for a couple of reasons, which I will talk in detail about some other time.

I can already show you a little example, though:

If you compare this with Taiko's old introduction card, you will notice that his first name and family name are written with different kanji now. And although the pronunciation remains the same, the meaning has changed. Furthermore, both of these are real ways to write these names. By which I mean that you won't really find the old kanji combinations in real life, but that you will find people in Japan, who carry the family name Kikai as written above, or who have been named Taiko, written with these kanji.

Again, I will talk more about the reasoning behind this in a future blog post, but for now, let's move on to the other changes:

The D.O.B. format has been updated, which I've done for GENBA as well, after noticing in several SHINRAI LPs that American players tend to get confused by the DD/MM-format. Aside from that, Taiko is one of three cases in which the Likes/Dislikes have been adjusted as well, keeping in mind what's going to be revealed in GENBA and SHINRAI's sequel. Finally, the "full" sprite is now shown, without the legs getting cut off by the black bar at the bottom.

There's actually a bit more to say about all this, but I guess I'll have to wrap up here for today, since I'm running kinda late, sorry! As always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3

PS: Fellow VN dev Nayru from NoBreadStudio has just released Blank Space, an escape room style mystery VN, so please consider checking it out! Especially since it's on a 10% launch discount!

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #308 - SHINRAI Script Update

As you can see, I've spent quite a lot of time going through SHINRAI over the past two weeks and by now, I have more or less finished taking a thorough look at the script. In the end, I discovered a couple of typos and a bunch of cases of "this sentence is way too long and could express the exact same things with better structure and a lot less words".

There were also some weird instances left in which the "progress text"-arrow was kinda randomly stuck inside of the text...

I have also edited some textboxes for better readability and will make some slight adjustments in certain spots to conform with the story changes that SHINRAI's sequel has gone through, during the past four years. Outside of that, however, nothing all too major will be changed in terms of the script and nothing really new will be added, either.

So, if you were looking forward to new scene additions or anything like that, I'm sorry to disappoint you...

Some double-checking and proofreading is still in order, but again, this basically covers the script adjustments. The next thing I will look into is the sound. I want to update some sound effects, the volume needs to be adjusted in some places, and there are some rather long and awkward segments of complete silence, which I'd like to do something about as well.

Of course, there are also the BGM loops that need to be adjusted, but with Solo's help, that shouldn't be much of a problem.

That more or less covers this week's progress and our plans for next week. By the end of the month, we will ideally be done with the vast majority of this update, so that August can be used to focus more on GENBA no Kizuna again.

I do have to admit, though, that playing through SHINRAI again kind of helped me a little in regards to some of the difficulties I've been having with GENBA's final chapter. So I'm actually glad that I decided to go through our first game again in such detail.

Anyway, there is still much left to be done, so I'll get back to work and hope that you will enjoy the rest of your weekend instead! Until next Saturday, take care :3

[gosatsuvns]

Weekly Update #307 - Updating SHINRAI

A new month has started and, just as mentioned in our last blog post, it will be another very busy one!

SHINRAI will celebrate its 4th anniversary on the 26th of August and we're working on an update for the occasion. At the moment, I'm going through the game to make adjustments to the script, for instance. One of the biggest criticisms has always been the fact that the pacing during the first two chapters is very slow and discouraging. We've received many comments of players saying that they considered quitting, but were ultimately glad they didn't, because from chapter 3 onward, they got really sucked into the mystery.

In some cases, however, players did give up before getting to the first murder and this is rather sad to hear...

Of course, I can't (and don't want) to rewrite the entire beginning of the game. Nevertheless, I'm trying to find ways to improve the pacing a little. There are certain parts that drag on after all, or where I could convey things in a much more concise manner.

Outside of that, we're going to fix and add a few other little things, but I will talk about those in a future post.

As for GENBA no Kizuna, work will naturally continue on that as well, even if it will take a backseat for the next two months. I had a very lengthy discussion with Natsu yesterday, who now knows basically the whole story and all the answers to the mysteries.

I still need to send her the final part of the last chapter, which will completely wrap up the story (almost like an epilogue), so I will dedicate an entire blog post to her impressions once she has read that, too. Overall, I'm very satisfied with her feedback, though!

Before we wrap this up, I'd also like to mention that the summer artwork featuring Runa has been finished! As always, it has been added to our gallery and patrons can download hi-res and "no BG/text" versions of it right here.

Now please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3