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One of the fashion students who attend Sacred Hearts Academy, a location of interest :)

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A mysterious NPC ? :)

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A lot has happened over the past... year and a half, for sure, which led to me having a bit of a writer's block (massive), and I wanted to make sure this game presented itself cleanly. Which goes to say, here's a new character-- Miyona Dawn, a young lady who hails from a famous exorcist family.

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Update 05/30/2023

Long time no see! Due to a series of MANY long circumstances in life, I had to put this project on hold. This also led to a big of a writer's block, and as well as deciding the logistics of the game before finally realizing that I think I ended up being a little too ambitious for the story and not satisfied with how it was going. Because of this, I will be doing some overhaul to the story writing, though the current state of the game and its system will stay the same.

Once I have the story rewritten and its premise, the rest should fall into place a lot more easily. I hope to jump back into this sometime in the next couple of months, though there are a couple things in the IRL horizon that may lead to some lifestyle changes in the future. Despite this, I have not forgotten about this project, and I want to release this game sometime! If not 2023, I am aiming for 2024.

Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you all again next time!

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I promise I’m not dead! A lot of things got in the way and some character writing related obstacles blocked me like nothing else, but I’ve learned to take it at a chill pace and I’m finally getting back into the groove of things*

*I did also catch Covid-19 due to household exposure, but I am recovering.

I did get a few music pieces commissioned as well, and since I’m still in the early acts of the plot, it’s just been hard being cohesive so far. Still, it’s all an experiment so hopefully the journey will continue to be fruitful. Here’s a temporary main screen, a little composition throwback to my other game.

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Sprites!

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Back at it again! I always struggle with the style direction for backgrounds, but I decided to go for a loose look for Enrica’s office to contrast against the more rendered look for the investigation scenes.

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These last few weeks have been hectic, and it’ll continue to be like that for a while! However, I’m getting around to tackling some rough drafts for the potential character sprites. Some heights as bonus info too!

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Been a bit stuck on writing and I was possessed by an urge to flex some animating, so I did a little animation of Lulu to get some inspiration going :)

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Bonus content for being inactive for a while! I managed to smoothly transition the investigation mode and figure out how to keep the descriptor scenes from clashing with the active point and click elements. :D

I also fixed the shuffling choice issue, but I haven’t recorded it on here since I did not want to record again.

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It’s been a hectic few weeks and I was quite blocked on how to start writing, but I wrote a lot today! This is a background test to see how I want to proceed with the various backgrounds I’ll probably have to do in this game... I’m always torn between the stylistic choices, but I think I’ll go for a simplistic color block type and ride on the blur filter to hide any thing I don’t want to draw :)

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Some style tests, though I don’t think I’ll go for a painterly style for this game...

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Last thing of the day!

I decided to ditch the Journal feature, as the idea of that is more trouble than it’s worth right this moment. However, I relegated some of the quick menu bloat into buttons to fill the empty HUD space, which would allow access to the History, Save and Option screens-- though the rest of the menu is easily accessible through them as well!

I also tested out a rudimentary point and click system. So far, so good, I’ll probably be very reserved about using it. It’s still more visual novel than not, and I don’t want to go too far on specs to make this a reasonable project to finish.

Unseen: Hidden sanity meter.

And minor extra thing, I added another HUD thing that states the current location of the scene. I think I got the majority of the daunting coding things out of the way, so I can focus on branching paths and writing soon!

Other things I need to address later on: Possible timed choices, deciding on the design of “cutscene” moments...

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Adjusted the UI for the other menu options!

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Somehow it’s happening! Figuring out HUD things, so far so good... I’m afraid for the final load once everything’s in place, but small victories.

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Journal system and point and click mockups, those will be next on the list once the HUD is stable!

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Layout mockup… Instead of the modern full-screen BG+Sprite+Dialogue only styled VN, I was thinking about those boxed-in layouts that some old Japanese games used to do, where they had the scene and incorporated other bits of the UI into a designed border around everything.

I just did some very quick photobashing and other shapes to block in stuff, but I’ll figure out how to unify colors and how to make the scene the main focus :)

There’s some filter variation, but very subtle...