Hi everyone, it's time for January's update!

Surveys still haven't been sent out yet because we're dotting our i's and crossing our t's to make sure everything is right and proper, since we can only ever send those out once. Combined with the fact that I was out of the country for at least a month, we ended up a little late. Sorry about that!

On the bright side, there was still plenty that can be done gamedev wise even while I'm away. Work on the engine continues on pace, we launched a patreon, and we officially started work on most aspects of the game. While I can't say for sure that all monthly reports will be so in-depth (since we're mainly going to be doing the same thing over and over again - make content, test, program, etc.) this period between funding and now certainly has a fair amount to say anyway.

Writing
Good news: we've begun work on scripts and fleshing out the outline more indepth, and our style bible is long finished. During the will-we-or-won't-we of the demo, we made sure to have the entire store planned out to a fair degree (all plot lines, general scene ideas, proposals for execution, all monthly pacing and a bit of week-by-week and day-to-day outlining, and 3-4 day-to-day proposals that we ultimately scrapped) but specific things (do we keep in the fencing scene in January or February? what does Forrest do on the 7th of April?) weren't fretted over. We had a strict timeline for when the demo itself came out and it didn't do anyone good to fret about parts of the game that we didn't even know would be funded or not when there was stuff in the demo that we had to focus on Now. If we had an idea for a later scene while we worked? We set it aside until now to really give it a once over.

While we're mostly keeping things under wraps, we still wanted to show an excerpt of one of the scripts:

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And for those who are into that I guess, have a screenshot of a bit of our style bible:

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Subtitle - How we Plan
When it comes to the writing portion of the game, it can be both fun and stressful because it's just one big balancing game! We promised you a big game, but that also means that there's the risk of glacial pacing for the sake of it, or filler when there doesn't have to be. We've gone through several drafts of the outline already, just constantly polishing and rounding out the outline to try to keep things fun without zoning you guys out. When the writers come to me to propose a scene, as a general rule of thumb I ask them "what is the purpose of this scene?" What character trait does it establish, why do we introduce it now in this sequence of events, can we do it more efficiently, what art assets does it require, etc.? When the writers brainstorm together in their spare time, they tend to ask "why did you want to write this scene?" more. We need both!

While I can be a little strict about what passes or not, it usually just means that the writer just takes their proposal, tweaks it to make it fit what we need, and we can still use the general premise or aesthetic that they were gunning for. I'm not a huge fan of outright killing darlings because most of the time, at least in my anecdotal experience, they can be repurposed or tweaked. (This of course doesn't apply to some things you just Have to cut, but, like. We're past the stage of having to cut any core desires as far as I know. Otherwise we wouldn't have the game.)

Subtitle - Forrest
Speaking of Forrest, I'm sure that if you've been following the (twitter) that you've noticed our recruitment post in the past couple weeks. So, Forrest's writers ended up getting a serious windfall when it comes to their career and honestly? I'm still so, so proud of what happened. We figured it'd happen eventually (hence why we made that disclaimer in our campaign about the swapping of employees) but so soon? While it was a bit of a hectic run around since we found out right before Christmas (and basically me leaving), it actually ended up being super convenient for us since the sooner we had a new official writer, the easier it'd be to keep the execution generally the same throughout the entire game.

And, luckily for us, the original writers have been sticking around and helping our new member, Makenzie, settle into her role. We auditioned writers in a multi-tier process similar to how I hired the original team - sample submissions, character analysis, interview (or two, depending on scheduling), and a second sample submission with a prompt of the team's choosing that was the same. We had a lot of strong candidates, like, a TON, and ultimately the writing prompt helped serve as our multi-way-tie-breaker. It hit the point where we realized that we narrowed the selection down to having no wrong option, and hopefully you'll agree when we post more previews in the future.

Subtitle - Additional Editor
Back when the demo was first immediately completed and we could sit and think about "what next" I had in mind temporarily hiring another editor, explicitly to work on our style guide. While Rev, our main editor, is a doll she's also been subjected to a lot of behind the scenes talk and discussion that can obviously color our opinion of a character. (I know I for one love memeing about Yvonne.) I wanted someone with fresh eyes who'd be 100% fresh as they went over what was in the demo itself, and not what we were expecting ourselves to do in the future.

During the campaign, I noticed someone doing a livestream of the demo, and honestly? It ended up landing that person a job. She offered great insight during the stream and one thing led to another, and now Harley's on the team! It also helps that Forrest's writers weren't the only ones to hit it big - Rev got a promotion to manager at her job and even our backup editors got new jobs, so heck yeah. They're still on the team, and Rev is still main editor, but now we have more of a failsafe because I'm currently pretty hellbent on making sure that even me being gone for a month hasn't halted dev.

Art/Non-writing Assets

Who doesn't love art sneak peeks? With the way we've outlined things on an ingame-monthly basis (and then weekly, daily, etc.) we can basically lock things in script wise on a month-to-month basis, which means we can ask for art assets at about the same rate. While December/January is a little slow in that regard, it's what we expected and accounted for!

While we do know some certain art assets that we'll need in the future, we're not in any rush to jump in CGs first. Instead, we're going to be working on the first set of sprites: the casual clothing. It's a fun excuse to look at pretty dresses and questionable sweaters, and muck around with collages and pinterest boards but also seeing what vacuum proposes since she's definitely the more fashionable one of me and her HAHA. With stuff like Diana's costume in the demo, we'd straight up pass the sketch back and forth through twitter for a couple hours until we came to a compromise, so expect some sneak peaks of some rough drafts soon, probably around March or Feb/April.

For backgrounds and music, while we do have some assured ones just like what we need from vacuum, haven't started quiiiite yet because I find it more important to focus on the writing portion first. There's no denying that the visual aspect of a Visual Novel tm is important, but it's also important to make sure that we know what -exactly- we need to ask from them first so we don't bleed our budget on things we don't even end up using.

Patreon
Twitter followers also may have noticed we opened a Patreon! It's definitely more of a tip jar than anything since the kickstarter was always intended to carry us through, but it also lets us give more rewards because stuff like monthly wallpapers and -especially- stickers aren't exactly kickstarter-fulfillment friendly. It's also a way for us to give you guys more of vacuums art during more "dry" months like this for public sharing stuff, and a way to help fill out the art book.

Next month's wallpaper is Valentine's Day themed with both Yvonne AND Madison, Orion, and roses. It's not finished just yet, but vacu grabbed us a sneak peek to show you guys. c:


January's wallpaper through sheer coincidence was Forrest.

And to cap it off, December's wallpaper is actually for FREE, and you can grab it here:

Looking Forward
More script writing, more visuals, hopefully more sneak peeks, about what you can expect.

All the best,
Olivine