First Look: Koda

Phew! Last week was a lot busier than I imagined it would be. I've only managed to write about a hundred words all week. orz But it seems about time for an update, so here's another character sketch from Every Sunrise! I know you've all been wanting to see him, so here's Koda! He's never been big on fashion, but don't hold it against him. XD

Wordcount Wednesday - Every Sunrise

Sprite preview shamelessly lifted from Deji's tumblr.

Hey! It's Wordcount Wednesday! On Wednesday! Let's see how long that lasts. XD I've been talking about it on and off, but I haven't officially announced this project yet. Well, here goes! Yes, Ripples is getting a sequel, and it's called "Every Sunrise." If you've been following our facebook page, you already saw the design sketches for Kuu there, but hey, here's a sprite preview! Woo! We've been planning this for a while, but we've just started actual work on it recently. This is sort of a side project right now (as Winter in Fairbrook and Cinders take precedence for me and Deji has other work, too), but at least we've begun!

Statistics:
The game contains 53 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 562 words,
for an average of 10.6 words per screen.
The game contains 0 menus.

P.S.

This game will be free.

Anime Expo + Future Plans

And I'm back from my very first Anime Expo! It was craaazy, but I had a great time meeting everyone there. Visual novels got a great representation there with several EVN dev groups putting in an appearance (Dischan, Kinou Games, Kuroi Games, Okashi Studios, R3 Productions, Sakura River, Zeiva Inc. and Zero Zigen, to name some in alphabetical order). It was also great to meet a lot of you guys who I've only managed to speak with online. Sorry if I seemed kind of tired. I really was. ^_^;; Unfortunately, my body is still recovering from the accident, so I really wanted to sleep, and I was a little out of it during the whole thing. Being able to see all of you really made the trip worth it, though! Also, a big thanks to EigoManga for graciously inviting sakevisual to take part in the doujin game panel alongside Zero Zigen, Carpe Fulgur and Okashi Studios.

Now that the big con for the summer is over, it's time to buckle down and get some visual novels done! Kansei will be released this week (in fact, the countdown to Kansei will begin tomorrow), and Winter in Fairbrook will follow shortly after that. I'm also doing work with Moa Cube on a fairy tail visual novel called Cinders. Expect a release of that sometime this summer as well.

Once these three games are taken care of, we'll be turning our attention to a sequel novel that a lot of you guys have been asking for. Hint: See the sketch above for details.

Biweekly Poll - Minigames

Hey, all! Look what I got in the mail the other day. Deji drew me like the prettiest thing ever. ::hearts:: It's up on my mantle now next to my Lelouch figure and my sonic screwdriver. I call it my mantle of yay.*

Anyway, this poll clocked in 255 votes, and I haven't seen this level of division before. I asked your thoughts on minigames in visual novels, and they really ranged the gamut.

Skippable	159 (62%)
Replayable	137 (53%)
Frequent	23 (9%)
Moderate	137 (53%)
Rare	42 (16%)
Not in visual novels	31 (12%)

I've been reading your comments and thinking about it, and I think I've hit upon an idea. What if the game allows you to choose between "novel mode" and "game mode?" In game mode, you'd be presented with a mini game in which you open a puzzle box. In novel mode, minigames are automatically skipped, and replaced with text like "After wrestling with it for a few minutes, I managed to open the puzzle box." That way people who want to just read don't have to be bothered to skip puzzles, and people who want to play will be able to. Beating all the minigames might unlock a hidden arcade or something so that you can go back and replay the games any time you want. Does that sound good? Any suggestions on other features or content?


*I never claimed to be good at naming anything.

Weekly Update

I made a new logo. I'm actually going to KEEP this one instead of make a new one every two days.

Anyway. Time for an update. Now with word counts!

RE: Alistair++
Finished writing for the extended edition. Some new scenes, some updated scenes, hopefully fewer bugs and typos...
Final word count: 23,254

Card Sweethearts
Finished Carla's arc, and getting close to being done with Lisa's. Hers is fairly linear, so it's a little easier to finish. It's a lot of fun, though. After that, one more arc to go and yay!
Current word count: 24,344

Happy Memories
Wrote a few more meeting/intro scenes with some of the characters. This game is pretty varied in terms of how things change based on your actions. There are many different ways to meet the same character, so each time you play, things are really different.
Current word count: 1,970

Ripples Remix
Finished recording for Kuu and had someone in (ha, if you know me, you know who I brought in), to record for Koda. All the vocals and music are now in place. Woo!
Final word count: 1,947

The Gameplan

Well, lots on the list of things to do right now, but I'm going to write out a gameplan so that I get everything finished in good time.

February:
The deadline for the two month challenge fast approaches. RE: Alistair is doing okay, but we're seriously in crunch time right now. A couple thousand more words, at least, hopefully done by the end of this week so that we can spend the last week testing and cleaning up any emergency issues.

March:
Crazy insane writing month. I intend to actually finish writing both Card Sweethearts and Moonsong this month. That's a lot, especially seeing as both have several tens of thousands of words to go, but I really want to get these done ASAP. They've both been sitting around much too long, and they'll get stale if I don't put a rush order on them.

April:
If my March plan works out, start writing three new games. Yes, three. A sequel to a game that's currently doing very well, a horror/otome game, and a personal project that I hope to be able to release commercially. @^@

In the meantime:
Ripples, Plat du Jour, and hanami x 2 will move along at whatever speed is appropriate based on the schedule and workload of the artist.

Kuu - Sprite Filmstrip

I don't know how many people will actually find this interesting, but I'm going to post it anyway. Side by sides of my original sprite and expressions for Kuu and the new sprite and expressions by Deji.

Two New Projects

Why am I starting two new projects? Don't I have like a million projects already? Yes. Yes I do. And they are all very important. In fact, Flower Shop is near completion, so I'm aggressively testing it right now. I'm also working very hard to finish up some editing I promised would be done by now. D:

After Flower Shop and this game, it's on to editing and writing another game that should have been done awhile go (but this one isn't my fault >.>), and seeing if I can actually finish writing Moonsong sometime in the first quarter of the year.

So what the herdy gerdy is this? Well, first off, I am happy to announce that my first visual novel ever, Ripples, is getting a remake. Ripples was a game I made in the course of a week, but now that I look at it, I think a little spit and polish would do it justice. So I will be re-releasing it with updated writing, all new art (courtesy of the lovely and talented Deji), and original music composed by someone who isn't me (this is a good thing). So basically, it's the same story, but a complete remake of all the elements in it. The writing is already done, so this really won't be much of a time eater for me.

And the second project is called Re: Alistair. It's for a two-month challenge on LemmaSoft, and I planned out the writing to be on my "personal project" day (every Sunday). There's not much more to say about it, but updates will come as we progress.

Renairody #13

It is my pleasure (and honor) to have my works featured in the latest Renairody 4koma series. Many thanks to F.I.A. for both cleverness and playing all my games. XD

If you don't get the joke, you should play all three of my released games. They're free and they're short. What have you got to lose?

As a side note, I have long been considering doing a rewrite of Forget me Not with better graphics, a longer story, new music, and re-recorded voices. It's not really at the top of my priority list, but maybe it'll happen someday? I've also been long working on a sequel to Ripples. It's not a direct sequel though, so I doubt most people will notice. >.>