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Hey guys and girls!
It's been a week since public release, so it's time to get back to work ^^
Long post ahead, you know how I like to type my thoughts by now
I always write transparently and write my heart out, so here it goes.
First of all, a big big thank you to each and every one of you. Regular players, patrons, commentators, whoever, thank you ❤
Before the release, I was extremely scared. It's been so long, will anyone even play it? Do people even remember the game? Before the Early access, I was worried if I'll even have 2 people voluntary play the beta without me begging people. And when the time for Beta came around, I saw multiple new faces that decided to support me in a big way. I was extremely grateful, but still worried. Will they even like it? Are they the only people left interested? If they waited for so long, justifiable with my uni or not, and then dislike the update...
It was hard to put out my worry, but as each new tier dropped and nobody was negative about the game, I started to have more and more hope. Maybe I am wrong, please, correct me if I am. But in the end, it genuinely seemed like players enjoyed the update.
The wait times have been long, and I really wanted to put a good update out, but my university wasn't letting me do so in a quick and reasonable timeframe. I really poured my all in Episode 4, and to everyone who enjoyed it an appreciated it, thank you. Thank you to both my amazing patrons that kept supporting last year, and thanks to all the new patrons joining this month just for the update. Thanks to all those public enjoyers too.
So what is the next step?
There should be no secret that I have some areas in the game that I wished to improve. Almost two years ago, I was already dissatisfied with my look of Episode 2, with that bad lightning, black/blue monochrome npcs in background... it looked terrible, but I had no real time to fix it with my uni. And I was ignoring it, why fix something if it's just visual, players can just push through it.
However, throughout the last year, and especially after ep4 release, I see so many other glaring issues I ignored till now. One of biggest being Eiko. When I was writing Episode 3, I wanted to have Eiko in it. She barely appeared before, so makes sense. But the more I thought how to add her, the more I realized how fucked I am with the cards I dealt myself before. As those very few OGs here might remember, my original Ep1 was quite different (will return to this point soon). Eiko's original personality was - a baddie and slutty. Yup, that's it. That's all I had before. In original Ep1, she drugged the mc in the club. Hell, I even back then had idea of her seducing outside the club and her being the first lewd. Yup, old Katana was dumb and wanted to be one of those vn games with a lewd scene first episode. Thank god I didn't do that. ♂
Even if I slightly changed it, I never thought deeply about who she is. During ep3 work, I even considered of making her a side character instead. I mean, Falazio, Simon, hell, "Npc male character/s" have more dialogue lines than her. Thankfully, I decided against it, and told myself that I'll make her a deep character and think of everything about her. Her past, present, future, thoughts, ambitions, worries, all of it. And so I did. Now she is as deep and characterized as all other girls. And while she has some different personas (to be explained in future), none of those is "slutty". With that in mind, last 2 weeks I've been asking patrons/players to list all inconsistencies or bad areas from earlier episodes, to see how much there might be work if I decide to tackle it.
The areas of possible improvements was staggering. Just some of the main ones:
- Unnecessary Covid talk
- Extremely long intro
- Bad Eiko/literally 3 different visual designs in 4 episodes
- cringeworthy "storm is coming" by that one unknown girl and then she never appears again nor does a storm come
- who is Atlas? I guess we will never know
- wtf is scorpios?
- why do songs often stop after a sound plays
- if you don't drink with Eiko, Avis literally has 10 renders where she is in another dress... during same party
- and more but this post is giga long already
My initial script was quite different, and seems some elements I never fixed nor changed to the current timeline and narrative. So I decided, I want to fix it all, all in one fell swoop. And now is the perfect time. I am actually free from studying, and although I might move out, that's at worst 1 week of work. Before you 5 in the back get up and circle on your calendar "2027 ep5 release", no I am not letting long delays happen.
I've given myself 3 months from this post to fix everything I can. I am extremely excited to continue the story, especially with how well received the new Avis/Serena part was, the bits with Eiko and others. However after thinking long and through the last 2 weeks, and with talking with some close people, I've realized that it's necessary to fix the past to be able to face the future.
See you all in Ep 4.5 in 3 months
Thank you, and I hope you understand my thoughts. My Discord server is always open for discussions.
Love you all,
Kat <3
