WOAH. WHAT THE FRICK!?

... Is probably along the lines of what was going through my head when Itch decided to promo my game out of seemingly nowhere. Seriously, I don't know what I did to earn the grace and mercy of the algorithm for a week, but damn I'm not complaining.

Algorithm aside, I of course have all of you players to thank for this. Over 6k downloads doesn't just materialize without people consciously clicking on the game and deciding to give it a try, so thank you!!! So!!! Much!!! I am eternally grateful for all of your kind words, as well as the generosity I've been shown in donations. Y'all know who you are, Ko-Fi squad >:P I'll have you know that all the money I get from this game goes into the mutually beneficial cause of securing funds to put it on Steam (Heh... 100 bucks per title can be costly) as well as commissioning more custom music from my good pal Jon and other rbs-related investments!

Speaking of which, we're working on something that I hope you guys will enjoy! Let's just say the rhythm game is about to get a bit more musical, heheheh...

Anyways, I figured that now is a good time to lay out the roadmap for my game dev plans, as well as some things you can expect from the next RBS update, because that's why you're here heheh!

Remember, You Will Die [Ch. 1 Demo]

As some of you may know, I've been working behind the scenes on my first Steam game, Remember, You Will Die--a spy romance chatsim with minigame elements where you play as the handler of a team of agents in an organization of questionable business practices. This game is actually a carried over project from a university game dev club program I did last year, hence the expansive list of credits and the longer time taken for its releases. I hope if RBS has established anything, it's that the quarter system is no joke!

That being said though, the team is extremely talented and I was so lucky to have people actually go out on a limb and give Ren'py and visual novels a try after my pitch (being a vn dev in a general game dev space is not for the weak). So I'm currently busting my butthole off to get all the finished scripts into the game so that we can release in time for the Otomefest feature on Steam from May 4th-11th. Therefore, for the next few days, my priority is getting this demo done, which means a lot of editing, implementing, coding, and art. It's one thing to publish a demo on Itch, but Steam can be an unforgiving beast of expectations, so I want to make sure the demo is as solid as possible upon submission.

Keep an eye out for any announcements I make for it on its page and my socials, lots of juicy stuff is in this narrative (including some yandere shenanigans)!

Villains Leave No Graves Ch.1

Another main project I have is an interactive fiction game made in Choicescript. Villains Leave No Graves is a villain(ess) isekai story following an mc who has awoken as the villain of their favorite fantasy book, with their memories of their past life not extending much beyond their knowledge of said book. Lots of angst and old Italian theater vibes, as well as some bonkers moments (shoutout the bird scene tm), so check it out if any of that interests you!

Originally, I was supposed to finish the first chapter some time at the beginning of this year, but Yanjam ended up being a bigger committment that I'd planned for, as well as the usual obligatory life stuff getting in the way. Currently the first chapter is at around 30k, but there is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more I need to write because of how much setup and plot is in it. Once the RYWD business is done, I plan to jump back into my 1-2k minimum words a day schedule to bring the people what they've been waiting for. Expect to finally meet the ROs, contemplate whether Arami truly is cursed, and maybe hate their family even more :3

I'll also be going on a trip out of the country this upcoming month, but I'm determined to bring my laptop with me to get as much work done as is feasible with all the moving around!

Check out the game (obviously) and keep up with its development on my Tumblr blog!

Rabbits Burn Softly {Week 2}

Finally, the thing that most of you are guaranteed to care about. The game this devlog is for. Week 2, aka the second half of Act 1, and the first chapter with a full Foks presence after you managed to slog through the status quo setup of Week 1. When is it coming???

The answer is, hopefully sometime during this summer! I won't name a month yet because I don't want to preemptively raise up hopes, but I am very determined to get it out sooner rather than later so that the demo is able to deliver more on what the people who click on it came for. Week 1 was supposed to be a miserable setup to our mc's life, so Week 2 should hopefully bring more of the shenanigans, fun, and drama that better represent the full game! While I have listed out my other two priorities just above this, that doesn't mean I won't also be working my butt off on RBS. It just means I won't be solely grinding this game like I did during Yanjam, which is probably for the best all things considered.

So what can you expect from Week 2? Definitely more Foks and more Kian. Surely you didn't think that the mc bolting out from their meeting after the coffee spill would go forgotten or unacknowledged? But honestly who cares about consequences? I'm excited to let you know that Foks is expanding his wardrobe because obviously his jammies are not going to cut it out in public, and the mc even gets a bit of a say in some of it! Lots of cute stuff, lots of seeds to sow, and maybe just a pinch of yikes, but we'll have to see! There may be one more change that will require you to play from the start, as certain settings will need to be configured with some additional customizations being added.

Also note, that for bugs, because until I can organize myself to get a team of testers with a diverse set of laptop devices to run the game on, so there will definitely be bugs I need reported to me, I feel I should be transparent with you guys. I'm not a great programmer. I source  a lot of my minigame code from other much more generous geniuses when I can, and so fixing bugs can be difficult, especially when I can't replicate them on my own computer. So if you do run into an issue, please try to document it as best as you can, whether it be through copying the traceback or telling me how I can recreate it! I unfortunately can't solve isolated incidents of weirdness without a means to actually recreate the problem to solve, so the best I can offer is further accessibility options like toggling off parallax cgs and allowing you to skip minigames with minor repercussions. The hard truth is that this game will run differently on different computers, and until the day I can afford to get a programmer to come in and give the code a magic touch up, safe from my cursed hands, we're working with what we got!

I will still be doing my best to make sure the game is a whole, playable, and smooth experience of course--just keep in mind that I can't always replicate the issues you're facing, which makes problem-solving ten times harder for a coding chud like me!

Anyways, enough about all this blabbering. Thank you all so much again for your support, patience, and faith in me as I scramble around with all these projects. Every kind word, donation, or fan work is an immense motivation booster, so always feel free to share any of your cool stuff with me, I am everywhere and I love to see it! Follow my socials for more content, and maybe drop a dollar my way if you can so I can fund these silly little endeavors of mine :3

- LemonInk