Launch at Last
Whaddayaknow, I finally uploaded chapter 1 of the Bullwhip Visual Novel. You can download it here:
https://major-minion.itch.io/bullwhip
I posted a launch announcement as a devlog on Itch.io, but here it is in case this is the place you prefer to get your news.
It's been a long and winding road.
The day I stumbled upon the furry visual novel niche, I was instantly entranced. There were so many good projects out there, so many creators who had lovingly poured their heart and soul into plots and characters and romance and excitement, and marinated in beautiful art and music. I wanted to contribute, and figured "Hey, these are just text, and I can write! This might be my medium! I can make something cool too!".
Whew, was I naive.
But I did start on my own visual novel. Something like seven years later, I'm publishing the first chapter of it.
It's a bit embarrassing. So much has happened during these years of life simply happening. I've changed jobs and positions and received more responsibility at work. I've had a few partners during these years, and last I year even got married. My niece was born, a little, baby-faced boss lady. And though I can't brag about working tirelessly every day on my visual novel project, I can say that in total, I have worked a lot on it.
I wrote the first chapter. I commissioned art and music (heck, that takes more time than you think). Made the first UI. Remade it. Remade it again. Added a townmap and a (terribly inefficiently coded) building blueprint. Decided that I needed a splash of cinematics, so learned to use transformations to pseudo-animate a few scenes. Spent a lot of time on making and maintaining a website which I recently just scrapped because working with it was a pain and not worth it at all. I decided that the project needed sound, and one thing led to another, and now there's a boatload of them in there. I figured I needed to add some accessibility so I added the Open Dyslexic font and stronger contrast options. Then, I decided I should have an Android version, and that's given me a few grey hairs, but heck, if your phone is your console, now you can play too.
During the years I've gotten to know some excellent artists, and some I've worked a ton with by now. Kartos has made most of the character art and helped with art direction. He's amazing. BitterStrawberries has made every single background. She's awesome. LapinSpaceMarine made support characters. Tenshio Luma and AudioCreatures have created music for it. Kopten has edited it. They're great. Many others have also been part of the process, many enough that I have to leave it to the game's credits page to list them all. Do have a look at it, their contributions have all been important to me and I appreciate them very much.
Anyway. We're finally here. Pushing the "publish" button feels surreal. I'm not surprised people have thought my project is dead, because the labor's been long. Perhaps I'll see about finding some experienced writers to help out with the story so that the next chapter doesn't take quite as long to make as the first.
Oh, well.
Here you go. One leg of wrestling themed boy meets boy furry visual novel from me to you. It's cooked a long time, hope it's nice and tender. Say hi to the husbandos for me, and remember that you never know someone completely the first time you meet them.
Enjoy!
