Reverie Devlog - 2026 January
Wouldn't you believe it, another year has already passed!
This month's dev log will focus a bit more on the meta development side, addressing some common questions or sentiment. I usually have talked about these topics before, but only to individuals and never as formally, so this serves to help set people expectations on what's to come, and what aspects have been considered. Take this as an end of year reflection for the mod's development.
Note: Some sections below will talk in first person, which will refer to Stahl.
The progress is a bit mixed, the majority progress is mostly in November, with major milestones being organizational in terms of cleaning up writing and communication. This makes the progress a bit less visible, especially setting up to December where a decent amount of people will be busy on holidays. Other than that, a couple music and enemy sprites has been done passively as well, along with finishing drafting another map area layout.
Another aspect to mention is that I have spent Late November to December helping out with the final release of The Dreamer, as Otomerson would have a strict deadline due to life circumstances so it's a bit higher priority. I worked with the combat, progression tweak and general technical help. (Fun fact, some skills in there will appear as an obtainable easter egg in the upcoming chapter as well!). Additionally, I am also helping out with setting up with the upcoming mod jam event.
Now let's get to laying out some common information so everyone is on the same page in the mod direction. Statements that get a response does not mean it is a dismissal.
In fact, I also feel the majority of the problems addressed here, so this is not intended to be negative and just more to set expectations or be a reflection. A lot of dissonance tends to come from misalignment of expectation, so this serves to ameliorate it, at least for a bit.
Edit: Formatting issue with bullet point
Reverie was NOT intended to be THE post-good ending mod. While the mod does eventually touch on some theme by Chapter 3 rewrite, it was not part of the initial focus at all, and only touched upon it when it was convenient.
This misconception came up mostly due to there not being many mods that continue off the good-end in the early modding era, leaving Reverie to be the one bearing the label of "Omori 2" by a couple of videos.
It does not help much either that many mods in early times get cancelled, but now that there are other mods such as The Dreamer to help pick up the label, I thought it would be good to officially address it.
Reverie is focused on battles. Way back in early development, the initial gimmick was "what if headspace bosses are party members." The story was mostly secondary, and the mod being set after a good ending was just a setup to have Sunny to give it an "extension" feel.
Reverie is quite hard. The mod is intended to be harder than the original game, as the general idea of the mod being an extension of base game battle mechanics. Major examples are buffs and emotions being used more often.
Normal mode is supposed to feel relatively close to base game progression, but still should feel harder, as if you're continuing off the original game experience.
There ARE balancing problems though, especially on earlier chapters as they had a very different balancing philosophy. Some of the earlier bosses also got changed indirectly due to later chapter changes.
Many of the mod aspects are also inspired by Shin Megami Tensei series which tend to lean on being a bit hard in general, having a focus on setting up a build before running into a battle. Some other mods also have similar inspiration, such as remade Broken Dreams.
Some of the story elements of Reverie feel forced. This is mostly relevant to the continuation of Dreamworld or the slight shoe-horned inclusion of the Twins in the real world section. This simply links back to the initial problem of the initial reason for the mod being a battle gimmick of using headspace emotion bosses, and the sad boss happens to be the Unbread Twins, which are based on actual faraway characters.
Some of the story elements of Reverie feel conflicting to the game theme. A more major variant of the above problem. This is more relevant in relation to the dreamworld which was included for the aforementioned reason. If the game were to be properly a post good ending story heavy mod, I would have made the mod setup entirely different. I'm just really working with what the mod has set up.
The major characters are missing. This is mostly due to being early chapters. This links back to the initial problem of not being intended to be a definitive good ending mod. Additionally, it would also be thematically conflicting to moving on to shoe-horn it early.
Off-topic, but Reverie has always focused on elevating side-characters, so the mod always had a disadvantage in terms of popularity. The fact that the mod manages to get this far with that disadvantage already is pretty impressive to me. I always have felt if any mod that focused on the main cast that actually releases back in the early modding era they would have been vastly more popular. So far almost all of the mods with that aspect of that time are cancelled, with the only prominent remaining one being Rainy Mari.
Reverie is not a ship mod. This is quite a random inclusion, but this is just due to how many people thought the Aubrey cutscene quote would imply Sunburn. This is mostly an extension of the "major characters are missing" aspect.
The references made in Reverie are quite jarring. This criticism usually comes from comments on Playthrough videos, mostly in relation to Chapter 4 as some of the enemies very openly reference Shin Megami Tensei or Touhou Project. This is a valid concern, especially if it is thematically conflicting.
The reason this happened is mostly due to change in development style as I let it be more loose. The early modding times sometimes are overly serious, which isn't really good for long term development. This is also quite apparent with how many mods get cancelled in the 2022 to 2023 period.
Most overt references are also in optional areas, meaning you may not even encounter it at all. As the criticism usually comes from comments on Playthrough videos, it is likely also due to how the showcase shows all the features in a fast pace, making it feel like a decent chunk of the mod are just random references. This is made worse as optional bosses tend to be harder, making it take up much more of the video time.
Reverie development is quite long. While some would usually defend to say that games take time, I do feel this is a valid criticism as I do also feel it is much slower than what it could have been. So it would be interesting to reflect on the development as well.
The obvious aspect would just be having more people be busy in university or jobs in general would reduce the amount of time compared to before. Despite this, there is also an allocation issue.
Some have brought up The Dreamer Prelude as an example of fast work being done by less people, which is actually quite close to what Chapter 1-2 of Reverie was like. This actually sections off to a more interesting point...
Reverie's story does not feel personal. This usually comes in comparison to other mods, but it gives an interesting development aspect to analyze. For simplification, I'll group the mods to the category of being conceptual or expressive mod.
Conceptual mods are mods that stem mostly from some open-ended idea. For example, "what if the characters are swapped" like Omari-type mods, or "what if the headspace bosses are party members" in Reverie case. This type of mods tend to be subject to multiple opinions and decision making tends to be democratic. This gives a variety of ideas, but the downside comes from communication and idea conflict. This is usually how Omari-type mods also get cancelled, as the tasks become stagnant as no ideas become confirmed, causing uncertainty.
Expressive mods are mods that come from a personal story that wanted to be told. The idea comes from one person running on what needs to be told, which is the case of The Dreamer as Otomerson has a very specific story and expression to tell, causing them to solo all of the writing. This puts a lot of work on a single person, but this eliminates the majority of time spent on the discussion as the story is final.
With this in mind, Reverie being a conceptual mod makes it a bit awkward to write sometimes, as I do not really have any personal connection to the writing. A lot of writing feels closer to an analysis, especially on replicating headspace character writings as they are usually deliberately surface level. This also leads to the writing phase of the mod being longer than usual, as it goes through multiple rounds of writing rather than final decision, a similar pitfall that mods like Omari also falls into.
This does not mean I don't value writing, it just means writing does not really flow naturally and becomes more like a puzzle to solve, which makes it jarring and prone to miscommunication. Later rendition of the writing since Chapter 3 did manage to tie the story elements to the combat element really well in the current plan, so it's not all in vain.
Side-note, certain writing criticism is actually an artifact from the original game's writing. A common example is people thinking Sweetheart is written to be over the top obnoxious, when in actuality she only laughs a couple times.
Thank you for reading this far, especially as this is quite a long one. Despite the problems listed above, it does not mean the mod is coming to a halt; in fact, a lot of these problems have existed since the start, so this serves as an analysis on development so it may be properly addressed later.
As per usual, here's some new music to show!
Music Link: https://youtu.be/ZuJLObM_UhM
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