2nd Anniversary Musings
Hello to my lovely constellations!! Today marks the second (holy shit) anniversary of the release of the official demo for Project Cassiopeia!
Last year I totally forgot to celebrate the anniversary so i marked it on my calendar so I'd remember this year. I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what to do to celebrate it, and ultimately decided on doing a retrospective! Looking back on my goals, the lengthy development process... etc, etc. So buckle in, cause this is gonna be a word vomit.
July 22, 2021.
The sketch that started it all... is anyone surprised David was my first choice as super hot and sexy male lead? In February of 2021, i'd had small whispers of potentially making an otome game, but my own cluelessness of coding had me thinking to myself, no way in hell i'll just do some drawings.
Fast forward to the idea marinating in my head for a few months, in July i decided to make some test CGs to build up a portfolio to get gigs as a CG artist for indie otome games!
test CG for my portfolio!
I was then peer pressured. Successfully. Thus began the VERY LENGTHY process of hashing out the entire plot of the game. I asked myself many important questions. Like...
What would I (as a lover of otome) wish to see more of in the genre?
What do I love most about the genre?
Who? Why? What?
Up until this moment, my extent of original work was a few shitty one shots that never went far or even posted for that matter. My writing experience lies in fanfiction, and twitter RP, so how do I even begin to create an entire world interesting enough to make a whole game about? Honestly it's simple. You just do it. Put your nose to the grind stone and start throwing ideas into a word document.
this was the first ever outline for the game (yes, things have changed A LOT in 5 years). At this moment, we were considering a slice of life fluffy otome game (which in retrospect would have been a lot more easier to write, LOL) But then, i thought back onto one of my favorite otomes, Collar X Malice. I love the thrill, the danger, the fierce protectiveness of Kei Okazaki ♡, and the strong female lead. So... things changed.
spoilers... (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧
my notes are a sight to behold (i plan on actually potentially releasing a behind the scenes book after the games full release where a lot of these notes and MANY character designs will be released) as you can see, things are out of order and basically thrown haphazardly all over the place. I am not good at naming things (as my friends can attest) so when I finally settled on Project Cassiopeia things just... clicked.
For those who have played the demo, these were the beginnings of the established religion in the game. (it has a new name now haha) While Sabaism was the outline of the games religion, i also took many parts and pieces from zodiacs, and tarot cards!
April 14th, 2023
after 3 years of speaking at online conventions (thanks covid), coding mishaps, writers block, and hammering out plot points, i was finally ready to present the demo of Project Cassiopeia to the world.
I had reached out to a streamer friend who had offered me many opportunities to talk about my game, and gave him a free, early access version of the game to stream! He actually interviewed me on the process of it, and I was so, so nervous. (id love to link it but it's been sadly lost to time...) The community response i got was... amazing. Here was a project I spent so long working on (I even learned basic python for this shit!) and people were so excited to see where it went!
The original demo was a showcase of that specific time, and as I've grown, so too has my knowledge on how to make a dating sim I could be proud of, and I've been in the process of completely overhauling the original demo. Ideally, I wanted to release it last year, but well. We see how that happened, LOL.
April 14th, 2026
2 years. it barely feels like yesterday, and yet a long time ago. I was a different person back then, but still me. When I started development on ProCass, i told myself it would be fun to document the entire process, no hold barred. Game dev is hard, and even harder when you're the only member on the team. Originally, if you would have asked me in 2021 where ProCass would be in 5 years, I would have said, it'll definitely be finished by then! no. No, past moon. We are not even close yet, and that is okay. I love Project Cassiopeia. I love my community. I love my friends who keep me going and let me bounce ideas off of them, and who beta read my scripts so things look okay.
Some very not great things happened to me over these 2 years, and I have unfortunately not been able to work on ProCass as much as I would have liked, but I'm trying, and that's all I can ask of myself.
Regardless, I will not give up. I'm proud of the bones I have put together, I just need to add the meat.
For those of you who have been here from the beginning... I can't ever properly express how happy and grateful I am for your support. For those who are new, I'm just as grateful that you've read my silly musings, and I do hope you play my demo (it is free, but you CAN donate)
I don't know how long this project will take, but that's okay. I hope we all just enjoy the ride.
Happy Second Birthday, Project Cassiopeia demo, I love you!
