Stygian Eye Updates: End of 2025
Hello,
I was good about monthly updates, but then I dropped off because of work. I apologize for that. Still, let's review the year.
Honestly, outside of releasing the current 'final' version of Sacrarium Pario and integrating most of the CGs for The Woeful Rose & The Bitter Crow this year has been relatively uneventful for me in the VN space (minus some side work I did at the beginning and middle of the year to keep the VN muscles from rusting too much).
This is namely because I now work a 40hr a week cubicle job, at an office away from my main rig. AKA: I am away from my rig for roughly 10 hours a day, meaning even when I have nothing to do at work, I still can't really work on my games.
I'm currently trying to figure out a mini-laptop or tablet solution to this problem. Because while I do have some weeks where my current job has me working a solid 8-9 hours without breaks (one big work event I had recently essentially had me crawling my limping self home and passing out for four days straight), I have stretches of time where I quite literally am twiddling my thumb for 4-5 hours due to how efficient I am. There's only so much I can do on pen and paper or my phone.
I am also trying to do better in actually having a social life. When I was making Gelus, Pario, and the beginnings of WRBC, I was living pretty anti-socially due to being in a foreign country. I worked and went home with no one to really talk to (as my friends were in a polar opposite time zone). Thus, I had all the time in the world to sit and game dev. While that meant I did a lot of devving, it also meant I was very socially isolated, and I don't want to go back to that level of isolation again. Thus, I've got my TTRPG groups and friend groups that take up some of my time as well.
So big goals for 2026 are thus:
Figure out how to increase my game dev time without burning myself out or isolating myself again.
Figure out a way to bring my programming & writing (Because I am a lunatic who write right into the .rpy file >.>) with me while out and about to get more use out of my time away from my rig.
Release WRBC.
Release at least the first challenge of Sacrarium Contego.
Fully develop the mechanical skeletons of Sacrarium Rescisco and GSLH.
Use the above to flesh out skeletons for Project I.C
Let's talk about current steps and progress for each one of those big goals.
I am actively looking more at my schedule to determine best times for down time as well as where I can squeeze in more game dev. I am also trying to make sure my schedule is balanced.
I'm looking into different tablet options that I could possibly bring into work with me. Big thing has been finding one that can run VSC since that is how I program and write nowadays (all of the typos that slip through probably make more sense now >.>).
WRBC is down to the last four CGs! This is through the amazing work of the volunteers for that game. The Poly Route, Zahir Solo Route, Yukimura Solo Route, and the two most time consuming CGs of the common route (due to all the layers) are done! The remaining four CGs are also making headway and are either in the rendering/sketch stage or at least in the thumbnail stage.
Contego is currently still 1/3 (technically more like 45%) written, and the wonderful Nini is currently working on the character sheets and sprites for it when time allows.
I'm still debating how much I want to make y'all hate me with Rescisco. Because one wolf says to make it be that you can choose your personality traits and thus end up with options that only drop Amare's score or vice versa. One wolf says that's unfair and to not do it. They're still fighting. I'm also debating how much I possibly want to deal with puzzles in GSLH (leaning more towards "no, just focus on the other big thing for that game).
Through my long-winded self-monologues that surely are making my housemates think I am insane, I've actually got the rough ideas of how I want Project I.C to function mechanically. Now I just need to test a few more things with the remaining Sac games to see how viable those options are.
So all in all, not the most exciting update. My apologies.
Still, here's to hoping I'll be able to get more done in 2026!