#thornewood

[steamberrystudio]

Hi everyone!

Today was supposed to be my check in for WSC work. As you all know, it went into Early Access on Patreon earlier in the week. But I was brutally sick the whole week and did not really get anything done on it other than like two minor corrections.

I was planning on waiting to do a full Thornewood post until Chapter 10 went live but...here we are. Plans change.

Welcome to my next project - which is already in low-key, back burner development and will move to the foreground after the final episode of WSC in Q1 2026.

The only place getting regular updates about Thornewood right now is Patreon. And I will be doing character reveals in some places over the next few weeks. I also have a channel on Discord where I sometimes talk about it and show sneak peeks.

It is still technically my side project right now so I won't be focusing too much on it until When Stars Collide is complete. So for anyone worried about When Stars Collide, don't. I divide my time very clearly right now and still work on WSC every day. WSC is fully written and needs only to have the sprites and art added. Thornewood doesn't have much impact on that.

And now...more infos on Thornewood.

Thornewood is a dark, gaslamp fantasy pulling inspiration from classic Faerie tales and folklore.

Story:

The edges of the kingdom have been swallowed by Thornewood, a cursed forest whose origins have been lost to time. And in its pale moth-lit depths, an ancient, creeping curse is growing. Year after year, the forest expands, swallowing more of the land, corrupting everything it touches.

In this story, you follow the story of Valerian L’Custa, a child once sold to a Witch by desperate parents, then imprisoned in a lonely tower deep in the heart of Thornewood. After twenty-three years of silence and isolation, Valerian seizes their chance at escape while their 'Mother' is away. They slip away from the tower and onto the lonely dark road, hoping to find freedom in a kingdom already on the brink of ruin.

Discovered by the Huntsmen - a secretive order of magic-wielders and thorntouched mages - Valerian is drawn into the group's perilous cause. With each affliction healed, each monster silenced, the thorns whisper of broken vows, unpaid bargains, and forgotten truths grows louder.

Valerian and the Huntsmen journey through ruined villages, haunted forests, and deadly fae markets in search of answers. To break the curse, Valerian must not only unravel the mystery of Thornewood but also confront the shadows of their own past before the thorns take permanent root in the hollow places of their heart. ✨

The Game: Structure and Features

Like Gilded Shadows, Thornewood features separate routes with unique plotlines and antagonists that will differ for each love interest.

This is not going to be another episodic release. As I've said in the past, I did not enjoy that release style.e.

Each route is planned to be around 100,000 words.

The game will feature:

6 main love interests + 1 DLC love interest (if there is enough interest in him)

A gender variable protagonist - who will appear in game as a sprite and in CGs

The usual flowcharts and glossary

A rich, bookishly narrative style as per my usual MO.

A strange amount of silly poems....

A pet cat/familiar who can talk

Magical hair

Character Briefs

Valerian L'Custa Is a young Witch who grew up in an isolated tower, raised by a figure who was cruel and loving in the most maternal of ways. They escape the tower when their mother vanishes for several months.

Allen Wilde  An antagonistic man from a group called The Ferryman's Table who seek out rogue magic users. They distrust the Huntsmen, a group primarily made of natural magic users and the thorntouched - those who acquired magic through their proximity to Thornewood's curse.

Callis Weathersky A grouch with a heart of gold, Callis is a shapeshifting Wizard who primarily spends his time as a scout and informant for the local Huntsmen in Hatherly.

Everett Crevanna A thorntouched wizard blessed (or cursed, depending on your outlook) with immortality. He owns a small clockwork shop where he does repairs and works on a variety of inventions and gadgets. He works with the Huntsmen on request.

Ferran Vestire A mysterious Witch who lives in a mobile castle out on the moors beyond Hatherly. He works with the Huntsmen as an informant and supplier of magic goods and gears. His past and true motivations are unknown. 

Ivailo Demires The serious and reserved leader of the local Huntsmen. He's offered his family's manor as a headquarters for the local group. A Therian earl whose homelands fell to the thorn curse some years prior, he has a vested interest in putting that curse to rest for good.

Kiran Nirela The exiled crown prince from Varenthe, an island country with a sea-faring culture. He took up with the Huntsmen when he had to flee his home country with his twin. With nowhere else to go, he's dedicated himself to helping the Huntsmen to repay Ivailo for giving him and his sibling a safe place to stay.

Zen Cygnus A friendly thorntouched wizard who joined the Huntsmen with Callis. He's sincere and earnest to a fault and spends most of his time working as a healer and medic in the mansion, though he sometimes goes on field work with the others when needed.

Current Status

Thornewood is currently my "nights and weekends" project while When Stars Collide wraps up. This means exactly what it sounds like. I work on this project exclusively on the weekend and at night between about 7 PM and bed time. 

That means it's very, very early development with quite sparse assets and content right now.

But here is where things stand:

I have character design sheets for 5/7 love interests

I have 5 sprites fully rendered

I have started writing

I have planned out all 6 main routes with detailed outlines (about 10k each)

I have the common route completely drafted

I have Ivailo's route about 90% drafted

For a total of nearly 200,000 words of content so far

I've given the common route 1 full revision and am working on a second pass.

I have much of the UI mocked up and planned and most of the screens designed.

Including some favourite QoL features from WSC like:

The organised save screen

The flowcharts

And a ton of new things

I have commissioned the demo-related BGs

Anyway, I wasn't going to do the full announcement for this here for another couple of weeks but this is update week and I had nothing else to post because I was too sick to do anything but sneeze and whine the last week. So I'm posting this early. 🤣

[steamberrystudio]

H E L L O Tumblr.

I come to you with an UPDATE on Thornewood.

Well first I'm legally obligated to remind you all that When Stars Collide is fully released on Itch.io.

Okay. Now. Thornewood.

It seems like the last time I mentioned anything about Thornewood here as February 15. At that point I had 318,000 words written. The UI was designed but not coded. I didn't mention the state of the BGs - it probably hasn't changed that much.

I had all the main sprites done but no expressions. So...that's where we're updating from. 

But in case you missed it, though. Here's some background.

My next project, Thornewood has been under way for a while actually.

I started conceptualising the UI back in 2024 but it was first quarter last year that I started working on outlines. I started drafting in September - but like...just. I literally started on the 29th of September 2025. I have been working on this project on nights and weekends since then, basically - though Thornewood fell by the wayside as I struggled to get WSC finished while also moving to a new state.

Because it was really hard to work on two projects even if one was just a "side project" during that time. The move was...chaotic. And let's leave it at that.

But I've picked it back up and Thornewood is now shifting into being my full time project.

Thornewood is a dark (and cosy) fantasy set in a gaslamp/steampunk world. There is also some faerie tale inspiration forming the foundation of the character backstories and yes I can do all of that in a single setting. Because I'm an indie writer.

I do what I want!

Thornewood blends folkloric and faerie tale horror with a little bit of gothic horror...with a cosy apothecary shop set up and themes of found family, making it extra fun.

I will be reposting the character profiles below as some of the sprites have had minor fixes so if you keep scrolling you can see everyone and learn a little about them. These changes range from "No one can tell it's different but me." to "Oh wow. That hair is definitely a completely new style! 8D" 

Callis very nearly got his name changed as I consistently try to mistype it as Calli's and it pisses me off but I chose to keep it because frankly Callis is Callis and no other variation of the name (Callian, Callum, Cal...cifer? I don't know...) NONE OF THEM WORK. He is Callis. That's it.

Project Status

I have the common route + 2.5 routes fully written. The rest of the routes are planned out with chunky outlines (by chunky, I mean nearly 10k words of outline each....with some caveats but we'll get into those.)

The current word count is 432000 words. (About 35,000 of that is the outline content and the rest is full on real script). Yeah.

With a common route + two routes + 7 chapters of a route + a bunch of outlines. How is it that long? I do not know.

Listen. There's a lot of world building. 

Right now as we speak, my spreadsheet says that my goal is 720,000 words. My spreadsheet is a dirty liar. I haven't factored in the two additional idiots who showed up in the story and started pawing at me for attention and love and story routes. And it's not actually taking into account the size the routes actually are. 

My spreadsheet is a whole thing. Look - the game is going to be bigger than 720k but I'm leaving the spreadsheet there...FOR NOW.

So if you don't like long games you probably aren't following this blog or me as a developer.

People who know my games know that I essentially aim for each route to have a linear storyline similar in length to a novel. My games are like a collection of novels within the same setting and with the same MC.

So no one is shocked when I say this will be a long game but the routes are a little longer than the ones in Gilded Shadows. The longest route in GS when coded was 112,000 words.

I don't have any LI routes of Thornewood coded yet of course so I can only project the final in-game word count but Ivailo, I'm projecting to be around 125k-127k coded. Being the setting that it is, there is a lot of world building and a lot of description - this is a heavily atmospheric game and the writing focuses on keeping that atmosphere consistent through the story.

Yeah so I'll be writing this one for a while. 💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪😭

Anyway on with the current status. All the main cast sprites are done. The rest...*waves hands* I don't know. In the future.

I have the expressions done for Callis, Everett, Kiran, and Ivailo. I have some of Valerian's (MC) expressions done for some of the skin tones. 

Unlike WSC I decided not to do the colour slider for the MC's recolouring. I can try to break down in a future post why I think the dynamic colour slider by Feniks is an incredible tool and one that has so much thought and effort put into it but also isn't great for my workflow. I think I've touched on it before but I don't recall if it was here or on Patreon.

Anyway, I also have the expressions done for a major supporting character who will appear in the game.

The backgrounds are in progress. There are 8 of...*waves hands* I don't know. A lot. Like..50 probably. But I did hire one more person to help work on them and have one more I've reached out to because it's too much for one person to handle.

I have some of the creatures and animals in progress art-wise as well.

The UI is designed and a small amount of it is coded. There's a dialogue box and a name plate and a quick menu, a choice screen, and some of the additional features are being worked on already as well.

When will the demo come out? 

I don't know. 

The common route is fully written and edited and scripted. 

I will probably release a demo in parts as I have in the past. But there needs to be a functioning UI + background art for that. Honestly, the backgrounds will be the "hold up" as it were. There are a lot but there are 12 more I think just for the first couple of chapters of the game, and they take time.

The UI and features are not done but I expect them to be complete long before the background art to be honest.

So now...

New character profiles and other images.

Eyeball Feast

And then.....................

THE OTHER TWO.

Anyway here are some looks at the game itself. Ignore Valerian's ANGY face. This was just testing the sprite expressions on the menu. Ha ha.

Anyway, I'll be posting more about Thornewood now that WSC is complete so look forward to it!

[steamberrystudio]

Tumblr Devlog 23/05

So last time I posted, Thornewood was around 432000 words I think and the current word count is 457000 words so I've made a bit of progress. Right now I'm on Everett, Chapter 9, writing wise and I'm nearly first. He has 5 more chapters planned.

I suspect he will end up around 125,000 for his rough draft which is around where Callis ended as well.

I might be verging on the end of his route by my next post here but I don't think I'll be quite finished yet by then. We shall see.

The UI is fully coded for Thornewood now. I still have a couple of tweaks and one game-crashing bug to fix but that's pretty much all done. I'll post a few sneak peeks of that because I can't really remember what all features I talked about last time. If any.

I've gotten a few new BGs but those are just going to take a while - there's not much else to say about it.

Beyond writing I've been working on sprite variations - Valerian (MC) requires a lot of variations and and recolours so I've been getting those squared away. I have all the main sprites done and coded for the common route but there's one major supporting character who still needs a sprite.

And I've been writing up glossary articles and the like as well.

Next Couple of Weeks:

For the next couple of weeks my focus will be on writing - I've increased my daily word count goals again because I am trying to increase the speed of output since I have so much to write. I'll also keep working on any sprite additions as well as things like glossaries and flowcharts.

The flowcharts in Thornewood are SO much simpler than WSC. The WSC flowcharts were an absolute beast but Thornewood has much simpler branching because it's reverting back to a writing style that puts emphasis on long duration branches rather than many smaller branches. 

WSC, each chapter, was essentially taking 6 routes and forcing them all into a single flowchart, which made each flowchart HUGE. But in Thornewood the routes are separate, so again, you get a simpler overall structure.

Anyway I'll be working on that stuff. We're still a ways away from a demo release because there are like 11 backgrounds still needed. There's no real need for me to rush on sprite expressions or the like because I'm still missing so much of the environment art.

Instead I'm focusing on getting drafting done for the routes and just picking at the remaining UI and expression stuff for the common route.

And that is all for now!

[steamberrystudio]

Tumblr Devlog 21/06

Progress:

So Everett's route is done now and I went through Zen's outline to flesh it out and clean it up because I decided I was going to do his route next. 

And I started working on Zen's route though I'm still in chapter one.

The word count of Thornewood right now is just over 520,000 words at the moment. I'd like to say this at least half written but realistically it can't possibly be half written because there are now 8 LIs and I've just started #4. 

So.

ANYWAY. I am still slowly acquiring art and I'm doing a lot of writing. And doing art as well...here and there - Mostly sprite variations and stuff.

Of course, the UI and stuff is already coded though I keep running into little bugs here and there as you do.

Here is a little look at the character creator just running through the options the game has. The sprite bodies work basically the same way as Thornewood though I'm not doing the colour slider this time for recolouring due to certain limitations with it.

As you can see there are some minor clothing differences across the bodies - like with all my games the MC will have a variety of outfits and most likely the outfits will stay largely similar across the bodies. I cannot guarantee that will be the case. 

For instance, there is a formal party the MC attends - in a pseudo-Victorian setting that would normally mean a difference in attire and I'm not totally sure how I will handle that yet. But this gives you a rough idea.

You do get the option later to cut Valerian's hair shorter - above the shoulder. I may show how that looks at some point later on. Valerian's hair length changes a lot due to their magic but if you choose to play with short hair, regardless of when their magic causes their hair to grow, they will always trim it back to above their shoulders.

Otherwise they trim it back to that waist-length braid.

Like in WSC you cannot change the MC's last name. Their name is based off the scientific name for lamb's lettuce (valeriana locusta) and this is something several characters point out (and also is a callback to their inspiration of Rapunzel) so at least part of the name has to remain static.

Like WSC you can pick body, pronouns, and other terms independently of each other. Overall the customisation is somewhat of a blend of Gilded Shadows and When Stars Collide.

Hair colours, this time around, I kind of went a little nonstandard with the steel-grey and rose-red but it just kind of felt appropriate somehow but I did put some typical colours in as well - the blonde, brown, and black. So I think it balances out.

Next Couple of Weeks Development-wise:

I've started Zen's route of course and that will be my primary focus. Anything else I work on - art, coding, etc - is kind of extra at this point.

I can't remember if I've talked about the demo release here. I think I have but if I haven't...

The demo can't release until I have the remaining BG art and there are still quite a few so I can't imagine the demo going out before September at the earliest. 

I may release a non-playable teaser of the prologue (a video basically) before the full demo goes out. We'll see.

For now the game is in development limbo but I shall be continuing to update you on progress. 

A little WSC update:

If you have been waiting for WSC to appear on Steam, please just know that Valve's review team is working very hard to ensure that WSC will not overly shock or harm anyone with its semi-explicit content and implied nudity.

Between allowing games where the goal is to use mind powers to manipulate women into sex, and games where you can brutally murder people (or be brutally murdered on screen with blood everywhere!), they are truly hard at work to make sure that visual novels with minor references to alcohol and those pesky love scenes don't sneak past with multiple full reviews that require us to submit and re-submit builds that allow them to check every little thing including content that doesn't have any sexually charged moments at all!

Admirable. (oﾟvﾟ)ノ

For the non-sarcastic version - we're just trying to get through the steam review and keep hitting roadblocks regarding the mature content. As per usual.

But don't worry - I will let you know if and when we make it past the review process.

[steamberrystudio]

Tumblr Devlog 07/06

Hi everyone. I lied about Everett.

He is definitely going to end up at around 135k for his draft.

WHAT AN OPENER. ╰(*°▽°*)╯

Let's backtrack. Two weeks ago, I naively thought that Everett's rough draft would be around 125k words long. Yeah. Well, Everett is at 122k and I have 2.5 chapters left. VN chapters tend to be quite a bit longer than book chapters owing to the branching so yeah. I'm thinking around 15k left which means 135k for the rough draft.

Yeah.

I was correct that I'm close to the end of his route by today, but not quite there yet. Last post, I was on Chapter 9, I think. I'm currently at Chapter 13. You know. Progress.

Anyway! Here are some screencaps of the choice menu with the "in game guide/hint system" implemented!

I still can't do too many screen caps of game and character moments yet because frankly....I don't have a lot of the main game BGs. I have...two rooms and one street. But here are some anyway.

I love having Zen and Callis on screen together. Just makes me smile.

ANYWAY.

I'm getting art...slowly. BGs are going to take a while. I was really hoping I could release the demo for Thornewood by September. At the pace I'm currently getting BGs, that is not going to happen. When I first started getting them, the turnaround was a little faster so I was hopeful but it's just kind of slowed to a crawl unfortunately - I think the artists are just super busy suddenly. And early game introduces the central location of the story which has a lot of BGs associated with it - it's the shop you see in the above screen caps. Even just in chapter one I'm missing...at least three backgrounds that are essential to the scenes because this building has a lot of different rooms in it.

And you don't even meet everyone until Chapter two of the game...which has another new environment that most of the chapter takes place in.

So the prologue, Ch 1, and Ch 2 are the LEAST amount of content I think a demo would need for this game. And really, I think I need Chapter 3 as well to really drive home what kind of story it's going to be...which has an additional 5 BGs or something? So yeah.

It's just one of those games.

At this rate, game may be half written by the time the demo even comes out. Given the size of this game, that may not be a bad thing though. Because it's...another behemoth.

Dammit Esh, why do you always write long games?!...you might be wondering.

Let me pause here and say that...some people on the internet are incapable of seeing others exist and talk about craft while also 'creating imperfectly' - so if you make stuff and you dare to feel anything but humbled by and ashamed of flaws in your work, raising your head even slightly above the muck to talk as if you know something...means these people MUST show up and remind you that your work sucks actually...

I just want to say that I know my work has flaws and issues. I know I'm not a perfect writer. So if you are one of the above people and you're gasping in horror that I'm about to talk about writing stuff...you can just go about your business (why are you even reading my blog? LoL)

If you don't like writer talk or you find it insufferable, you can skip the rest of this post 'cause I wanna ramble a bit and this is my blog, so I'm gonna. =)

So for everyone else who is curious why I like to write long games...here is my reasoning:

I like writing long form fiction (IE something like a novel in length). That's it. That's the reason. Long form fiction is just the structure I prefer.

Well, I also like exploring a lot of LIs - I clearly have a preference for games that explore 6-9 love interests. I think it's fun. That combo...means big games.

One of the weird things about the typical visual novel structure is that when you have individual routes you are essentially bundling multiple story lines into a single product. On top of that, those story lines then have internal branching. If you strip away that branching, depending on the linear length of each complete storyline, a visual novel isn't just "A Story" it's a bundle of short stories, a bundle of novellas, or a bundle of novels.

This is why it can be so frustrating when you write a 200,000 word visual novel and people call it short. 200,000 words is a lot of words! But if you have 6 LIs and you factor in branching, the linear story line for each LI may be the length of a short story so the "time to credits" (IE the time it takes between clicking 'new game' and reaching the end one time) can feel quite short. It's not that the game is short, it's the experience of one story line of the game is like reading a short story.

Meanwhile if you have a bundle of the equivalent of six - nine novels, it's going to be a lot of words that sound like a really horrifying number. Especially sci-fi and fantasy. These novels are often 90,000 - 150,000 words long (sometimes way longer - these are modest numbers tbh!). And if you have 6 of those, you're looking at at least 550,000 words of linear storyline. And then on top of that, you have the branching and endings and variations.

If you're writing long form fiction AND multiple routes AND branching, you inherently have very high word counts.

And it's not even about high word counts being better or more valid. They're not. Short form fiction and Mid-length fiction (IE short stories and novellas) are as valid and as entertaining and heartfelt as novels. They just serve different purposes and have different narrative structures.

My games being "long" isn't because they're more valid, better, whatever - plenty of people do not like "long games." The length is just a side effect of me liking the structure of long form fiction and liking to write a lot of LIs - and ending up with something that is basically an entire book series bundled into a single experience.

It's really popular for people to claim that long VNs are long due to "intentionally padding out the word count." But realistically the superfluous content or sometimes wordy exposition (that nearly ALL writers sometimes have in their work) wouldn't budge the word count that much. If you come across a novel where, 10 times, read a page you consider filler, it feels like SO MUCH FILLER but realistically it's 3000 - 4000 words. That's not a small chunk, BUT. Those 4000 words are not why a 150,000 word novel is "long". Even if you remove them, the word count does budge that much.

"A lot" is relative and sometimes it's just a feeling. Some people play my games and think it's "too much blah, blah" (which is still one of my favourite comments I've ever gotten!)

But usually with VNs that high word count is coming mostly from the number routes and the level of branching. If you strip out the choices and you include the common route content for the story lines in GS - the start of the adventure to the end of it - each love interest's complete "time to credits" storyline was only about 95000 words - which is the length of a YA science fiction novel (not even a very long one). 

That isn't to say that my stories don't have exposition or superfluous stuff I could cut - they totally do. I always think this when watching LPs or streams - "Oh, I could have cut some of this dialogue." But realistically even if I cut 20k per route (which would not have been possible), Gilded Shadows still would have been 850,000 words. Cutting even 180,000 words of filler would not have made it a "short" or even "medium length" game.

Like all writers, I can get wordy (I mean...look at this post...*gestures at it*), I can overuse certain phrases (if you know, you know). I include scenes in my VNs that I might not include in a traditional novel because of game and narrative design reasons. But GS isn't long because I intentionally padded it and Thornewood isn't going to be long because of that either. It's just a big game with a lot of LIs and a lot of branching. Gilded Shadows had something like 350,000 words of just choice and ending variations.

VNs are so complicated because you have the total word count and then you have the individual route word count, the total storyline word count, the linear word count...there are so many different to structurally break down where all those words live and how players experience them.

But my primary focus tends to be the storyline and what the player experiences as they try to read these individual story lines, because my goal is to write a story line that feels like reading a good novel. And that is, for me, going to mean around 90000 - 120000 words of linear storyline per LI.

And when I have 6 love interests, or 8 love interests, or 9 love interests...that results in a chunky game, every time.

ANYWAY RAMBLE OVER.

Next Couple of Weeks Development-wise:

I'm basically focusing on writing the game with some coding of demo stuff here and there as I wait for the rest of the art.

By my next post here on tumblr, I should have Everett's route done. I've been bouncing back and forth on who to write next, and I still haven't really decided. I think it's going to be either Kiran or Zen. And I'm leaning towards Zen. I've done three routes with fairly slow-paced romances - although different styles of slow. Everett's romance develops at a leisurely pace, but there's actually a lot of flirting and affection through the route. Which isn't necessarily how Ivailo and Callis flow.

But I still kind of want to do an LI whose romance I know will move faster. I know that includes Zen, but I'm not sure how Kiran's romance will flow. I definitely think Ferran is a whole other beast. Allen and Julian...are...idk. They're not outlined enough for me to know yet. Kiran, though is going to be a "feel it out as I go" sort of situation. Hence, leaning towards Zen.

But I have to finish Everett first and that's what I'll be doing the next couple of weeks. I will see you then.

[steamberrystudio]

I was going over some hand written notes and corrections for Thornewood's common route and came across this hilarious typo I apparently found a few months ago when I did these revisions...and also found it hilarious at the time.

[steamberrystudio]

Tumblr Update

Hallo! Checking in with some dev updates for When Stars Collide! It looks like I wrote up but never actually posted my last update (OOPS. I hate how often that happens).

So I'm leaving the information from that never-posted update in here as well! 

Summary

Finished all sprite expressions

Set up the epilogue screens

Added in the new BG variations and some new BGs

Coded in Raif and Yren's eye colour changes

Started on SFX and Music

Created the flowchart screens for the finale flowcharts

Set Asher's to unlock

Started on setting up Daaz's unlock statements

Finished Khyrri Nymera's sprite

Art

I did some work on BG variations which was mostly stuff like setting up the exterior view from the ship windows, etc. 

The main art thing I did was Khyrri's sprite. He's one of the characters who appears in some routes at the end (only three) and is one of the more important side character sprites from this final update. There are two more people that I would say are about the same level of importance and visibility. Maybe three? 

And then several much more minor characters.

I will be grabbing time to do art when I can but for the next few weeks I might not have much time to do sprite art unfortunately.

Coding and Other Stuff

I got expressions done. That was huge. They took....FOREVER.

But beyond that I've also worked on the flowcharts, getting those set up. The flowcharts were a little less intense this time around as the build up, story climax, and resolution are always a bit simpler in terms of branching.

I need to finish up with the unlock statements. That's probably 1 day of work - I just have a lot of distractions right now.

I did also do a few other things - Raif and Yren's eye colours, the short epilogue/wrap up screens, etc. 

So yeah.

Upcoming Weeks

Finish SFX and Music

Flowchart unlocking

Sprites...when I can.

Progress has slowed due to real life intruding on my work day but I am still making progress. And it is rapidly reaching that state where all I have left is the art and everything else is basically done.

I don't have an ETA on the release yet because ultimately my work day has shrunk quite a bit and will stay this way probably into mid-March. After that, things should pick back up again. And until then it'll be slow going and doing whatever I can fit in my "WSC hours" 

As I've mentioned, I am working on this project in my off-hours. (So...nights and weekends). I can be leisurely about it. I don't have to stress about it. I can doodle Thornewood sprites at 1 AM and it doesn't feel like work. 

I also don't have to get the sprites perfect because they aren't for an impending update. They're for something months away and there's still plenty of time to tweak them if I decide I don't like Ferran's sleeves or his stupid eyebrows. *cough* NOT THAT I DID THAT RECENTLY.

Narrator: They did do that in fact.

The benefit of being my off-hours thing is that this project sort of moves forward at a steady pace in spite of all the other chaos and also functions as a way to get my mind off other things. 

I know it comes across like "relaxing by working" but until a project becomes my MAIN FOCUS project, it doesn't like work so much as a hobby or a personal project and the mental space I'm in while working on it is very different.

Most of what I'm doing for this project right now falls into one of four categories:

Writing/Editing

UI design

Character Sprites

Managing the BG artist

Realistically I would like to be able to release the demo for this game within a month or two of WSC finishing.

To some degree that'll be dependent on the backgrounds - which I am not doing because....I hate doing BG art. And I don't honestly think I'll have all of those in time. But who knows. There are a surprising number of them in the demo though.

If I can have the demo content 80% complete by then though, pulling a demo together actually won't be that time consuming. The writing for the demo is actually done incidentally. The demo is probably going to be the first three chapters of the common route and I finished writing the common route months ago. Back in November I think.

So where are things with this project right now?

SPRITES

All the main cast sprites have their base design completed but still need their expressions and what not.

Valerian has all the options determined but needs their recolours and expressions

One major supporting character who appears in the demo needs a sprite.

UI

The UI is fully designed at this point but needs to be coded

all the important features and QOL elements need to be set up.

Fortunately there are no major systems that need to be developed this time around like WSC's flowchart system. Which isn't to say there are no features that need to be designed but I think most of it is pretty straight forward

BGs

There are a lot of backgrounds in this game. No getting around it. I have one person working on the demo BGs right now and he's just working through them methodically.

WRITING

As always, the writing is the big chunk of work. I'm not going to talk about word count length estimates. I think the type of game I make is clear at this point so you can all guess how long a 6 LI game + 1 as DLC is likely to be from me...

Right now there's about 318,000 words of story written.

The demo content has been written, revised, revised again, and proofread. All but one chapter of it is already coded.

So yeah, that's the state of both of my projects at the moment. I will try to update again in two weeks but with all the life chaos there's a high chance of "writing it but not posting it" again. I do update Patreon weekly though!

But that is all for this one. I will see you next time...Whenever that maybe!

[steamberrystudio]

It came to my attention that I never posted Zen's profile sheet here on tumblr though it's been posted other places. =O

Here it is for anyone who was wondering what this sweetie looks like!