It's over.
The hiatus, I mean. As of last October, development has resumed at a steady pace.

Technically it never came to a full stop, but last year was sort of hectic so things were slow for awhile.

Moved houses. Got "Medicated". Learned a lot about a wide range of relevant topics. Watched from afar as underpaid canadian Steam employees killed off every single game with "sister" in the title.

I also felt a lot of new things, like fear. And horror. And dread. All things I never had a chance to feel before.

Yep... Sure was a year, alright.

But anyway here's a loose breakdown of the different elements of Visual's Novel Development and the progress we made in the last year.

Art

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Visual Coherence.

Having worked on other projects and gotten a better feel for these things, I can say with absolute certainty that animation is a total pain in the ass. The animations I had planned just clash with the already established visual identity in a really distracting way.

They also take forever. Which, after 3 years of development, is the last thing I need.

(Disclaimer: I'm talking specifically about frame-by-frame. Live2D looks worse, BUT... it's actually even slower.)

Longer cutscenes (like the trailer) might be worth animating. A sudden change in stylization can catch the players attention and make them realize that something is happening. But that's a thought for later on.

As for asset progress... First, sprites.

Two sprites I lined recently. They're not very important but they're so cute. Look at them.

Two new sprites for a character who hardly needs one. No longer a dust bunny.

Corrected some older sprite's proportions/anatomy. Margo's shading was weird, and so was Joe's... neck? Among other things.

Some character's heights are off now but it's not like you ever see their legs.

Unfinished alternate poses for more "important" characters.

Yes, the Veronika has no arms. There is a very good reason for this. Unlike the boy having 3 sprites. That was gluttony.

Around 10 sprites are at varying levels of progress. 5 aren't even sketched, supposedly. 12 are complete.

12/27.

2 BGs I finished in the last 2 months. 3 more are 'in progress'. That number will probably go up but backgrounds don't take very long.

(I actually drew around 30 last year.)

5/8.

"Generic CGs" are CGs used throughout the game to stave off monotonous scene direction.

Currently 4 are in progress. That doesn't sound like much but one of them requires art of nearly every character.

Gary also insisted on touching up the old train CG. New one is on the left.

Event CGs are a never ending deluge. Trying to give an approximation of completion is both impossible and would probably make me cry.

Currently there's something like 12 in progress for the common route. 1 in progress for the teacher route, for some ungodly reason. (Guess he got bored?)

I don't know how many are finished.

???/???.

... Seriously though, it's not as bad as it sounds. Art is the easy part.

Title screens.

Of the lowest importance.

1/7.

Code

In early 2025 I fixed a lot of jank in the Desktop UI. For example, now when you open a new window it always appears at the top.

Figuring out how to do that was annoying.

Renpy is annoying.

It has a lot of peculiar hidden functionality but the way the documentation is written feels like the engine was only intended to be used for obscenely basic projects.

I've gotten pretty good at it though.

In late 2025 I started reprogramming basically everything other than the Desktop UI. Since now I know what systems are used consistently throughout the game, I can more easily design tools to simplify those systems.

Less bulky repetition per scene. More varied scene composition. Mouse following thing— whatever that means...

That said, I'm actually not supposed to look at the code again until we've finished most of the assets needed for the common route. Our task list is just too long.

Music

Apparently I've created around 20 songs.

Here is one.

Writing

Took me a really long time to notice I forgot to make a section on writing.

Writing is... hard.

Of all the different aspects of development, writing takes the longest.

And that's just fine.

I have gotten faster at it, but I've gotten faster at everything, so...

"Minigames"

This is a rambling, messy rant that serves as a forewarner of things to come. Feel free to skip over it.

The first piece of advice given to blossoming developers who are interested in adding a minigame to their VN is to not add a minigame to their VN.

The second piece of advice is to make it skippable.

This is actually fantastic advice. VN developers aren't game developers— they're VN developers.

Plus, readers generally hate minigames... for good reason, since they're often terrible.

Though a fledgling hackfraud such as myself can only dream of creating something so unplayable... *Sigh*...

No, but seriously. I've been thinking about how light gameplay segments could be used to actually enhance a narrative rather than detracting from it.

Here's an example of a minigame that you're probably familiar with.

Not a fan of this game (which is something all DDLC haters are obnoxiously upfront about) but I think this part was pretty thoughtfully designed.

Communicates things about the characters and is used to drive the player down certain paths. It's also not an extreme shift from the norm. Isn't difficult, doesn't take long.

I've examined enough VNs and "hybrid VNs" and text adventures to have a general idea of what works well in this medium and what doesn't. What I need to be careful about, what requires extra attention...

(I think all that really matters is not making something that feels annoying.)

If I decide to go forward with what I have in mind, I'll probably implement it way in advance for beta testing.

Think I'll also drop the word "minigame" from my vocabulary going forward.

2026 Timeline

2 weeks out of every month are dedicated to this project.

This schedule could change based on the needs of my other jobs, but at the moment things are stable.

This itinerary might seem unrealistic to you based on our previous momentum. Personally I think it's doable if nothing goes catastrophically wrong.

Throughout the year I'm going to post progress updates somewhat regularly, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Winter

Spring

Summer

Fall

If we're at the point I want to be in Fall, then we should be able to have a substantial update out by December.

That's all for now. As always, if you never hear from me again it means that I'm probably dead.