It's been a bit since my last post bewailing the current state of OW on this platform after the deindexing and subsequent freefall of my account and games on here. But a lot has been happening behind the scenes since then, things that actually have me hopeful and motivated again. Thanks to the incredible kindness and generosity of BáiYù and Project Ensō, Our Wonderland is going to be published on Steam! I couldn't be more excited!! (and also a little anxious because Steam is a big step up, but I AM READY I think) This really feels like the game is getting a second chance after everything that happened here on itch. And to that end, I want to make the Steam release be the very best it can be, so it has a chance to do well on a much bigger (and more demanding) platform.

The Steam release will be the complete remastered version of the game. I've talked a bit a few times about what exactly the remastered version will include, but I'll summarize it again now for anyone unsure. The remastered version will include:

• Updated artwork (sprites and early CGs getting an overhaul)
• A lot of new CGs (at least 40+ but final count is uncertain)
• A new Iggy side sprite
• Updated GUI and menus
• New After Stories that take place after the game (1 for each LI)
• Various scripting updates to help bring early arcs more in line with later arcs and generally feel more immersive
• Also some random changes and tweaks I've done that I've already forgotten and people will likely be like "has this changed??" when they play it

In addition to these already planned features, as part of the Steam release, I'm also hard at work now on even more updates, which will include:

• Full controller support (which should also make it playable on Steam Deck)
• Steam Achievements
• Various QoL overhauls to help the game feel even more polished and nice to play (menu sounds, better skipping experience so sprites don't get all messed up when you skip, etc.)

In essence, what I hope is for this to be the best, most complete, and most polished way to enjoy the game! And yes, it will still be completely free! I don't plan on ever charging for this game (or any of my games, at least not right now because of my circumstances).

You can check out the Steam page (with the super sweet trailer I made lol) now, and I hope that you'll all wishlist it! I don't have an exact date planned yet for the release as I'm still hard at work finishing up all the remastered content, but it will definitely be this year, perhaps in the summer, and I want to also release a demo of Arc 1 sometime this spring. Now that this game has new hope again it's activated my Intense Motivation™ once more and finishing the remaster is now my top priority. I really hope this release can be a second chance at life for this game after the abysmal year it (and I) had last year.

The Steam release has been quite the endeavor already. If you follow me on any of my socials, you'll know that I've been quite anxious lately and it's been mostly related to this... It's taken nearly a month just to be able to launch the store page for the game because of Steam's approval process. The store page and game build approvals are separate on Steam, and normally, you are able to launch a store page without needing to submit the game itself. This makes sense because the whole point of putting up a store page is to get wishlists as you continue to work on a game, and the game launch itself could still be quite a ways off. But for OW, Steam decided they needed to see the complete game first before they would even approve the store page. This was incredibly anxiety-inducing as it meant they saw something about the game that raised flags for them and that they needed to double-check. (Likely because of the content survey I filled out that included all the mature content in the game, in particular, the checkmark I clicked for "sexual violence".)

This triggered a mad rush to get a version of the game uploaded to Steam for review including a couple of changes I'd been working on, as well as a save file that would let the Steam reviewer easily access any of the mature content. I was pretty much freaking out, as you might expect. I had to learn how to get things uploaded on Steam incredibly quick, along with things like how to create a beta branch with the save file version, and it was very stressful, but I tried to stay as calm as I could at least throughout this process so I wouldn't mess anything up. And then... cue more waiting. It took 9 days after I submitted the store page to get the response that I needed to submit the build. And now it would be even longer. Another week and a half passed with no updates. And then suddenly my status on Steamworks changed to "Your build/store page requires further review and will take some additional time beyond the normal 3-5 business days." This skyrocketed my anxiety even more, as from all the stress-induced research I'd done, I'd deduced that this could lead to months of waiting and/or a potential ban of the game itself. My brain was catastrophizing up the wazoo that OW was going to be banned from Steam just like Horses and a number of other VNs that had gotten banned in the past (and once a game is banned, you can't appeal it, even if you change things in it; it's banned for life). It's not like I think there is bannable content in the game, but I had no idea what to think (after all, itch deindexed the game and my account for seemingly no reason). That perhaps something about it would just be deemed unsuitable for Steam because of some of the sensitive content and it would be banned, leaving me with literally no places left that I could release the game with any degree of success.

But then... five days later... I woke up on Saturday morning... and the game build was approved!! No comments about the content or anything. Just approved. I almost cried I was so relieved. (And I wish I could hug my Steam reviewer LOL) Though I still then had to resubmit the store page now that the build was approved, which took another five days hahaha.... but thankfully, there were no issues with that and it was approved, as well, and I was finally able to launch the store page! It only took literally a month lol. I'll still have to go through some more approval rigmarole to get the demo ready over the next few months, but the hard part, the main game build part, is over now. And I shouldn't have any issues later on when it comes time to release it, either, since the build has already been approved.

So... that has been my last month LOL Needless to say, I'm incredibly relieved and thankful that that part is over and I can focus now on finishing up the rest of the remaster for release. And I have been working hard already! I haven't been able to talk about it because I wanted to save it for the Steam announcement itself. This is why I haven't been able to talk about all the stuff I've been doing in the background, including all the new features and stuff going into the game I've been implementing.

Great news is that I've finished up Arc 3 already! So I thought I'd show off a few sneak peeks of it.

The biggest endeavor for the remaining arcs is, of course, adding the Iggy sprite. This is a surprisingly time-consuming task, especially given he has nearly 400 variations by now... (and this game doesn't use layered images like I do in all my new games). It pretty much requires me to go line-by-line throughout the entire game, adding in the sprite and additional animations and effects to go with it so it all feels very immersive and integrated. As I go through, I also tweak and polish bits of the scripting with the other sprites and animations, etc., for instance, tweaking the sizes and positioning, adding a bit of lighting where necessary, sometimes changing up some expressions (for instance, some characters have additional expressions I added later in the game, and now going back through the earlier parts of the game, I can use these expressions there, too). Basically just giving the whole thing a scripting polish as I add the Iggy sprite to go with it.

Arc 3 has a number of other Iggy sprite variations, too, for instance I get to use the kid Iggy sprite some more for flashbacks:

And of course, some of the new outfits, in particular, his suit for the ball, which will come in handy later in Arc 4, as well:

There are a couple other new outfits variations, but I'll let you all see those once the game is out teehee.

When it comes to CGs, I have already talked about this a bit, but starting from Arc 3, there will be a lot less necessary to do than there was for Arcs 1 and 2. Arc 1 of course was the worst, with almost every CG needing at least a bit of an overhaul, and quite a few of them needing to be completely redone. Arc 2 a bit less so, but Arc 2 had the least amount of CGs of all the arcs, and considering it's also the first repeat of the loop, I wanted to make sure that it felt substantially different from Arc 1. So I ended up adding a decent number of new CGs to help set it apart more and make sure it was on par with the other arcs. However, starting from Arc 3, I was already getting better and more consistent with my art, so there are less egregious CGs, and I was also drawing a lot more CGs by this point, so they also aren't really missing anything and are already packed with CGs.

That doesn't mean that nothing is being done though. I still say I at least tweaked around... 85-90% of the CGs at least a little bit. Sometimes it was only very small changes, like tweaking the eyes or the hairstyles (Orlam and Gidget in particular needed at least a hairstyle tweak in almost every CG, as the way I drew their hair changed so much over the course of the game, and I want to make it more consistent). I also found myself having to fix a lot of the noses, as my gosh I used to draw them so small!!! They look so strange to me now. So on many of the CGs I'd redraw the nose to be a bit bigger and also increase the size of the pupils or tweak the eyes a little bit, etc., just so that the style would feel more consistent with the later stuff.

There are some CGs where I completely redrew the faces and tweaked some strange stuff. This CG for instance needed almost all of the faces to be redone as they all looked very strange to me...

I also completely redrew a handful of CGs that I just felt really needed it, particular ones that I felt were pretty important scenes. Like this CG looks 1000x better now:

So expect a few redraws here and there, just not nearly as many as with the previous two arcs.

There are also a few new CGs. Not very many, as like I said, this arc is already chock-full of CGs LOL It was really only in a few specific places where I felt like it would be nice to have another one added. I also didn't really touch most of the whole ending sequence as that freaking sequence and all those huge CGs already took me weeks to draw back when it was originally in production, and I just didn't want to touch it besides some small consistency tweaks here and there LOL But you may spot a few small hidden tidbits I gave some extra love to here and there throughout the arc just for funsies.

So now I get to start on Arc 4! I think Arc 4 will be very similar to Arc 3 in that the majority of the work will be adding the Iggy sprite (though I shouldn't need to do any new Iggy sprite variations?? I don't think... since Arc 3 already had me create most of the new ones that will also appear in Arc 4 I think... well, I'll see as I actually get into it lol). I think it will be similar CG-wise, too, in that the majority of the changes will be some small consistency tweaks to faces and hair, a few CGs will get some redraws, and I may draw a handful of new ones. So generally a pretty similar approach. Then by the time I get to Arc 5, there should only really be a few small consistency tweaks here and there, since by Arc 5 the art is all pretty decent and there are literally a gazillion CGs already  (I think Arc 5 by itself has over 200 CGs...)

A few other things I've been working on...

I finally made a menu for the After Stories:

They will be grayed out until you unlock them. I haven't written them yet though LOL I will work on these after I finish up work on Arc 5. These will likely be NVL-style short stories with maybe an illustration or two. Unsure yet of the exact details.

And of course, controller support. This was made worlds easier thanks to Feniks's controller support plugin; however, it still required a ton of work on my end to get it all set up throughout the game, particularly in all the galleries, where I had to also get a bunch of new hover and focus stuff set up for it to work and allow you to scroll through all my gajillions of CGs and also in the music room and replay gallery, etc.

I'm also ofc working on the Steam achievements, which took a while to figure out, as well. I'm learning so much!!!! LOL There will probably end up being maybe twelve or a few more, a variety of different things from completing arcs to getting different epilogues, completing the CG gallery, etc. (This one will take me the longest to implement... as I need to include the achievement code for every single one of the 560+ CGs hahahaaaaa... but I think it will be a nice one to have. I have all the base code set up for the achievements now, but I still need to continue through the rest of the game for all the collection stuff. And I still need to draw the art for the achievement icons, too.

I've been trying to do some other general polish of the game to get it ready for the Steam release, too, for instance, accessibility stuff like menu sounds. I've also been trying to make the game work better when skipping. I use a ton of sprite animations throughout all of my games, but this leads to a lot of issues when you try to skip, because the positioning gets all messed up (usually because of the little bounce animation I use, which can completely throw off the animations while skipping). But I would prefer players be able to skip easily, especially when trying to go back through and do different choices, for instance, when trying to unlock different epilogues, etc. So I've been painstakingly going through the code to add new bits after each animation that will "reset" them correctly, making it so that aside from maybe a few tiny spots where there's just a ton of stuff going on, you'll be able to skip easily to anywhere and the sprites will be in the right place. You can see how much better it looks even while skipping, as well:

Previously, while skipping, the Iggy sprite wouldn't even pop up, so it would just be nothing over there, Hunar would never appear, the CGs wouldn't load all the characters, and Orlam and Genzou's sprites would be completely in the wrong positions. It looks and works much better now and should keep all the sprites and images (mostly) correct no matter where or how much you skip!

I've finished doing this for the first arc because I want it all to be available for the demo release later in the spring, though I will need to do it for the remaining arcs, together with all the rest of the remaster updates.

OK I THINK THAT'S IT FOR NOW. As you can see, I've been working on quite a bit! And will continue to do so to finish everything up for the Steam release.

But please please please wishlist the game! I'll talk about this a bit more later, but the initial launch week on Steam will be so important when it comes to engagement and reviews, etc., in order for the game to do well. So I hope that the game can get a good amount of wishlists before going into the launch later this year and it can have a strong start on a new platform! As always, everyone's support means so much to me as a small solo dev just trying to make games in the increasingly horrific state of the world. Thank you so much!