Hello, all! It is I! Wanted to make a little post celebrating because... today marks 1 year since I released Our Wonderland's finale (and thus, 1 year since the day the game was complete)! So...

🎉🎊Happy Anniversary, OW! 🎊🎉

It's hard to believe it's actually been an entire year since I finished the game...

A lot has happened this year. Much of it not great on me or my mental health. But I'm still here working through it. Working on stuff. Surviving. And I'm glad that so many of you are still here, too, supporting and loving the game and my stories. It means so much that people are still following along with my art and updates, talking about the game, asking me questions about the characters, and generally still getting excited about my characters. There are even many people still discovering the game for the first time, which I think is really cool!

I originally thought I'd draw something for the anniversary, but I ended up not having much time to do anything extensive, both because of my constant work on the comic and because I've been on a 3-week trip in China visiting my partner's family and only just returned yesterday. However, I figured that people are a bit tired of me just posting art all the time anyway. And I thought it'd be nice to do something different. Especially as I had a little think recently (as trips make me wont to do), and I've decided I will start releasing alpha builds of the remaster! Yeah! Combination me taking longer on the remaster than expected (I had a major mental health slump in the fall and found it hard to work on for a while) and also as a celebratory anniversary thank-you gift to everyone who's supported me all this time and stuck behind the game.

Remaster Alpha Builds, Yeah!

OK what does this mean exactly? You might ask. Well, as you probably remember if you read my previous post (or follow me on my socials) I'm currently working (albeit slowly) on a remastered version of Our Wonderland with updated art and GUI and a few new features. If you weren't aware of this and everything it entails, please check out the big giant remaster info post, as it goes into everything I'm doing in detail!

I got a ton of work done on the remaster in the fall, finishing basically all the work for Arc 1 and maybe half or so of Arc 2. Then the slump hit and my mental health took a nose dive and I had a hard time even thinking about it or opening Ren'Py and I haven't done a whole lot since, I will admit. But in the process of getting this alpha build ready and also because people have been asking about it more, I've started to feel more motivated to jump back in. I hope seeing people enjoy the alpha build will also help! I'd like to start working on it more now that I'm back from my trip and maybe even finish up the rest of the Arc 2 stuff relatively soon.

At any rate, because of this delay, I feel quite guilty. But because I have basically all of Arc 1 finished, I thought the anniversary could be a fun opportunity for me to release an alpha build of the remaster that includes all of the updated content for Arc 1! In more detail, this is what it contains:

• All of the updated GUI and menus
• All the updated sprites that appear in Arc 1
• All the CGs I've redrawn or touched-up in Arc 1
• All the new CGs I've drawn for Arc 1
• The new Iggy sprite implemented throughout all of Arc 1
• Some basic scripting polish I've done throughout Arc 1

This means you'll be able to play Arc 1 in its entirety with the new remastered updates. There may still be a few things I tweak here and there in Arc 1, but essentially, everything I want to do in it is finished.

Because this is an alpha build though, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• There will be probably be some oddities and errors (this build is untested, and though the updates only really have to do with art-related things rather than anything fundamental/structural in the game, there could be some weird errors, so please keep that in mind if you play it -- this is far from a polished release!! lol)
• There are some parts that are obviously not finished yet (the build will only have the updated content for Arc 1; even though you'll be able to continue playing after Arc 1, since the full game is still included, I don't recommend it, as you'll start running into errors, because I deleted any other post-Arc 1 art I've finished from the build)
• Parts of the menu also aren't finished (by this I mostly mean that the After Stories I talked about aren't finished, so if you click on that in the menu, it just takes you to the music room or something; there may also be other parts of the menu I'll update later, too, especially the title screen and such, but I'm not sure)

Basically, don't expert a perfect experience hahaha. But I do still hope you'll enjoy playing it and seeing all the new art and updates I've been working on. Arc 1 has quite a bit new to it! Not only all the sprite updates, but also 28 tweaked/redrawn CGs and 14 new ones! I also hope people will enjoy the Iggy sprite, as I feel it really adds a lot to the presentation and experience overall.

You can find the new remaster alpha builds on the game page below the downloads for the original game. They're marked with a big [ALPHA] so they should be easy to find and differentiate from the original complete game builds.

Please do note that save files from the original version of the game will not carry over. This is purposeful because with the various new things I've done to the GUI and menus, it would make for some wonky things when loading old save files. So you'll need to start a new game from scratch. (Well, you'd need to do so anyway to replay Arc 1 with all the updates hahaha.) However, I believe that if you have a version of the original game on your computer already, it will likely still pull some data from it. For instance, it will likely still have all the CGs you've unlocked, the title screen might still be on the previous arc you played, and it may even have some auto-save files, etc. I'm not entirely sure if things and what all things might carry over... it's just due to how Ren'Py works because the remaster is a copy of the original game that I kept working on.

You will, however, be able to carry over your save files from this remaster alpha build into future alpha builds as well as the future complete remaster launch once it's finished! So you don't need to worry about having to completely replay anything later if you decide to play the alpha builds now (unless you want to ofc lol).

Because the alpha builds/remaster in general are still very much a work in progress, I welcome any reports of oddities and feedback, too! If you find anything you feel is an error or weird bug (rather than something that's just not finished), feel free to leave reports as comments here on this post or for instance by sending an ask to my Tumblr, etc. Ofc I'd also just love to know what you think of it in general, too! I'm really excited by how much more polish these updates give to the game, and the new art really elevates some of the scenes (at least to me lol).

I don't have a schedule for future alpha builds. I will likely release another new build once I finish all the updated Arc 2 content. Then probably one after I finished Arcs 3-5? Because those arcs don't require as much art (likely only a few redraws and tweaks to some CGs in Arcs 3 and 4), so it will mostly be implementing the Iggy sprite throughout those arcs, general scripting polish, etc., so I'll be able to finish each arc faster than I did with 1 and 2, which both required a lot of new art. Then I'll work on the After Stories and likely release them together with the final official launch of the remaster. That's just my current thoughts, but we'll see. I don't know when those releases will be though, as we already saw my original guesses re: remaster progress were way off because of my slump, so we'll just have to play it by ear lol. (But I do hope to start actively working on it again now and will likely post updates on my social when that happens/I have new things to share.)

What Else?

In addition to the remaster alpha release, I'm going to do a silly fun little thing on my socials to celebrate the anniversary called 30 Days of Our Wonderland, where each day there is a new prompt to answer re: the game. I thought it'd be a fun way for people to share their thoughts and experiences and engage with other fans! I will also be answering each prompt every day in case you're interested in my own thoughts and lore about the game. Feel free to join in, either trying to do all the days or just picking and choosing ones you feel most compelled to. I hope it'll be a lot of fun and get people reminiscing about the game on its 1-year celebration.

You can see the prompts here:

I'll be posting it a little bit later on Twitter, Tumblr, and Bluesky and after that be answering the prompts each day. I'll use the hashtag #30DaysofOW so that others can also use to keep all the posts from everyone easy to find.

Aaaaand... What Else?

OK no that's really it regarding the anniversary LOL.

HOWEVER, I am of course always working on other things, too. If you didn't catch my earlier post about it (or forgot) for instance, I'm still working hard on the OW spinoff comic, Broomtail!

It's going strong at already 20 episodes and much is happening... Genzou's gotten cholera... Orlam's been an impish (but lovable) menace... Iggy's learning to ride a horse (and looking very cute doing it, too). Almost all the OW cast members have made at least a small appearance at this point, though some of them won't really get involved in the story until later. It's a bit of a slow-burn to show off more of the characters and world and develop all their dynamics (and have many cute scenes wah...) as I slowly thread in more bits of lore regarding larger story points and future directions and conflicts (and ofc all their convoluted traumatic pasts, because where would we be without everyone's convoluted traumatic pasts??? lol)

It already has close to 1,500 subscribers on Webtoon! So I hope if you haven't checked it out yet, you might give it a chance. I'm having a lot of fun with it, especially all the new dynamics I get to build between the characters.

You can read it on either Webtoon or NamiComi (the version on NamiComi has uncensored language).

And besides the comic (and the many many hours of drawing it requires WEEP) I'm ofc always drawing up random little self-indulgent things on my socials when I have the time (or when I'm spiraling and desperately need to draw something comforting to slow the descent). Despite all my issues, I feel like I still always have so much going on hahaha. Unsure if this is good or bad tbh.

Ehhhh...

...anyway, that's about it. Thanks for reading until the end of my rambles LOL

And happy anniversary again to OW! I hope people will enjoy getting their first taste of the remaster with the alpha build! And thank you again to everyone who's played and supported the game for this long!