It's been a bit over a week now since I launched the demo for WtDSR! And I'm really happy with the response and how many lovely comments I received from people playing and connecting with the characters. I know I've said this already, but I was pretty anxious going into it as this is a completely new universe with new characters, so it just feels like a lot more uncertainty and pressure over whether people will end up liking them and my new story. That and I knew it would definitely get a lot of comparisons with OW, which is a pressure in and of itself. As I already know this story won't end up being as long and detailed as OW, so I worry a lot that people will think it can't live up to it or it's not as good or that the characters don't have as much depth. (Which is only being made worse as people compare the characters from WtDSR to the OW characters, I'll admit... hence why I keep trying to distinguish and separate them lol...)

Overall though I'm really touched and grateful that people have responded with such love for these new characters. It feels so funny to me that what started as a one-off little idea to doodle some character designs for a potential rehash of an older story of mine has turned into all this and now I'm 20-feet deep in a whole bunch of new lore and convoluted story for these new characters and they've really taken over my heart. Like... I knew once I started getting heart pangs from thinking about future tragic story developments and getting desperate urges to draw future story scenes that won't leave my head, that I was in deep with these characters similar to my love for my OW characters. So I'm honored that others are also starting to love them too, even though I've only been able to share an introduction to them through the demo and various posts and doodles. I mentioned this a bit on Tumblr already but I love that this new group is allowing me to explore different dynamics than with the OW characters. Because this crew has quite a different vibe and each of them brings different personalities that I haven't gotten to work with before when setting up scenes and dialogue and group dynamics.

I'm really glad that I decided to release the demo, even though it's something I haven't done before. One, because it forced me to get the game into a polished presentable state, for instance, with the UI and the menus and the title screen and all that. Since I think I would have kept putting all that stuff off otherwise. But now I can continue working on the game knowing that's all finished and looks nice. Two, because I really wanted people to have a chance to get to know the characters early on and already connect with them as I continue to work on the game. Even though part 1 will probably end up being about the length of a single arc of OW, because of the higher art and production values, it will no doubt take me longer to finish, and I would have felt sad to just sit and work in isolation. Now at least people were able to enjoy the first part and meet the characters, which makes me really happy <3

Hopefully also this will let the game page on itch build some strength in the algorithm... maybe... LOL I don't know. It's already dropped way back down into the depths at this point so maybe not hahaha. But I already know from experience that my games are not the type that will do amazing upon release like others that automatically zoom up to the top of the list as soon as they come out. Instead, I need to slowly let it get visibility and players over a long period of time. So releasing the demo and already getting some traction on the page really helps with that. So thank you extra from me everyone who took the time to play and leave a rating and/or comment as it's the only thing that might help the game get a bit of traction and do better when I release the full parts later on.

So where am I at now and what are my future plans for WtDSR???? You might ask. Well, production on part 1 is still coming along steadily even though I haven't mentioned much since the demo release. I already have another 8k-ish words written/rewritten, which leaves about another 16k to rewrite from the original story. I don't even really know if I should call it rewrite truly as it's all completely written from scratch except for a few lines here and there. And so much of it is just... completely different. Like, the characters are completely different. The ways I approach the scenes are completely different. All the background and lore and... "key driving motivations" for lack of a better word is completely different. It's really only that I'm following the same structure as the original story but completely rewriting it from the inside LOL So in my Ellipsus doc even though I have the original story in there, I just delete huge chunks at a time and rewrite everything and go chunk by chunk as it gives me some flow and structure to follow to keep me on track haha. And I will just say that the story actually works SO MUCH BETTER now in this new form than it ever did in the original. Like. It feels like it was meant to be completely reimagined because now everything makes a lot more sense and has a lot more impact.

Art-wise I've also drawn 3 more CGs and 1 more comic-style cutscene and scripted a good few more chunks. The scripting is quite slow, as it was also for the demo. But that is expected lol. Like, to give you an idea...

...you can see here (maybe) that there are exactly 3 lines of narration/dialogue in this chunk. The rest of it is all me moving characters around, playing sounds, or tweaking parts of the UI, etc. SO YOU CAN PERHAPS SEE WHY IT TAKES ME A LONG TIME TO SCRIPT. Also since I do everything by hand/number rather than using any sort of visual guide, I constantly have the game open and reload my new changes after every line to check that everything did what I wanted to do and the positioning looks right. Then I usually have to tweak the numbers 3, 4, 5 times in tiny bits to get everything looking and feeling exaaaaaactly how I want before I can move on. Even my sound effects are very carefully timed, sometimes with inserted silence to make sure they play at the exact right time. Because it's really like being a director and carefully setting up the scene and actors exactly how I want them to look on the camera. Which is tricky when I'm working with so many characters! Hence why I also move them around sometimes in little groups, on and off of the screen in different combinations to create allusions of movement and space and to keep things balanced according to the scenes. I don't often have every character on screen at the same time. I kind of save that for a certain feel I want to create. Most of the time instead I'm trying to keep track of them on and off the screen and moving them around to give the scenes the right balance.

Of course, scenes with less characters don't take me nearly as long to script LOL Though even with those I try to be careful that they don't feel too sparse, so I make sure to keep it engaging in other ways, like facial expressions, sound effects, etc. It all has to do with pacing though. You want a mixture of more active scenes with less active ones to set a good flow and not have it ever get too intense for too long or too slow for too long. At any rate, I have all these thoughts constantly flooding my head as I'm setting up scenes and scripting. It's a bit noisy in there LOL Also of course figuring out when and where I want to do a scene as a CG or comic cutscene instead. I still could not tell you exactly why and how I decide to do these. They kind of just feel right for certain scenes, and I could not for the life of me tell you why. Sometimes admittedly it's for selfish reasons that I just think something would be cute or fun to draw, but most of the time it's because my head tells me that this needs to be a CG for impact or because the vibe won't be right otherwise, etc.

So anyway... I am just slowly but steadily working through what I've written. I tend to do everything in chronological order in the game. I write, then I work through from start to finish scripting it, drawing any CGs or making any other art I need as I get to it in the script. There are sometimes I don't work in exactly chronological order -- usually this is when I have an art something I know will take me a longer time to do. Like the intro animatic was actually one of the last things I did. And also the little montage in the middle of the demo I skipped over first and then went back and did it. But usually one-off CGs and the comic cutscenes I'll just do as I reach them. At some point I'll start writing again, too, since I still have about half of that to do, but I have a good solid chunk up to about halfway through written, so I'm focusing now on the scripting and art for that.

I can talk a bit more about where it's going and like... my plans for the two arcs and such. As you know, right now I'm just working on part 1, which I think of as the question arc. And part 2, which will be longer (probably like twice as long), will be the answer arc. I think of them like this because part 1 will undoubtedly leave you with many many unanswered questions hahaha. Then in part 2, I will not only continue the story but also dive into a whole slew of past stuff to answer and explain things. The two parts are extremely interconnected because I need to have essentially everything for part 2 already figured out in my head in order to write part 1. In essence, all of the "answers" will already be there in part 1, it's just that you won't know they're answers and you won't have all the context and a lot of it is symbolic LOL Then in arc 2 you get everything straight with all the full context and everything.

I'll probably end up releasing part 2 in two parts as it will end up pretty long. We'll see though. It's still a long ways off obviously so it's not like I need to be thinking about that for quite a while hahaha.

I've only talked a little bit about The Gay™ so far. Mostly just in what I mention on the game page about the romantic elements. While it's indeed true that this game won't be like OW in that you can achieve a different route with a different character based on your choices, this game will still very much involve a lot of convoluted romantic (gay) stuff. Tbh it forms kinda the core crux of what sets a lot of things off. And then it becomes yet another overarching theme in part 2 when I start diving into past stuff and get my deuteragonist going lol. However, it will be less so happy-feely stuff and more like... a mixture of tragic painful decisions and yearning and internal conflict LOL So I hope that no one is expecting happy fun times out of this. (Though who would given it's a horror game...) These are the things that are already twisting my heart thinking about them in the future sob. I already answered a question about this on Tumblr regarding the chars sexualities and orientations. I can't really go into full detail or reveal everything yet because some of these are key plot points and/or struggles the characters will deal with throughout the game. But I can say without revealing too much at least (I think...) that Gum is toric, Marshall is pan, and Berek is demisexual biromantic.

There's also gonna be some supernatural stuff. Not quite to the extent of OW where the whole game was based around a magical other world, but more than, say, Easter, which was a straight-up "realistic" horror in that it had zero supernatural elements. This game is mostly grounded in reality/the normal real world but will have a kind of key supernatural instigator that turns all the "realistic" issues and drama up to 11 lol.

I am of course not giving any hints as to who dies :P (But also please do not hate me for all the pain and tragedy these characters are about to go through/have gone through alkdjfasd)

Anyway... now I feel like I'm just rambling on about random bits of the game hahaha. I can't really think of any other things to mention about it at this point. At least not that won't reveal too much. I'm already struggling thinking about how I'm going to share bits of progress as I continue to work on part 1 without revealing too much. I will have to very carefully select screenshots or CGs to share that don't accidentally reveal anything (even indirectly)...

Please never feel like you can't ask anything about the chars though! There might be some things here and there that I will say that I can't answer, but I'll always at least try to give somewhat of an answer if I can that won't be completely spoilery. I feel like I'm starting to vibrate wanting to talk and share more about them so it's very hard for me to hold it all in hhhhhhhh.

OK I think that's it for now, I should just wrap this up. As always, I'll continue to share various snippets, sneak peeks, and progress updates as I continue to work (though nothing too spoilery). But I can't even give an estimate of how long it will take me even for part 1. It will have to wait until I'm much further along and can see the end in sight before I'll likely be able to give a potential release date. But until then I will keep plugging away.