Hi everyone!!

We’re back, and I’m feeling much more alive since last time we spoke \o/ How have you all been? Summer is right around the corner, which means I can start putting in full hours into Alaris, so I’m really excited!! Summer is also a break, so vacations and trips ((maybe, I guess? lol)). Time still moved weird for me these past two weeks, so I’m not entirely sure what I have to update you all on, but let’s get into it and find out <3

Supporter Shout-Outs

1. We reached 500 followers on itch.io, and we are actually almost at 4,000 downloads on Alaris >< I know numbers aren’t everything, and I tend to not put too much weight on them. But at the same time, I’m grateful for the support and am always really honored to know people are interested in the game <3 

2. Someone recently uploaded a playthrough of Alaris. It’s the first one that I’m aware of that’s been made, so I’m really appreciative someone put the time into creating the content and uploading it!! They’re incredibly kind, so I recommend supporting them if you can, and it was an exciting moment to see that someone liked it enough to recommend and make a playthrough of the game :’)

3. Someone also bought us a coffee on our Ko-fi, so thank you so much for the support. It always means a lot when people see the project as something worth donating money towards!!!

4. This is personal, but I finished my last semester of classes for PhD school!!!! I have been in school for what feels like a million years, so the fact I never have to take classes ever again is a little weird but mainly completely surreal and makes me want to shout at the top of the rooftop out of pure joy and excitement \o/ I’m still in “PhD school” in the sense I will have research to do after this, but I never have to take classes ever again!!! Never have to do “projects” and “papers” (in a class-sense) ever again!!!!! \o/ \o/ \o/

Announcements

Remember how we had a casting call a while ago? Well.... we’ve selected the voices for our LIs and have actually started revealing them on Twitter! I’m incredibly happy with the cast and think it’s such a diverse range of voices, tones, and just people in general, so I’m super pleased with how everything has come out. I’ve honestly never been super into VA because I’m a gremlin and usually play my games on silent at 3AM in my dark room alone. But hearing lines I’ve written voiced and having voices associated with the characters has been an amazing experience, and I hope people are happy with the final result <3 

We had a poll contest on Twitter to see who people would want to see revealed first, and Fenir was our reigning champion, with Kuna’a as a close runner-up! We’ve already gotten to work revealing them, and you can check out the rest as we post them on our Twitter! 

Because I can’t upload the video themselves, here are the base graphics for the reveals! If you’d like to hear the actual voices, I’d recommend checking out the Twitter posts to hear our LIs.

I’m going to try and upload the video reveals on Tumblr as well, just in case anyone doesn’t have access to Twitter. But I’m probably going to wait until we finish up all the reveals on Twitter so that there’s not an awkward discrepancy between what’s being posted on Twitter and then on Tumblr (i.e., posting Fenir on Tumblr the same day we post Aisa on Twitter could be confusing to people who follow us on both platforms). 

Hope you’re all excited though! I’m really happy with them o//o

Demo Updates

So these past two weeks, I’ve mostly been dedicating time to the VA Reveals and coding the game. Because I had a lot on my plate regarding outside-of-Alaris-stuff, I couldn’t do much more than that. But I also realized I ended up coding around 60k-70k words into the game, some of which was related to Chapter 3 content, some was Free Time, and some was Codex stuff. Literally at one point, it felt like I was lost in the coding void. But we finally coded everything into the game!! 

My process with coding is a little weird, I first focus on getting just the base content in. Then I go back in and add visuals, like scenes and sprite expressions. Then I go back in again and add effects, so like italicizing words, adding overlays or effects, etc. So right now, I’ve finished up the second stage (adding visuals) and all that’s left is adding effects. So we’ve basically coded most of the game! 

I need to test the game to make sure how I’m routing things (e.g., choices, jumping to scenes, etc.) holds up, but I am going to go back in and add some of those timed choices as well hehe. As someone pointed out in the past devlog, I am going to make this optional, so if timed choices will add stress to your gameplay experience, you can just opt out of it! 

Regarding art assets, I’ve completely finished the sprites!!! I need to code them in for things like the Dragon Energy Vision feature, but I did get to creating Kimura and Mom’s Dragon Energy. So now the entire cast will have Dragon Energy available (at least those that the Dragon Energy Vision will work on) 

Sneak peek:

Up next is probably going to be more coding, GUI, and game mechanism stuff. I have a lot of game features I want to include in this demo. For example, I want to give each LI a character page where you can revisit their Free Time dates, listen to some of the voiced lines we were able to get funded, and look at their CGs. 

I have some other things but don’t want to overload you all with information, but I’m hoping to get some of the new game features into the game since I think that’s the last major step before we enter final stages of development! I’d say right now demo is sitting at 60%-70% finished? So it’s wrapping up for sure, but still quite a couple of big things to go! 

Developer Ramblings

No ramblings today, except for I’m excited for summer and being able to officially start working on Alaris at a much fuller capacity than I’ve been able to!! Thank you so much for all the support, everyone. I’ve noticed people leaving comments and stuff under our devlogs recently, and I’m so glad to know people actually read these LOL. I feel like they’re more for me to keep track of game progress, so I’m glad people like them as well <3 Until next time!