It’s been a while, with the last update being the release of Life as Designed. I’ve not gotten as much done as I’d have liked in the last few months, but I do have some exciting news and teasers to share.
Books
The first major update to …
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Life as Designed is Now Available!
Life as Designed, the romance and coming-of-age story featuring Cho Fukuda, is now available for purchase!
Cho Fukuda has spent much of her adult life as a freelance costume designer, to the point that she feels like she’s been typecast. Her motivation to work on projects that all feel …
read moreLife as Designed Demo, Mysteries of Akiramine, and Other Updates
As part of the process of trying to get back into creating things for public release again, I’ve been working on getting a few projects ready for something sort of like a “soft launch”. Today, we have announcements for two of those projects: Life as Designed and Mysteries of …
read moreDevlog: Sim Akiramine Revisions Planned for v9
I've been having a difficult time trying to get back into writing lately, but this past week I had a number of ideas to try to make Flowering Nightshade's bonus mode "Sim Akiramine" more fun and easier to create content for. I thought it might be interesting to share some …
read moreEldritch Academy v3 Release!
The biggest update to Eldritch Academy is now live! This release brings us to the end (at least for now) of the long journey that started in 2013 (pre-production) and 2019 (v1 release).
For those who have not been following the project on Twitter and other sites, Eldritch Academy v3 …
read moreFebruary 2022 Progress Update
Just to make sure people who don’t check Twitter and the other sites where I drip-feed information can stay at least somewhat up-to-date, here’s some progress on what I’ve been working on since August:
Flowering Nightshade
As is probably already clear by this point, version 7 has …
read moreDevlog: A New Bonus Feature in v8?
While I've tried to spend the last few months weaning myself off overworking on my writing to avoid burnout (thus the delays to v8 and my other projects), I've still done a lot of tinkering with Python and Ren'Py. Recently, that tinkering resulted in something that I almost feel could …
read moreA Few Old Shireishi Sketches
I was refreshing my memory about some plot points in Shireishi to prepare for some other projects in the works when I recalled having a number of sketches of scenes and characters from that story. See, originally Shireishi was planned as a comic, so almost every major character had a …
read more“Weather the Storm” Lyrics [Flowering Nightshade]
When Flowering Nightshade’s version 7 released a little over a month ago, the side story “Storm on Your Peace” closes on the first performance of the eponymous band’s debut song, which is mentioned as being named “Weather the Storm”. While the lyrics aren’t mentioned in the script …
read moreThe Past and Future of Flowering Nightshade
With the release of v6, Flowering Nightshade finally has the first draft of every promised character route. A lot of things have changed since the original demo back in 2019, but hopefully the game is a lot better for it. With so many things having been tweaked or changed, I …
read moreDevlog: The Kiyomi Conundrum
Across both Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade, I feel like Kiyomi has consistently been one of the more difficult characters to write for as a love interest. As a supporting character, her surface-level traits are fairly easy to work with, since she doesn't have many extreme character traits. When she's …
read moreDevlog: Major Update in Production
As I've noted elsewhere, I've begun a project to revise and update Eldritch Academy to have the same style as Eldritch University. While the most obvious aspect of this update is the overhaul of many of the art assets, this update also includes a number of changes to the script …
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Devlog: A Story for Kiku
While writing for Blooming Nightshade, Kiku might have been one of my favorite characters to write about because of her mature, caring personality. But when the first Steam version of the game came out, Kiku was one of the least popular characters, going by the achievement stats for her ending …
read moreDevlog: Orino Route Reveal
Nanami's boss, formerly referred to simply as "Baker" in the game dialogue, is now one of the main love interests! Like any other route, her route can be started from the stories menu once the player has finished the prologue. This route continues from a world state where Himeka didn't …
read moreDevlog: Troubles with Demo v2
While working on the next version of the game, some feedback I received regarding my previous stories made me concerned about the overall quality of the game. In particular, the way I wrote Blooming Nightshade had to take into account two sub-routes within each route (friendship or romance) and the …
read moreDevlog: Potential Major Changes for v10
After looking over feedback for the game from the Steam launch, I've been considering making a major revision of the game to try to make the story and characters feel more consistent. Since this is such a big change, I figured it might be a good idea to explain what …
read moreEldritch University Reveal
The nightmare is not over...Today I’m revealing a visual novel I’ve been working on for a little while: Eldritch University! It’s a sequel to Eldritch Academy, taking place about three years later. Here’s the current blurb:
Kasumi Kawamura just wants to get through university while …
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