Hello there!

It's been two whole years since I've released a game with a group - and I could not have asked for more lovely individuals to have done this with. Their shared joy and dedication has brought me through many tough moments and I am so, so grateful that they've chosen to join me on this journey.

Now that I've finally gotten a chance to crash, I did want to touch on some of the game inspirations and future plans.

Inspiration Overview

This game is a love letter to JRPGs and fandom culture. Those two things held me together during quarantine and helped me to embrace my inner cringe in a way that I had not allowed myself in previous years. I'm admittedly more of a newcomer to the fandom space for my age, but I'm still glad to be here.

Special shout-out to Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Sylvain Jose Gautier for having me in a literary analysis chokehold. I maintain that some of those fandom's fics are among the best pieces of literature I've read period and they still rattle around my head to this day. :')

Hoyoverse, especially Honkai Star Rail, was another culprit. The sheer joy of being a chaotic trash panda MC (love you Trailblazer) juxtaposed with insightful exploration of much more serious themes has made it the long-term game I keep returning to, long after I'd burned out of other similar ones (sorry Genshin).

This project also would not have happened if not for this tweet that got the brainworms going: https://x.com/greatgrebe/status/1775338917136388348?t=FyGfZNXFDWG0_G6kts64Rw&s=1.... As stated before, I tend to take myself too seriously, so I figured, "why not go full cringe and experiment?"

And the team truly went and embraced that. When playtesting, I don't think I've ever smiled so much or laughed so much in a short span of time from a game - and this was knowing what went into it. Also, the bad ending came out so good, I ended up making it easier to get. :')

What's Next?

We're gonna polish up the demo in the next couple of months or so and add some features we didn't get to during the jam. General QA tweaks aside, here are some things we're planning to implement in this timeframe:

• Gallery for Posts
• Forging Rhythm Mini-Game
• Safe Mode for Motion Sickness

An Extended Demo will be released some time in 2025 that will approximately double (or exceed) the word count of this release. We also will eventually be seeking crowdfunding to cover the costs of development beyond that - everything is currently being paid for out of pocket right now.

So yeah. This game is going to stay silly (hopefully). It's also going to get real and tough, because my default state is angst. Hope you're ready. :3