thoughts on a break midway and re-releasing episode 2 (Patreon)

we'll start with just a check in post since i've been snoozin' here lately

so, it's been nice. i've been playing video games. trying aikido. started storytelling in dnd for the first time last week-- generally catching up on things that i felt like i didn't have enough time for before. and... like, feeling that i didn't have time really was the bigger issue than actually not having time, so i'll be trying to hold onto that going forward. less is more and all that. i'm a little insecure about if that's really sustainable for the amount of work games take? but i'm also hopeful. 

one of the games i've been playing lately is Atelier Firis. ... actually, aside from my league vice, it's the only thing i've been playing lately. for those who don't know, Atelier is a long running jrpg series based mainly around alchemy and crafting. this is only the second one i've really played, but it's such a huge leap up from its predecessor (Atelier Sophie, which really only barely functioned) I've been baffled all the way by what the hell must have happened between those two titles. I'm like 80 hours into it and there are large swaths of content i feel like i haven't even touched yet. There's some cats, and some design choices (especially in character outfits) that I really can't express how much I hate... but overall, I feel like a lot of love must have really went into making this game and I keep finding things like you can DO that?  or they really hid like five scenes and two entire areas behind this random sidequest???
and I love when games do that kind of thing.

so I had a moment last week while playing where I was just like
gosh, I guess that's kind of how some people feel about reborn.
...oh.
and naturally, I just kind of started crying on the spot.
Actually, I'm still tearing up a little.

I'm really, really glad that I was able to (if nothing else-- feel like I) have captured a scale of scope and whimsy that most games never have the chance to realize. There are a lot of things in Reborn that I would have liked to have done better, but as far as making a long-reaching journey with plenty of depth and hidden crannies to make exploring the corners of it worth the effort... I'm proud that we did as well with that as we have. 

I've talked a lot about how the decade-long time scale of Reborn's development has given me some psychic damage. On the other hand... this is nice. I was thinking towards the end of development, it would be responsible to focus on smaller-scale projects... And... objectively... it would.
But now that I'm just playing games again I'm back to thinking... okay........ but small scale projects are for babies. i wanna go big or go home.

Towards the end of development, some of my insecurities have been in the way of-- have I burned myself out too much, to where my ability to commit to these projects is permanently damaged?
and... no. here I am, getting Ideas again. last night too, I briefly had a minor thought like "it might be fun to make a system that expands on this someday--" as if that weren't literally my job. 

But I take that as evidence that I've needed this break-- and, to be clear, still do need it for a while yet. I'm still stressing about getting loose ends tied up in a neatly time, and I gotta get that off of me. Anyway, thanks to everyone for encouraging me to take the time (and for that matter, sticking around during this calm between storms so that I can) <3

...Still... I don't want to leave you all without something to chew on. So how about this for now?
A discussion on our Discord server came up a while ago, started mainly by Siewek who has been diligently searching and collecting old game versions and tidbits from its history for, what, months? longer?
Anyway, I promised I'd upload Episode 2 some time.

Why not Episode 1? Well... nothing of the existing content really changed between 1 and 2, so it's more bang for your buck. Also, Essentials changed the save format between those version releases, so saves were not compatible between them. The other thing of note that changed between 1 and 2 was the screen size. Originally it was GBA-sized and it was upped to DS-sized, which entailed a bit of tedious remapping but ultimately is not terribly interesting. 

Still, this is for your eyes only as patrons. A lot of this old stuff is very cringe to me! More importantly, to be direct, when I first started reborn, I hadn't realized I was trans yet. I was definitely editing my in-game sprite (which looks very different) to be more and more androgynous over time (lmao obviously that's not a sign of anything tho), but having a self insert character in the game from before then is... a little awkward! I trust you all to be respectful about it, but I would prefer that the old episode not go beyond the privacy of patreon. 

The development files are all included, I think. Play through and see how empty and awkward it feels, or just poke around in RPG Maker for those of you who have it. In the latter case, expect to see some leftover jank from default old Essentials. 

But, as you do-- because here's the reason I'm uploading this-- think about this.
As rough as E2 is, at basically the start of the project, it still eventually reached the height of E19...
The Starlight Demo, for being a proof of concept was quite rough but already solid enough to play on its own...
If E2 > 19 is any indication, by the time we finish Starlight, how much better will even its earliest content be?

Anyway, here's the download.

The password is "ancientpast". Go nuts, if you're so inclined.