August Newsletter Pt. 2 (Patreon)

Alright, I got some rest and I’m feeling much better. Thank you for your concern! 💕 I’ll make sure not to put my body through that again haha. Now, I’m back and ready to share my reflections on the development of Crimson Chains, and what you can expect for September.

Technical Issues:

There was an issue with the Mac build of the game where it stopped at the end of Chapter 6. I figured out the problem—apparently, a music file didn’t get copied due to its name being in Japanese, which messed up the whole game. But it’s fixed now! If you downloaded the macOS version before, please download it again. I’ve included a Troubleshooting Guide in the folder, which is also available here if you need it. Of course, you can always send me a message if you encounter any issues or need further assistance.

Game Creation:

Now, about the game. I think I was influenced by Teacher's Pet and wanted to create a more emotional narrative. I even read a book about an alien who gets a human body to better understand how to portray Choso's first experience as a human 😅 My writer side took over, and I ended up writing a lot. I think my game dev and writer sides are constantly battling within me, and I need to learn how to balance them. For future games, I’ll strive to find that balance and experiment more with game mechanics. We can also discuss what you all prefer—these games are for you, after all! ❤

Animation:

Animation-wise, I tried to make everything look more dynamic. I added a separate bone to control the lineart and shadows, making the 2.5D effect more apparent. However, improving animations is challenging due to the Spine plugin I use with RPGMaker. I actually have a degree in animation, so not being able to animate exactly how I want drives me a bit crazy 😂 But it’s fine—I’d probably spend too much time perfecting everything, and the rest of the game would suffer. Sometimes, limitations can be a good thing.

New Tiers:

I’d love to share enhanced animation versions with you all (the HD version with physics and bezier interpolation), so I’m thinking of adding another tier with that as a reward. I’m also considering a tier that includes raw footage of my animation process. But since the whole process takes many hours, I’m not sure if it would be something you’d enjoy 😅. I’d offer my drawing process too, but I’m a little embarrassed to show how ugly it looks before it’s finished hahaha I’m definitely not a “trust-the-process” kind of girl.

These new tiers would mainly be a way for you to help me invest in better tech equipment, so I can continue improving my games. It feels like all my electronics are falling apart haha—I guess I’m asking too much of them, poor things. In the meantime, I’ve set up a Ko-fi with the same goal, to help me purchase the tech equipment that will allow me to create the best games for you and make my workload a bit easier. Here's the link to it. But I already appreciate your support here so much! 😊

Games Popularity:

Around August 20th, I noticed a spike in views on Teacher's Pet. It went from 1,000-2,500 views per day to a whopping 6,300! Downloads didn’t change, so I was confused at first. Then I checked where the views were coming from and saw that Teacher's Pet was ranking #1 or #2 in the nsfw popular tags. This is something I thought would take much longer to happen, but there it was. One of my missions is to fill the adult itch.io page with games from the female gaze, and seeing one of my games up there already made me really happy—like, wow. Despite all those views from people who might not be interested in my games, we only got one mean comment and two nice ones, which also made me happy!

September Tape:

I know I said we’d do Honkai in September, but since the JJK manga is ending on September 30th, I thought it would be nice to make a JJK game as a tribute! It’s an important date, and I don’t want to let it pass by. I’ll be posting a poll for the next guy very soon. You’ll have two days to vote!

And that’s it for Crimson Chains! Thank you for your support and lovely comments as always. And also for your patience. In the next few days, I’ll try to create mobile versions of the games, since that’s been requested a lot. Let’s hope it works out! Fingers crossed!

With love,

Khywae