A 2024 Rumination (Patreon)

Hey all! I figure Origin Story’s win at the 2024 AVN Rookie of The Year would be a point to ruminate a little on the year I’ve had. I’m about to have a busy few days finishing up the festive period with family visits all around the country, so now is as good a time as any to do this as I might not have time before the end of the year. It feels weird to be getting some recognition as a 2024 game for a few reasons. Origin Story was first publicly released in December last year and I believed I wouldn’t even qualify to be nominated this year. I even had some nominations last year by a couple of people who’d had the chance to play it in that brief window between release and the 2023 nominations being open. Luckily for me, the rules changed to include Nov & Dec releases like how the Game of the Year awards work, I guess. It's also weird as this is a game I’ve been working on since 2022. I started writing the script for it sometime around summer 2022 to be exact, all the while I was learning Daz and Ren’Py with a “practice game”. I started to officially work on posing the scenes and putting everything in Ren’Py around Feb 2023. I put together a demo that was played by a handful of people around July 2023. That demo, after some re-writes and a bunch of extra scenes (everyone’s favorite scene with Evelyn & Moonsong included) became Chapters 1 & 2. So yeah, the concept of this game is now 2.5 years old, and it feels a little unusual, but absolutely welcome, seeing the game finally get some love like this. I won’t lie. It’s been an extremely tough year working on the game alongside everything else in my life. As you all know, I am just a lone developer. I am also a developer that has a full-time job and a family to support. I was also promoted in my full-time job to a managerial role which has become extremely high stress, emotionally draining and saps almost every bit of energy I have out of me. What little time when I’m not exhausted from work that I have, I spend either with my wife and son or working on Origin Story. I have almost no time for anything else. I am fortunate to have a wife who fully supports my work on the game and understands that I often need to leave her be, while I do my thing, but I’d be lying if I said having to essentially work two jobs hasn’t put a little strain on our relationship. Regardless, she gets it, and allows me the time in the hope that working on the game brings me happiness (which it absolutely does) and a little extra income for us. I am always overly self-critical that my updates are not hefty enough, or released fast enough, but considering my lifestyle I think I have been doing pretty well, right? I hope you agree. I do wish I had more time to spend on the game and get the updates out even faster. I wish I could devote time to learning to animate better to give you the animated scenes which I know would push Origin Story even higher up there. I wish I could spend the time improving the UI (why the hell did I win that category?) or introducing a scene gallery system.But unfortunately, I simply can’t do any of that without sacrificing time from working on the writing or the renders, and that is more important to me. Well… I could also leave my stupid job but unfortunately that pays 4x more than what Origin Story currently brings in and I can’t survive without it. So, I appreciate all of you who understand this and have stuck with me regardless. I want to take this end of the year opportunity to show some love. Naturally, you all deserve some appreciation for your support but there’s a few people I just want to specifically call out for obvious reasons. PandaDrummer & Landrassa… two supporters who have been with me right from the get-go (all the way to pre-Demo days) and have been a huge help. You guys are awesome. Invisovsky… my longest supporter and Amber’s biggest fan. Storm (and Slockie) & Kentyrr (and Stoya)… when the developers of games that you fell in love with… games that inspired you to create your own VN (that’s Bare Witness & Chasing Sunsets if you’re not keeping up)… not only come along to support you in those early days, but actually enjoy your game too, it gives you a huge confidence boost. Thank you guys for giving that to me. And thanks to the other developers who I’ve crossed paths recently and have come along to support. DogCat, FireValley, Amomynous, Saint McDaniels, Paraloop etc… You guys are all awesome and I wish you success with your games.Man, that basically turned into an award acceptance speech which wasn't my plan but we'll roll with it. Alright guys. I’ll see you in 2025!