Development Has Started/Resumed

There's news on two fronts. Development has started on the next project, and development has resumed on Hana Exposure!



Development for the next project has started!

Pre-production stuff such as the writing and general brainstorming had already started and were already in the works during the development of Blooming Flower, and as such, those things are already very far ahead. Because of this, there hasn't been a need to do any planning in order to be able to start development, as the direction and contents are already mostly decided. The main real issue that needed to be addressed for development to start was the engine. For the longest time I had the intention of getting more hands on board to develop the second game, and with that additional help, switch over to Unreal Engine. The idea was to use the sells from Blooming Flower as a budget for to expand the team and make this plausible, but unfortunately, the game underperformed and... it didn't even manage to break even. So, expanding the team is out of the question, which makes the switch over to Unreal a lot harder. I still made the attempt to make the switch over to Unreal by starting to learn the engine and doing some prototyping for the past two months, but the reality is that it's just not viable. There's too much work and time needed in order to be able to properly start development in Unreal by myself. So, I decided to go back to Unity for this next project. The good thing about Unity is that I know it, and the actual development was able to start right away. The other issue was the jump to 3D. In Blooming Flower the world is 3D, but the characters are 2D. For this next game, the characters will also be 3D. 3D characters is something I hadn't worked with, and so there was a lot of learning that needed to be done, but I think I am now ready on this front to properly start development, and so with this, development has properly started!

The idea right now is to have a nice and clear sneak peek for what to expect with this next project on the post at the end of this month, with more details throughout November, and then a full breakdown and playable demo by the end of the year.

As for the contents, I will be leaving that subject for the sneak peek post. All I will say for now is that this next installment is not a sequel to Hana Exposure. It's a new game, with new characters, and it's not mainly focused on exposure. It will contain exposure, but it's not the main focus.

For now that's it for the next project. Now let's talk a bit about Hana Exposure!

This was not in the plans, but, development for Blooming Flower is resuming. I am now working on a small "expansion" for it. It'll be version v1.1. This update will add a bit of content throughout the whole game, and it'll be an update to the base game, not a DLC, meaning that it'll be free for everyone who owns the game.

I'll have more to share on this at the end of the month. This update will be a side project, as my main priority and focus is the new game, but it's in the works! 

No real ETA on v1.1. Internally I'm hoping to release it at the same time as the demo for the next project.

Overall, there are a lot of things to talk about when it comes to Blooming Flower, and so I intend on having a post-release post later this month having a bit of a deeper talk about the development, the challenges with it, the things that went wrong, and overall how I intend on changing the development process for this new project in order to avoid some of the mistakes I made during the development. I also intend on having another post with a survey on Blooming Flower in order to gather a lot of concentrated feedback, see what worked, what didn't, etc. There will also be some questions there that will be to get some opinions and feedback for stuff related to the next project.

There's various things I will be doing differently this time around. I'm planning on opening a Discord, post more small things on Twitter/X, among other things. If there are any changes you would like to see, let me know!

Now that development on the next game has properly started, Patreon billing will resume. And for the sake of setting expectations, I think it's important to say that joining the Patreon is not a form of pre-ordering the next game, nor will it be free. It'll go through it's development cycle, and then be available for purchase on digital stores. Things will also be a bit different in the development of this second game, and so there be very few builds uploaded prior to the final release, more on this on the upcoming posts later this month. What I would suggest is, only join the Patreon if you are interested in supporting the development, and getting the detailed logs of development, and not because of rewards.