recently, you’ve had trouble finding sleep

even in the darkness of your room, your imagination paints vivid pictures to your exhausted eyes

because your body doesn’t feel tired, but your eyelids, oh, it’s as though there were an anvil weighing on them

you grab your pillow and turn it over to feel the cooler side

it only makes you even more awake

maybe you just need to adjust your position on the bed

so you roll over

you scream in sheer terror

not because of jeff the killer everyone knows he’s lost all aura

but because you know i am going to be yapping

Hi my Chimmy Choos!! Did you know this devlog was consumed by Jimmy Choo? Yes!!!! So buy $1000 heels!!!! CONSUME!!!!!!!!!!!! WHERE DO YOU EXPECT TO FIND HAPPINESS BUT IN CONSUMPTION!!!!!!!!! USE MY AFFILIATION LINK!!!!

So, time for me to answer the question you’ve all been asking for months, begging for my otherworldly presence!!!!!

*i don’t care what you say the people in my head approve*

*i am being literal*

*send help*

So, the question was the following: “WHERE ARE YOU BITCH!!!!!!!!”

and gosh chill out, go touch some grass or something

Ok, time to actually give an update lol

So, last news, I released The Beauty Marks of Aquarius, my horror yaoi visual novel, and I want to thank all the people who took time to download/play/rate/comment it!! Especially those who shared their thoughts, it means the world!! This game is very special to me, and now that some time has passed, I can more confidently confirm my initial intuitions: it has become my favourite game of mine, beating High School Lolita, which is crazy to think, but I guess having proof I didn’t peak three years ago is reassuring!

Now, what happened after I released the game? Well, as you guys know, NaNoRenO is a rather intense jam, and last March was CRAZY. Especially considering The Beauty Marks of Aquarius has more than 30 CGs, 35k+ words etc.

So, the same way Albert Camus said “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”, one must also imagine I then took a well-deserved rest.

WELL, THEN ONE IS WRONG!!!! GO SIT IN THE CORNER, ONE!!!! LEAVE ROOM FOR YOUR SIBLINGS SIX AND SEVEN!!!!!!

Considering I spent March making a game, I was behind schedule for the papers I had to write during my master’s so… that’s what I did during April! And May was spent working on my thesis (and I still have to defend it which makes me very anxious because guess what I found TWO BOOKS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE THEME I HANDLED AFTER SUBMITTING IT DFCVFDVGFVB WHERE WERE THEY?????)

And while the expectation for the thesis was 100 pages, I ended up writing 180, so……………………………. let’s say it took time…. Now, we’ll see how it goes, hopefully the jury doesn’t hate it 😭😭😭😭

And for June? Well, high schoolers are sitting on their exams during June, so OF COURSE I AM BUSY PREPARING THEM

yet

YET

YEEEEEEEEEEEEET

you don’t know if he said yet or yeet

yeet the cat of schrödingaling

I’ve been doing some things on the dev’s end!!!! So time to share.

Quick The Beauty Marks of Aquarius update

It should be the first thing I commit to next week, but I intend to release a very small update to The Beauty Marks of Aquarius to correct some typos/repetitions and, more importantly, wrong dates in Jonas’ line (at some point, he mentions Lazare died in 1842, which is wrong: Lazare died at 42, but it was in 1840).

Also, that’s not a priority, but I was wondering because I’m working on a special build for a friend that lets you know when a jumpscare is going to appear. I don’t intend on removing them, as I see them as parts of the game’s vibe and narrative experience. I’m not sure about releasing the “jumpscare warning” update publicly since I’m not sure most people would care, but if there are requests for a version that lets you know when a jumpscare (whether visual or auditive) is going to happen, I might issue it publicly!

Otome Jam

I’ve also been working on a visual novel for Otome Jam! With AI!!!!

DON’T THROW YOUR TOMATOES

DON’T THROW YOUR STONES AT ME

BECAUSE YOU CAN BUILD ME UP YOU CAN TEAR ME DOWN YOU WILL FIND THAT I’M UNBREAKABLE

YOU CAN DO YOUR BEST BUT I’LL STAND THE TEST YOU’LL FIND THAT I’M UNSHAKABLE

WHEN THE FIRE’S BURNT WHEN THE WIND HAS BLOWN WHEN THE WATER’S DRIED YOU’LL STILL FIND STONE

MY HEART OF STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE

Let’s get back to topic after this musical interlude.

So, rest assured, the game won’t include AI-generated content of any sort, as usual, I still value art and human creation. And I mean, AI could never write devlogs like I do.

EDIT: EXCEPT FOR REN'PY I GUESS LMAOOOOOOOOOO WHAT THE FUCK I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PROCESS THE INFORMATION SO DON'T ASK ME TO COMMENT ON IT

But I’ve been SPAMMED with ADS for AI chatbots, and, in my opinion, the ads are absolutely immoral, even beyond the AI debate. Indeed, they present themselves as a substitute for actual human companionship, and they do promote patterns of possessiveness and obsession. And if I can comprehend why people would enjoy that in fiction (like in dark romance and stuff), I cannot use this framework for ads that, once again, pretend to be substitutes for actual relationships.

Needless to say, such relationships are meaningless: the people on these apps are not interacting with anyone sharing their feelings, just with a network of neurons trained to predict text. And those apps are cashgrabs, obviously.

In my case, and I write that with great shame, it was easy to stand from the shore and to despise those sinking to the sirens of AI, to which their loneliness led them to.

So I wanted to make a game that would tackle the topic while still helping me to become a more empathetic person when it comes to people using AI — not to approve it, but to open dialogue. So I thought of a horror game where you can date an AI boyfriend!!

So far, I can’t say I have made much progress (only around 3.5k words written, for a demo that will certainly be around 6k-7k words, including the first part of one route out of 4), but I knew I would be busy during the last months of the school year, with my job and my master’s. So I planned ahead and commissioned art for the game, which makes me very excited! And if you’ve made it so far into the devlog, despite my shitpost, you deserve a sneak-peek. First, the LI whose route will partially be released during Otome Jam (hopefully……), Sico:

Sico is an AI love interest, who happens to be very supportive and understanding of you!! Certainly, nothing can go wrong with that!! And you can also get to meet, Omar, who is the second LI to appear in the demo, although it won’t be in his route (since his route is very tied to another LI):

Omar is your former high school classmate, but also your boss in the computer shop you work at! So yes, Omar is actually a human being!! The only human love interest in the game!!! I think the art looks absolutely LOVELY, and I have to thank alliumiao for it!!!! Commission them!!!!

I won’t detail too much of the rest of the game when it comes to the horror elements, but you can expect a different experience from The Beauty Marks of Aquarius. Indeed, as my NaNoRenO game was created for people who primarily enjoy horror and aimed at nailing the “gothic” vibe, this one is first and foremost targeted at the otome girlies, boyies and enbies who just enjoy “subversive” approaches of otome games (I do put quote marks, because there isn’t anything truly subversive, games using the tropes of romance to go into another direction than standard otome games do is commonplace, my game is like the other girls!!!!), so yeah, very different vibes!!

So ta-dah, I hope you guys are excited! Truth be told, I don’t even know what title to give the game yet, I only have “Date the AI” in mind which, well, is the gist of it, but it SUCKS in terms of SEO lmaoooooo, so I’ll have to think harder… If you guys have suggestions, I’m not against those! But if I end up releasing the game with “Date the AI” as a title, then it means my brain didn’t want to work!

And that’s it for updates (beyond some art experimentations for Margarêve, but I did switch to some sort of digital painting, while still adopting an even more anime-ish art style). Thanks for reading me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you close your eyes and take a deep breath

that was not chimériquement the game dev

it was just a hallucination

you finally find sleep

and in your dreams, a visitor comes to you

what will your dream be, margaret?