Over the course of February and the latter half of January, there has been quite a bit of buzzing around OSAS HQ! 

While I still plan to write up a proper post-mortem for the demo itself, there are a lot of moving parts that I've been preoccupied with, so I'll get right into it:

Close-ups of Seamus and Hugo's Chapter 2 Introduction CGs.

In a Nutshell

You can see it's been quite a jam-packed month!

• Released the Extended Demo! 🎉
• Seamus Chapter 3 has been fully drafted, and Hugo Chapter 4 is in progress.  Some content for Seamus Chapter 5, 8, and 12 has also been in the works!
• The full version of the Crosby Hall Background was delivered (and it is even more beautiful.) See the full thing here! 
• Scripting for Hugo Chapter 2 is in progress.
• Hugo's Chapter 2 CG was revamped, and the CG for Seamus Chapter 8 was sketched.
• Posted a devlog titled Sprites, Camera, Action!: VN Cinematography in Of Sense and Soul to itch.io.
• Began work on future crowdfunding rewards.
• Finalised our Voice Cast then recorded Soundbytes and Fully Voiced Scenes for the Demo. And last but not least...
• Our Newsletter, The Illustrated OSAS News, got an overhaul, with letters from Hugo now to be included in every issue!(You should sign up if you like that kind of thing! 😌) 

Voice Acting

This is perhaps the most prominent development over the past month: The speedy casting, onboarding, and recording process with our voice cast! There are still a few files yet to come in and a whole lot of work left to get the audio in game, and it has been an amazing whirlwind thus far.

Role announcements will be made over the course of this week, but everyone we cast has been a pleasure to work with and each of them embodies their characters so well!

You can see the announcements all together in this Twitter Thread. 

In particular, we've had the joy of working with the actors playing Hugo and Seamus, as well as our Voice Director MAHO!Cody, during live direction sessions to record the fully voiced scenes in the Extended Demo. 

The bloopers are just one of the many amazing things about them:

Our audio engineer will be editing the soundbytes and line files for the next while, but we're so excited to share the voices of OSAS with you all. 💖 They truly bring the game to the next level!

Beyond the Demo

With our focus having been so solidly on the Extended Demo's content, which was two chapters each from Hugo's and Seamus' routes, we've now naturally turned our attention to other parts of the story.

We set out on the demo with the goal of getting most of the Act 1 content done despite the demo containing only half of it, so we've got a decent chunk put away! As mentioned above, work has also continued on CGs for the rest of the game.

When it comes to scripting the rest of the game, there are some elements we can play with, such as the camerawork. In Chapter 2, Hugo and Seamus' routes share the same misunderstanding conversation, but they're depicted a little differently in Seamus' route versus in Hugo's, and not just for which side the characters are standing! 

Creating more or less depth between the sprites really makes a difference in the emotion of a scene, and you can see it here:

A screenshot of the misunderstanding scene from Hugo Chapter 2. Hugo is closer to Seamus and they're on more "even" standing.

The same scene, but from Seamus Chapter 2 as shown in the Extended Demo. Hugo is distant and blurred out, whereas Seamus is much closer to the viewer.

That's all for now! We'll see you with the next game update :)

Be sure to wishlist the game on Steam and rate/comment on the demo on Itch!

Until next time! Ingrid