In the blink of an eye, November has arrived! Busy as we have been, it's been a difficulty to sit down and report in through a devlog such as this one—so once again, here we are with a two month digest.

Production for the game is back in full swing after a little while spent wrangling with logistics and admin matters.

Join our Newsletter and our Discord to get the latest updates first and chat with us! We'd love to hear from you 💖  

Reminder: Backerkit Surveys

There are a handful of our Kickstarter Backers who have yet to send in their Backerkit surveys, so check your emails for the link if you need to fill that out!

If you have any difficulties finding your survey or have any other questions, feel free to send an email to forsythiaproductions@gmail.com or holler at me on our Discord.

You should also have received the first of our many rewards, the Vignette Tier DIY Sittees PDF, as a digital download on Backerkit! Go forth and seat Hugo and Seamus wherever you like!  🙌

In a Nutshell 🌰

At last, more progress has been made on the art front! As in all other areas, really.

More extensive behind-the-scenes content are to come in The Illustrated OSAS News(letter) and Kickstarter Updates, including videos of gameplay! 

Production Updates 🛠️

Story

Writing has been going steadily and surely, with progress made on both routes; most notably on Hugo's route with Rowan at the helm, with the full drafting of Chapters 4 and 6. I've been writing in chunks for Hugo's route to add to existing chapter content as well, but my focus has primarily been on editing and adding to Seamus' route—particularly Chapters 10 and 11, which are quite pivotal ones in the story.

As a result, Act 1 of the game is now fully written! Final touches will still be made to both new and old chapters before they're fully implemented in-game, or as required by scripting, but it feels good to have that squared away. 

Editing was outsourced on Chapter 4 of Hugo's route because Rowan and I had gotten a little blocked over what should be done to the chapter to refine it, and I'm pleased to say this helped quite a bit! A majority of our chapters are edited by Rowan or myself, but we will likely seek editing help for select chapters in the future as well, to give our writing additional perspective.

Since our last devlog, the entire story of OSAS has grown from roughly 55,700 words to over 60,000 words, meaning we are well on track to our estimate of 100,000+ words.

Visuals

In October, creation of artwork for the game restarted in earnest, starting of course with the remaining assets needed for Act 1. 

(Background art production runs on a slightly different timeline to that of the CG illustrations and Sprite art, so the current batch Joseph is handling, including the near-complete Everett's Attic Study background, is actually for Act 2. Below you can see some of the incredible detail he has put into the attic.)

While lower on the priority list, the revamp to the Chapter 4 Poetry Reading CG has been slated for a long while now—and with the Kickstarter Backer CG Cameo reward decided, it seemed as good a time as any to give it a do-over.

Below you can see the initial sketch of the new CG overlaid on the previous CG, which was drawn in August 2022. 

Overall improvements to the composition of the scene and the refinement of art style are the main objectives here, as the previous CG wasn't created with extensive camerawork in mind. The new version is also at a higher resolution and features better layering for that purpose.

Here you can see the difference in style compared to last year's. Seamus' facial features have been adjusted to match newer art, and the colouring and line art styles have been made smoother.

Sadie's sprite, which you can see in-progress below, is also ready for implementation! Hers is the final full sprite needed for Act 1, though I plan on giving all the sprites more poses and, in some cases, different outfits.

Once her arms are fully rendered we can consider this sprite ready—not for the full game, but for the beta test version this month!

Audio

The first, most exciting piece of audio-related news is the addition of six new voice actors to our cast! Announcements for their roles have yet to be made, but we are incredibly excited to begin recording with them.

We also completed recording for our existing cast for additional soundbytes and introduction lines. While not every character can have dedicated fully voiced scenes, we still want their voices to come through—and so we've recorded the first few lines spoken by the character in each route so that extra context is included. It was a treat to hear everyone's voices once again, and the next step is for audio engineering to match the files up to our existing ones.

On the topic of audio engineering, we asked our engineer Haru to master the entire soundtrack following issues noted in the extended demo where certain tracks were too loud, too quiet, or overpowered the voice acting. This is now complete, and should make for a more pleasant auditory experience for you all!

Scripting

Seamus Chapter 3 introduces Sadie, Seamus' older sister, and much like Hugo's equivalent chapter introduces Seamus' main subplot—his familial tensions and reckoning for his past mistakes. 

Roughly a third of the chapter is now scripted, comprising Sadie's introduction and the reading of a letter Seamus receives soon after. 

 There are five scenes remaining to script for this chapter, which come with a bit of drama, so I've been prototyping back view sprites for Hugo and Seamus in order to push the cinematography further. 

(This idea came from a game I worked on during Otome Jam this year. I've been tossing the idea around in my mind ever since!)

Though the below screenshots use just rough prototypes of the back sprites, you might be able to see the wealth of possibilities in store with them. Whether for casual scenes or more intimate moments, having an additional angle of the main characters will be quite useful.

Of course, these aren't really a priority for now—it remains to be seen if there will be time for full versions to be made for the beta access version of Act 1—but you can bet I'll be making use of these back views as we go forward!

What's Next?

Looking ahead in November, we're planning to slow a little on creating more story content, as Rowan takes on NaNoWriMo for a separate project and I turn my efforts to scripting and getting that Act 1 beta game build out to our backers. 

We'll also be working with our newly cast voice actors to record soundbytes and introduction lines, and we will likely be getting a start on another background!

Thank you for reading this latest update, once again, and have a great month! 💌

Until next time,

Ingrid