When it comes to this visual novel, it being a ‘side-project’ or companion piece if you will, the length and complexity of the project is an important consideration. Should we make a short, bite-sized experience that can be completed in a relatively short amount of time or craft a longer and more in-depth story that players can really sink their teeth into?

On the one hand, creating a shorter visual novel allows us to produce more of these in a shorter amount of time, giving our players a variety of experiences to choose from. It also increases the likelihood of it getting completed at all before we have to dive into the next project!

On the other hand, a longer and more complex visual novel is more likely to stand out and become successful on its own.

For now, we’ve decided to start off with the shorter version. We’d like to give our players a quick and enjoyable experience that they can complete in a short amount of time. We also want to be able to produce more of these bite-sized visual novels so that our fans can keep coming back and have something new to explore. Of course, that depends on how well this first one does – if everyone hates it I guess there will be no more of that.

This also means that we’ll definitely start out with only this artefact and release it as a VN of its own, rather than having you choose between all three in the same game.

Now, exactly how short and bite sized this thing will become of course depends on the outline, which I’m writing right now. I’m definitely not going to compromize a great story just to keep it short, but it’s good to have a clear idea of what we’re aiming for before committing to design the overall story from start to finish. After all, designing a 2 hour game is a lot different from designing a 100 hour one.

Hopefully I’ll have a better idea of where things are going next week! Stay tuned 🙂