Hi everyone! I'm currently working on a development post-mortem for Office Rivals, but I want to celebrate the release real quick, and here goes:

I want to say thanks for those who follow this project, whether closely or casually! Big thanks to our longtime patron Maeo, and former patrons who have supported in the past (Fungaru, BigMac66, McGruff, and Shodan)!

I'm truly sorry if the project has dragged this long until release. This is a passion project, which means I can't prioritize it the same way other developers (who handle it as a business/career) prioritize their projects.

This will be sort of a post-mortem as well, but more on the general side.

2022 Hiccups

An early promotional image of the game.

Originally, I was aiming for a late 2022 release of Office Rivals. I'm always cautious on being overly ambitious, and when I did become ambitious, my caution was proven right: there was no way I could release the VN that soon!

2023 came around and life got busier. My irl career had its ups and downs, and I experienced heartbreaks and guilts here and there, too. Time-wise, I could only spend a few hours on some weekends to work on the game. Not to mention, every work that I put into was not necessarily directly productive.

What I mean by this is, I could be working on several frames of animation for a month, only to scrap the whole thing because of its poor end quality.

Guilt and Refunds

Admittedly, I felt very guilty that my progress was very slow, and did some refunds or paused Patreon billing here and there when I felt like the month had nothing much to show for. I really want to avoid being misunderstood as ripping supporters off or stringing people along.

Much thanks to those who have been supporting this project so far!

Realizing the original vision: Heart City Stories Anthology

This project is actually quite structured, even from the very beginning. But I avoided revealing anything too much, as they say: do, not tell. It's only after Office Rivals has been released that I could finally realize the original vision: this entire project is actually an anthology of VNs, with a shared universe.

Other than the VN, which is the main project, I release artworks (pin-up artworks) every now and then, and sometimes free character sprites for your own VN projects. Eventhough they aren't as good as the work of other artists, I hope they are good enough as placeholder assets for aspiring devs who lack resources in the art department.

Some character sprites. Some may end up released as free sprites, some may end up in future games as side characters.

But the side projects' purpose is mainly to keep me getting burned out from working solely on the VN. Some days, it's exhausting to keep working on the same 6 frames of a particular animation, so it's nice to draw something else, simply to keep the productive momentum going.

CHEERS and thanks again!

Please look forward to the in-depth post-mortem I'll be posting soon!