August.3/2025

• Been making a lot of progress. Focusing on visual effects for multiple scenes. The drinking chapter motion blur+camera noise system is fully in place. Really satisfied with the second pass of the particle effects for the ending sequence of the chapter. Using a merzbow song as a placeholder for the music. Plan is to end on one minute of noise while the effect is happening. It feels like my previous games i promise and The Light Of Our Yearning put together. Next is to add more juice (screenshake, dutch camera, double vision, fov changes, radial blur, vignette, sound design).
• Bought a road bike from this really cool couple that went bike touring across Japan. It’s a huge upgrade over my rusty mamachari bike. Will be super useful for long aimless exploring inside and outside the city. This is where inspiration strikes me most often.

August.8/2025

• Encountered a big bug today with the horse controller. Managed to fix it after 5 hours of debugging. Was feeling extremely demoralized when making no progress. Turns out the issue was a simple fix (as it always is). Moments like this are scary. Technical bugs can halt the production of a project and eventually it becomes abandoned. There are a lot of games that don’t get released simply because of a bug that ruins all momentum.

August.9/2025

• Thinking a lot about the narrative and writing today. Potential renaming of the game. Whether it should be a wordless story. I feel very lucky to have a talented writer part of this project to guide the direction. These thoughts are sparked by the concept of Game Poems and wanting to create a visual poem that doesn’t rely on the written form to evoke an emotional response. I’m not against the idea of having words to convey parts of the story. The story will be minimal in the end. I’ve played examples of games where their story would shine more with less writing. Maybe I’m going to extreme with no writing. Either way, there will be a visual story.
• Got a lot done today. Feeling extremely motivated in having all the systems in place to have something that’s playable. A mid fidelity prototype of sorts. Nearing the stage where I can start the polish phase and begin using more of the grant money to pay for concept art sketches. This will help with guidance for original 3D asset creation later.

August.31/2025

• A lot of this month was spent on bug fixes, project cleanup, and scene polishing. Also traveled for a week for the Setouchi Triennale which provided a much needed break and new inspiration.