I have never written this sort of thing, let’s see how it turns out.

Making this game was an interesting experience.

While I am not extremely proud of it, it is the first project I have started, finished, and released in a complete state.

And it is such a strange feeling whenever I see someone play something I have made. I feel conflicted - on one hand, happy that people are enjoying my work, while on the other - worried, perhaps anxious, that it was not good enough, that I could’ve done this or that better.

As I mentioned earlier, it is not something I am extremely proud of. The entire story is practically pointless, as it gets discarded by the end of the game (albeit for a good reason), the music is randomised throughout the entire game rather than tied to a specific theme/character, which was something I planned to do in the beginning, character dialogues often don’t tie into the character’s personality, among other smaller things.

What I can say I am proud of is myself. Truly, releasing a full-fledged project out onto the open in 9 days is something I never thought I would’ve done. I have learned quite a few things too; the PBR workflow in Blender, UV mapping, posing, basic animations in Godot, and probably most importantly - that proofreading and testing every new feature is very important for a proper release.

Among all those things about myself, I want to thank:

• You. Whether you’ve only checked out my profile, read this post, played my game, talked with me, whatever; it means a lot.

• My first player and tester. You know who you are.

• The Touhou Game Dev Discord server. A lot of great people that I’ve met over the course of the jam.

And perhaps; a bit about the story, lore, maybe the thought process behind it. I have seen that quite a few people don’t necessarily understand it. That’s fine; after all, video games are a work of art, and art doesn’t have to be understood by everyone. In fact, if it isn’t understood by everyone, that’s what makes it art. I suppose I just wanted to say that everything that happens throughout the game that may seem like a bug is fully intentional.

Lastly; will I be continuing game development?

Quite honestly, I have no idea. I feel like I want to either focus on other programming projects or on full-fledged writing projects with complete world building, maybe with some Touhou fanfiction on the side. And as I see it, for now, if I do release something on itch in the near future it will most likely be more of an experience or short story set in a larger world, rather than a complete, self-contained game.

Just remember,
The end is never the end
~ Gaia