Hello! It's been quite some time since we last saw each other.... So today I just want to catch up on the months of silence by talking about all the events of the past, as well as the near future.
But before that: thank you for reading this right now. I'm far from the best developer one could wish for.... so I'm very happy to everyone who still stays with my work and with me as an author. Thanks again for all the support!
Well... shall we begin?
The first thing that happened was my move to Japan in April. Despite all the stress associated with it, I didn't so much gain inspiration as I SIGNIFICANTLY broadened my horizons. In short: it has greatly raised my expectations of my own work. The impact it has already had on the development is incredibly exciting to me!
Next, I went with Nikita Kryukov to the Tokyo Indies (a small convention of indie developers in Tokyo). There, along with other games he has published, he presented my visual novel. I still really like his slide to this day:
And another month later, two REFLEXIA anniversaries happened. August 31st was one year since the game was released on Steam, and September 5th was two years since I finished and submitted it to a visual novel contest. This news was originally supposed to be released on one of those days, but something went wrong as always... Anyway, there is still a gift left in the plans for these anniversaries. More on that in a bit!
Also by the anniversary Prototype ver. managed to reach the anniversary number of copies - as much as 200 000! And this, I think, is just the beginning. Thank you very much!
And today - a little talk about the unobtainable achievement and French translation. I want to apologize to everyone I ignored on this topic all this time: it was really hard for me to decide how best to act and what to say.
It was a really difficult problem for me. Actually, I created it: I shouldn't have added an unobtainable achievement in advance and promised a new translation before it was ready... so it's only my fault. Why didn't I give the opportunity to get the achievement without the language? To me it seemed disrespectful to the translator. Now I realize that by doing so, I only caused them more stress, while causing a lot of inconvenience to all the players. I really apologize...
Regarding the translation itself: it's still not done yet. I'm sorry for the promises I made a year ago but still can't fulfill. Unfortunately, I won't be able to say anything about it even now. French is definitely coming, but when and in what version (more on that below) I have no idea. Anyway, I immediately inform you about any changes in situation! In the meantime, the language button will disappear from the game - just not to tease anyone anymore.
I solved the problem with achievements in a similar way, because I don't want to further complicate things. And anyway, I had a plan to do it in the future, so... there are no more language achievements. Mentions of all translators have been moved to the game description on Steam. Now anyone who was only missing French or any other language achievement for some reason has the game completely finished. Congratulations!
Now let's talk about the anniversary gift?
I used to say all the time that I would never update the Prototype ver. Now, however, due to my incredibly broad horizons and raised expectations, I feel like the game just needs to be given a fresher look. Therefore... I'm making a remaster!
The script and text will remain almost unchanged. But the rest...
This post is already long enough, so I'll leave the details of the update for later. If you can't wait, you can find a couple of spoilers on my Discord server! In the meantime... I'd love to hear any expectations about what's going to change in the remaster. Maybe there's something you'd really like to see and I haven't thought of it yet...? And you can also ask me questions here, not only about the update, but about REFLEXIA in general.
See you soon!