Hi sweets, welcome to our first dev log for March 2025!
This log is originally written by Norika, our artist, in Chinese and then translated by me, Sinope, into English. And I'm gonna be very open here that due to the strong personal colour in her writing, translating it accurately isn’t exactly easy. Hence I decided to completely improvise while making sure all the important and necessary information is conveyed. Beyond that, the writing will be mine, possibly with a strong personal colour as well. This is how our dev logs will work from now on. English users, you're stuck with me.
Anyway, I'd like to thank Norika for writing the dev log, as I originally thought I'd have to write both the Chinese and English versions myself. Her writing the Chinese version definitely saves me a lot of work and provides a framework for the English log, which means I don’t need to think about the content at all and can just focus on adding some wit here. Did I make it? Not sure.
Our goal is to update every month—we'll see how that goes. Here’s a summary of what happened last month:
- Launched our first demo
- Worked on the English translation
- I did some socialising, networking, and SNS marketing as usual
- Norika drew so much stuff, including a new Steam capsule, new backgrounds, new CGs, and even designed new UIs
- Whitefish has been writing and added another 20k Chinese characters, almost finishing the prologue
Demo 1.0 Launch
Another round of applause, please! Congrats to us on releasing our first demo! 🎉
I can't believe it's only been a month, honestly it feels like a year ago. And I’m rushing to finish the English translation as soon as possible, because when Demo 2.0 arrives, it won’t just bring new content but also a revamp of existing content. That means some parts of Demo 1.0 will be gone, and you guys haven’t even had the chance to experience it yet!
You can't hear but inside I'm silently screaming like AHHHHHHHHHHH!
Translation
We've had a very very kind volunteer reach out to us, offering Japanese translation for free. Thank you 蛇村铃田 sensei! 🙌
Norika is gonna help me with the English translation to speed things up. On top of that, she’s assisting with the Japanese translation too—what can I say, with great power comes great responsibility amounts of work.
But Japanese translation is a less priority compared to English, mainly because we have no idea where/how we can establish connection with Japanese players. We really want to, as TRT is essentailly a story set against a Japanese backdrop. However Norika is the only person in our team who speaks Japanese, and she’s already handling a huge workload, so it’s a bit tricky...
As for the English translation, we do apologise in advance for any mistakes or unnatural phrasing. English is not our first language, and we don't have any experience in English translation nor a proofreader. We’re doing our best, and hopefully it won’t turn out to be a mess!
Script Debug
Yes, Whitefish found a bug in her writing. Here’s the thing (from her first-person perspective):
While slacking off and doing research at the same time, I discovered that although some Taishō-era settings in fiction include ramen shops, it seems that back then, only Chinese-style noodles (chūka-men) or soba were common. In short, ramen wasn’t something you’d typically find at street stalls or small eateries… I didn’t think too much about it at the time and just wrote it in. Now I can only fix it in Demo 2.0—I totally didn’t see this coming! But how could you survive winter without a bowl of hot, soupy goodness? Guess I’ll just have to let the protagonist eat udon instead.
New art & UI
Not sure how much of a surprise it’s going to be if you haven’t played Demo 1.0 and seen our old UI yet, but here are some sketches:
We do have a finished design, but let’s save the spoilers for later.
The inspiration for the About and Preference pages comes from old magazines and planners/journals. Norika herself has been using planners/journals for years, so she adopted a collage style in her design.
We do plan to add a gallery in the game, hopefully for Demo 2.0 or Demo 3.0 if I run out of time to code. The art style for the gallery is already decided: it’ll be a traditional folding screen with silhouettes of the 5 characters projected on it. Clicking on a silhouette will guide you to the CGs of the corresponding character.
The Main Menu UI is also planned for a renovation, though I personally really like the design we already have. You'll know when you see it, it's so cool.
Norika also drew some new illustration for a short OP (opening theme, though we're using our main theme song as we don't have budget for more customised music) animation. We've post this spoiler on social media and here's the full picture:
Moreover, she's redrawn some CGs she wasn’t satisfied with, updated spirtes for the cop and some NPCs who haven't appeared yet, drew 3 new backgrouds and much more sketches, NSFW included.
Discord server
Speaking of NSFW content, yes I just finished furnishing our Discord server so it's officially open now! Norika will post her work (SFW and NSFW) there, so feel free to check it out if you’re interested.
Click here to join! We’re excited to meet you there! Nevertheless we’re still getting the hang of managing a Discord server, so please bear with us if we make any mistakes along the way…
And that's a wrap for this dev log. I'm tring to post more on social media (but honestly I'm not good at it at all) so you can find us on X/Twitter or Bluesky as well. Until next time then!
All the best,
SweetSome