Hi, everyone! It's the first Because We're Here patch in a long time! Nothing too exciting, I'm afraid - it's just some smallish cosmetic changes. But I've written a general project update too, so read on if you're interested in how things are going in a broader sense. ^^
First things first - Act I (v1.5) and Act II (v1.4) have had the following changes made:
- Umlauts have now been incorporated into the game's script! A handful of character/place names have changed to reflect this - Saenger becomes 'Sänger', Mueller becomes 'Müller' and so on.
- The medics' insignia is now a green cross, to avoid resemblance to any specific real-world symbols or organisations.
- Elfriede's hometown is now called Blauebrück, to avoid resemblance to any specific real-world places.
- Eugen's familial home is now named Bodendiek Hall (it just sounds nice).
- Rewrote a good few textboxes for clarity and flow.
- Fixed a good few typos, text errors and textbox issues.
Acts I and II are also going to be 40% off for the next week or so, to tie in to the AdventureX Steam event. AdvX is a narrative games convention in London - I exhibited Because We're Here there in November 2019, which was around the last time BWH development was truly active and firing on all cylinders. It's nice to be taking part in the event once again, in some capacity. (I'm also, less-digitally, helping my friend showcase their own, excellent, game there, so come and say hi if you're around this weekend!)
Anyway! Now I've come out of the woodwork, I'll do a quick State of the Union address for BWH in general.
It's staggering to think that it's been S I X Y E A R S since Act II came out!! That means I wrote the first drafts for Because We're Here over ten years ago. BWH is an incredibly personal game for me, and is also really quite possibly a bit of a niche taste hahaha, so it's still an absolute dream whenever I see people playing, enjoying and discussing it, or people who have kept it in mind all these years later. Thank you to everyone who's occasionally checked in, or even just let your thoughts wander to whether BWH would ever be continued! ^^''
I can only apologise for how long the gap between Act II and Act III has been! I've had wildly varying amounts of free time since 2020, and I've been drifting in and out of working on BWH as the years have passed - I'm a hobbyist game developer, and I think it's a fair summation of the past half-decade to say the project sort of inadvertently slid into hiatus without me necessarily realising. And unfortunately, it became increasingly difficult to work on it whenever I *did* have chance; it's hard to write up the second half of a story you drafted years and years ago (and have been sitting on the artwork for too hahaha) without wondering whether it'll feel like it was written by a different person from the first two acts at this point.
But recently, things have actually been going quite well with BWH! I've had a lot more chance to work on it lately. The game was never cancelled, as I earnestly intended to continue at every point - but I do currently feel a little like, for all intents and purposes, I'm reviving a cancelled project, and I'm finding that's actually quite a nice way to think about it hahaha. This game has always been a labour of love, and I'm really enjoying being back actively working on it and feeling like I can make something faithful to the story I wrote way back when - whilst still accounting for the fact that a lot of time has passed.
As mentioned in the patch notes above, I've fixed up a bit of the dialogue in the current versions of Acts I and II. I definitely think it's possible to get too fussy about overhauling a past creation, but it's also still sort of technically 'ongoing' as a project, so I think I'm just about allowed haha. I haven't yet looked over most of the text to the extent I would have liked, so I'll still be chipping away at that in the background and probably do another patch with more tweaks sometime before the next acts are out. But once it's finished, I'm going to leave it all alone (to the best of my ability lol). ^^
I also want to say that I've decided to combine Acts III and IV into one release - primarily because they felt like very much a two-parter, and I didn't want to risk another long pause between them! But also, Act II was always going to be the longest act, so if people had been expecting something that rivalled or exceeded Act II in length then they may have been disappointed when a solo Act III came out. So 'Act III and Act IV' is going to be a single game, of comparable length to Act II! The story's still four acts - just now told via three releases.
I'd hoped to have this ready in time for this update, but time's gotten away from me in the end: I'm going to put up a store page for Act III + Act IV hopefully next week. It may not have a great deal on it yet, but I figure it's good to let people start wishlisting - as well as its existence being a good way to show at a glance that things are Back On Track. I'm setting an estimated release date as '2026'.
(And yes, I'll also be updating my store page assets into the new resolution etc. over the next few weeks! I'm very aware that all my resources are varying degrees of outdated right now haha)
Anyway! Ṭhank you for your patience so far, and thank you thank you thank you to everyone who's shown interest in this tiny indie game at some point!! I hope this answers some of your questions (the big one generally being 'is this game dead'). Time to get back to it. See you on the other side! Or at least see you a little closer to the other side. 'See you later', I guess is what I'm trying to say. Just a normal goodbye, in the end. Goodbye!