The Human Reignition Project - An English Visual Novel

35k and the Final Hours!
over 9 years ago – Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 10:32:59 AM

Making this update a quick one as I'm somewhere on the California highway, with my good friend Razz from Starlight Vega. Anyway, a few minutes ago we hit our next stretch goal, and the one I was most excited for personally: a full opening theme. We'll be contacting a couple doujin circles as well as a few established singers to weigh our options.

I'll post a more detailed update once I get to Seattle and the campaign ends, but I just wanted to say something real quick as we get into the final hours here. Thanks again to all our backers, old and new. Let's keep pushing for that animation stretch goal!

Last 24 hours special tier!
over 9 years ago – Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 10:32:55 AM

As thanks for helping us reach our goals, we added a special $60 tier for the last 24 hours that adds a physical copy of the game and a digital copy. If you missed out on any of the other early bird specials this new tier comes without a backer limit, so don't miss out!

Also if you can't afford to back now, jumping on the $1 tier will unlock BackerKit access which allows you to access the tiers in the future.

Now and Then
over 9 years ago – Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 10:32:43 AM

Wow. Lots to talk about. Apologies this is coming rather late in the day; been out and about for most of it.

So, as you can probably see, the Kickstarter has ended. Including Paypal donations, we're just over $48,000 raised, and that will probably go up somewhat during Backerkit. I've said "thank you" an obscene number of times in the past few updates, so I'll just it once more: thank you.

Immediately moving forward, we'll be setting up Backerkit within the next couple weeks or so. For those unfamiliar, Backerkit is a site that allows you guys to modify your pledges, purchase extra add-on's, maintain your shipping info, and lots of other neat stuff. You'll be receiving an invitation to that via email once it goes live (first we have to wait for the payment to be collected by Kickstarter and for everything to be ready).

Even though we didn't hit the $50k stretch goal, we'll still look into adding animation. THIS IS NOT A GUARANTEE THAT IT WILL BE INCLUDED. However, it is something that I personally really want to see happening, so I'll do my best to find a solution. As for our opening theme, well, we'll post more news about that when we have it.

One thing that I am really excited to announce is that our demo will be receiving a Japanese translation and, if all goes according to plan, it'll be exhibited at Sekai Project's booth at Tokyo Games Show this September. TGS is similar to the Japanese E3, so this is a huge honor for those of us at Alienworks. Unfortunately, none of us will be in attendance personally, but a couple members of SP as well as Love In Space will be. This is the reason that we'll be updating our demo after all. However, due to the amount of time that translation will take, we'll only be making minimal changes to the script. We'll be fixing typos as well as hopefully rewriting a couple of the weakest scenes from the demo, but as mentioned before, you won't see the full scope of our intended changes until the full release. We have a bit more time to work on things like music and art though, since they don't require any extra localization effort, and so you can expect to see more changes of that nature in the updated version.

I think that's about everything from us for now. See you next time, and thanks for supporting #BigEroge!

Greenlight, Stretch Goals, and Demo Feedback
over 9 years ago – Mon, Jul 06, 2015 at 08:51:35 AM

Hey again everyone! Time for another quick check-in.

As you probably heard, we released our Act 1 demo almost a week ago. You can find a link to that at the top of the campaign page - it's available on Mac, PC, Linux and Android! Anyway, we've spent the time since then scouring the depths of the internet for feedback and seeing what people think of it so far. While I'm pleased to say that reception has been overall positive, there are definitely a few clear areas for improvement.

To keep you guys in the know, I wanted to go over what a few things are that we're gonna be improving moving forward.

The first thing is the oft-mentioned artistic consistency, both between CG's and sprites, as well as from CG to CG. Most of our troubles there can be chalked up to poor communication, so it's a relatively simple problem to overcome. We'll be providing closer feedback to the character artists and also changing up our CG process a little bit to help everything feel a little bit more uniform. In addition, Myuto's going to be touching up or redoing a large number of sprites.

We'll also be touching up our setting and improving upon that a lot. Included here is re-evaluating our usage of Ambrosidone and the way that we portray Ken when he's taking it. While we won't be cutting it out of the story (it's actually really important in a couple routes later on), we do recognize that there were some issues with how we were showing it - namely that the scenes were over the top and a little bit confusing. 

Going along with the setting is the issue of location - Japan in our case. The reasoning behind that one is actually kinda interesting. For a long time, up to maybe two or three months before we released the demo, we tried to keep it ambiguous. Yeah, our characters had Japanese names, but we didn't wanna straight up say "our game is set in Japan" for a few reasons. However, as we did some more research and talked to a few people, we realized that a couple real-life issues that Japan will be facing in the coming decades are issues that tie in nicely to the themes of our game. With that in mind, we decided to fully embrace the Japanese setting thing... After the majority of our demo was already written. Rather than go back and do a thorough rewrite, we changed a few details and called it good. Thing is, it wasn't really good enough, as anyone with some knowledge of the real Japan can point out a number of inconsistencies. We know how to improve these for the full-release, but unfortunately it is a bit too late for the demo. Like I said though, it's room to improve.

The last major thing that we'll be working on is an overhaul of Ken as a character. We intentionally wrote him to be somewhat jaded and apathetic, as we wanted to make him a product of the society he lives in. Of course, the unforeseen consequence of this was that he turned out to be a little unlikable, and more than a little boring. After a several hour meeting yesterday, we've got a pretty solid idea of how to fix that and make him more interesting, but I'm not gonna say too much on the issue yet. Expect an update on that sometime in the next few months though.

Beyond the demo, we do have some more good news. For one, HRP has been Greenlit on Steam! Thanks to everyone who voted. If you pledged for a digital copy of the game, when it's released, you'll be able to choose between a Steam key or a key for another distributor that we work with (likely the Humble store). If you got a physical copy, you'll be able to activate the game on Steam, too.

As of the time of writing this, we're sitting at just above 27k pledged. Please keep spreading the word and help us reach some of those stretch goals! The 35k one, with a professional quality Opening Theme, is one that I'm especially excited for. Please, send a link to the demo to your favorite LP'er or post about it on your social media; every little bit of exposure helps.

Just below here, you can see the finished lines for the Yukino daki by Shiyun. She's working hard to finish the rest of them; shouldn't be too much longer. If you're interested in watching her draw, she sometimes streams the process while she works on them. Follow me on Twitter @Raithfyre or her @Gaisvelt and we'll often tweet about it when she goes live.

Don't forget that a few of us are gonna be at Anime Expo next week! Stop by Sekai Project's booth to say hello (I'll probably be there!) or to buy one of the prints that we're selling. Sekai Project also has lots of other awesome merch this year; Grisaia posters, Nekopara and World's End Economica shirts, as well as much, much more. I recommend checking out the Fault series that they sell if you're not familiar - some of my favorite VN's. No matter where your interests lie, I hope to see lots of you there!

Finally, I just wanted to give a shout out to another VN project that's recently caught my eye. I'm generally not much of one for otome games, but Purrfectly Ever After has some really nice looking character art, and their backgrounds are actually being handled by the two guys who did our demo BG art, as well as a good friend of mine, Sendo. Please check out their project and consider supporting it if you're interested in otome games or more mobile VN's - I hear that they're also working on developing PC versions right now.

 Thanks for reading, and for everything else!

Demo Release + General Updates
over 9 years ago – Mon, Jul 06, 2015 at 08:47:00 AM

Hey again, sorry for the lack of updates. To make up for it, this one will be a doozy.

First of all, I should properly introduce myself. I'm Josh, but most of you probably know me as Raithfyre. Like I said in the last update, I'm one of the leads for Alienworks. I'm also the one who's been answering questions and messages on here. As far as the project goes, I'm Yukino's writer, and I guess you could also say I'm the producer. I oversee a lot of the art asset production, pay members, and a couple other behind-the-scenes duties. Honestly, the management stuff is one of my favorite parts of development so far.

Enough about me though. Let's talk about you.

The most important thing I have to say is: Oh. My. God. Not only did we reach over half our funding goal on day one, but we also met our entire goal less than a week into a campaign. That's so... So incredible to me. I really can't say thank you enough (though I hope I'm not saying it too much). 

That's also part of the reason that there hasn't been an update since the first one. When we met our goal on the 18th of June, I thought that we'd also have our demo out later that today, so I decided to wait. End of the day; still had a bit more work to do. Oh well, I said, we could wait another day. Obviously, it ended up taking a couple more days than anticipated. Because I knew it was coming up so soon though, it just made sense to me to wait until I could announce the demo along with the update. Looking back, I probably should've posted something sooner to keep you guys in the know. It was my bad, and I won't let another major milestone pass by without an update again.

All that said, the demo is out! You can find a link to it at the very top of the campaign page. As mentioned before, the demo is the entirety of our Act 1. It's 35 scenes long, and roughly 55,000 words. There are versions for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Please know that the Android version is still experimental and may not work as well on older devices (and that some minor errors such as spacing may appear even on newer hardware). There are a few goodies that are available for beating the demo, so please enjoy those.

There are a couple updates to the rewards, too. For one, we've decided to include a character print with the $100 physical collector tier. You'll get your choice of character, bundled in with the rest of your items. For those interested in the dakimakuras, we should have designs within the next couple days. We're a bit behind there because the artist who was going to be drawing them, Hibiki, ran into some real-life issues for a bit, and wasn't able to draw. Yune stepped up after the fact though, and has agreed to draw one side - you can see a sketch of her work just below. Hibiki will be drawing the more risque side. Once the lines for Yune's sides are finalized, I'll make another update showing those.

Last thing I wanted to mention was a shoutout to another project, Walkerman. They're a really cool looking visual novel/adventure game hybrid who will also be published by Sekai Project. Right now, they're about halfway to their funding goal with a little over 10 days left. Give 'em a look! I doubt you'll regret it.

That's it for this time, I think. Like before, please don't hesitate to message or leave a comment with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thank you!