The Human Reignition Project - An English Visual Novel

Holiday 2016 Update
almost 8 years ago – Sun, Dec 25, 2016 at 09:38:11 PM

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone~

We hope you're all having a pleasant holiday season. We have a couple things this time around, although due to limitations regarding what can be posted on Kickstarter, not all of it's included here. If you wanna see the full update, check out our blog post we made. Be aware that it includes NSFW content!

Besides some lewd-ish Christmas art, we showed an example of the kind of animation you'll be able to expect from the h-scenes. We didn't use an actual CG from the game, but rather a promo image made just as a sample. Again, check the link above to see it in action. There's also some news about Highway Blossoms stuff, including physical copies of the game and a new spinoff light novel we're creating.

As for HRP, though...

In terms of general progress updates, here’s where we’re at:  

-You may have seen that, a little while ago, we were looking for an additional background artist to supplement our ever-impressive Zydaline. We were fortunate to have a really talented applicant in the form of Aimless_Art, and he’s been turning out quality content since he joined.

-Over 400,000 words total across all the routes so far, with none of them having been completed yet. We’re still estimating around another quarter of a million words before it’s all said and done.  

-45 completed CG’s, with a lot more to go. About a quarter of the CG’s in the game will be by Rosuuri, with Katz doing the rest. 

-A handful of new songs completed. Since one of our two composers is also one of our writers, he’s working on his finishing up his route before focusing on the music. We’ll be reusing a few of the songs from the demo, too, but for the most part you can expect new stuff that you haven’t heard before. 

-We’re trying to do a few fancy things programming-wise, too. The animation in h-scenes is just one example, but we’ve always wanted to do more with the visual presentation of the game beyond having the sprites slide across the screen. If you’ve played Highway Blossoms and seen the 3D camera there, or in its native Fault - Milestone series by Alice in Dissonance, you might know what I mean. In addition, we’re trying to make the UI more immersive, insert some neat visual effects, and just generally up the eye and ear candy.

That's it for this year! Like always, thank you very much for your patience and support. We can't wait for you to play HRP, and are working to hard to make that happen as soon as possible. Happy New Year, and here's to 2017 being a good one~

November 2016 Update
almost 8 years ago – Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 09:01:17 PM

Just another "business as usual" update to let everyone know that we're still plugging along and making pretty good time. Hitomi's new writer, Jaspirian, has been a workhorse. Not only has he been doing wonders for the Human Tornado herself, he's also been a big help organizationally. Our folder of game assets is getting fuller and fuller every week.

I may have mentioned it before, but at some point next year, we'll be releasing a new demo/Act 1 for HRP. This will have the new, updated sprites from Myuto, as well as new CG's from Katzchen and Rosuuri. It'll also be totally rewritten to be more engaging and less drawn-out in some parts. Hopefully it'll be a nice way to pass the time before the full release.

Finally, we're almost done with the drawings for all of the 200 and 250 dollar backers! If you pledged at one of these tiers and haven't gotten an email from me about it yet, it shouldn't be too much longer.

Thanks for your support, like always. If you're celebrating Thanksgiving this week, then have a safe and happy holiday!

This CG is by Rosuuri, and is a remake of an early one from the demo.

General Progress Update + Come Party (Online) With Us
about 8 years ago – Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 11:15:27 PM

Hey everyone,

Perhaps the biggest news with this update is that we've once again had to replace Hitomi writer. It once again came down to a matter of availability and timing, so we amiably parted ways with Vogue. Our newest writer goes by the name Jaspirian, and HRP will be his first commercial work. Though he only joined us a couple weeks ago, he's already got a detailed outline and plan for Hitomi's route, as well as a solid chunk of writing done. Jaspirian also writes for the free, in-development VN "Mainframe" by Bcube Studios, which you can check out on their website. We're hoping to have the brunt of the first-drafts for all the other routes done by the end of this year, so that they can go into editing. Summer of 2017 is still our intended release date for HRP.

October 13th will be Alienworks' 4th birthday or anniversary (not sure which word is more applicable), so to celebrate, we'll be having a sort of all-day party on our Discord server on Friday the 14th. Come hang out and play games with us or just chat! We'll be answering questions if you have 'em, and probably drinking too much. Also, if anyone is going to be at AkibaFest in Los Angeles on the 15th-16th, some of us will be around if you'd like to say hello.

As far as HRP progress goes, the total word count so far is between 200 and 300,000 words, with significant amounts to still be written. We have about 30 CG's currently completed, which is roughly a third of our anticipated final amount. Our programmer, Kevin, is going to be adding some animations to the adult CG's, as well as some of the regular CG's when possible.

That's about it for now. We'll have at least one more update before the end of the year, though it might not be until Christmas. Like always, thanks for your continued support.

HRP Opening Theme "REIGNITE" by Sasaki Sayaka
over 8 years ago – Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 07:06:10 PM

Hi guys,

We finally got to our big announcement! We have a new trailer to premiere our brand new opening theme song, "REIGNITE." The song is written and composed by the doujin group ARTE REFACT, who have created music for Love Live, IDOLM@STER, and more, and vocals are by the amazing Sasaki Sayaka, whose songs can be heard in shows like Nichijou, Girls und Panzer, and the currently airing Planetarian.

Check it out here: 

 The full version of the song will be included in the soundtrack. We've been blasting it on repeat since we got it a few weeks ago, and hopefully you enjoy the song too.

We've re-opened pre-orders on some items on Backerkit, just for anyone who may have missed out the first time around. If you have a friend who you think might be interested in the game, but wasn't part of the Kickstarter, please direct them to https://the-human-reignition-project-an-english-visual-nov.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

We're not making the prints available via Backerkit, since those were a KS exclusive. However, if you were a backer on KS but want to add some more stuff to your Backerkit, feel free to shut us a message here and we'll take care of that for you.

One thing: just for organizational purposes, I changed the way that the keychain and print combos were set up on Backerkit. If you had ordered any of the 2 or 3 keychain/print bundles, you'll now see that you have a corresponding number of the singles ordered instead. For instance, if you had ordered the bundle with a Yukino, Aya, and Hitomi keychains, you'll now see three separate keychains instead. The cost of shipping is converted to a tip. To clarify, there is no difference and price and you'll still get the exact same items - it's just to keep things tidier when we have to print and ship. If you have any questions, again, please feel free to send us a message and ask.

Thanks for all your support!

July Update
over 8 years ago – Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 11:54:45 PM

Instead, for this month's update, we decided to show some of the new stuff that we've been working on. First off, some things regarding the setting and backgrounds. We've kind of mentioned it off-handedly, but the decision to actually have the game set in a futuristic version of Japan was sort of last minute. For a long time, we had intended to be vague about setting, names aside, and just leave it up to interpretation. However, a lot of the social and technological issues that we wanted to address are actually very applicable to Japan, especially over the next few decades, and so it made sense to really embrace that as our setting.

One problem with that, which wasn't fixed in time for the demo's release, was that a lot of the architecture we had still looked very Western. Ken's spacious apartment, for instance, would never exist in metro Japan, at least not for an amount that he could afford. Other places, like the convenience store where he works, look more like they come from America than Japan, too. That's something we're going to be fixing for the full release. An example can be seen here in a newer background draft from our awesome artist Zydaline. Of course, everything is subject to change between here and release.

We'll be changing how all of the locations in the story appear, to make them more in-line with actual Japanese architecture and aesthetics.

We do have a recent change with regards to our character art team. Simply due to timing and availability, our friend Shiyun won't be working on HRP any longer. We will still be working with her for future projects, as we're still big fans of her work, but her schedule is just a little too packed for the rest of the year. Rather than hire on a new replacement artist, Katzchen has opted to step up and take on a much higher workload, covering the CG's that originally Shiyun would be doing. This means that all of the CG's in HRP will be done by either Katzchen or Rosuuri, with maybe a couple contributions from Myuto. While it's a lot of work for Katz, she's done an amazing job so far, and it also helps with consistency across the game's style.

That said, it has become clear that we're not going to be meeting the December 2016 date that we'd originally planned for on the campaign page. That was a very optimistic estimate, and for various reasons, we're not gonna make it. Right now, we're looking at a Summer 2017 release, though of course we'll update you guys when we know more about that.

For the time being, here's a sketch of one of the CG's from Setsuna's route, done by the aforementioned Katzchen.

Lastly, we have an introduction for one of the side characters in HRP. Kaede is Yukino's younger sister, and probably takes the crown for cutest character in the game so far. A lot more outgoing than her sister, Kaede would probably get along great with Hitomi. She's an important character in Yukino's route, but most likely won't appear in the other ones. Despite their differences, Yukino and Kaede are super close - way closer than either of them are to their brother, Jun. You can see some of the original sketches that Myuto did just below.

When we were talking about how she'd do her hair and what kind of clothes she'd wear, someone, I believe it was Myuto, had the great suggestion of having Kaede wear the outfit from Yukino's original design, sort of like they're hand-me-downs. That's the design that we went with and, well, you can see just how adorable the results are.

Thanks to everyone we got to meet at Anime Expo this year - it's always a pleasure. Some of us from Alienworks will be at Animefest in Dallas next month, as well as Anime Weekend Atlanta in September. We won't have a table or booth or anything, but feel free to hit us up on Twitter if you'd like to say hello.

Lastly, just a reminder that we released our first game, the yuri kinetic novel Highway Blossoms on Steam last month. We're very proud of how it turned out and hope that you guys will check it out too.