Detective Butler Update

As you may have noticed, I've been rather secretive about Detective Butler's progress in recent blog posts. I sincerely thank all of you following my blog for sticking around and supporting me. So now I'll give you the announcement you've all been waiting for! A sneak peek into the story after the demo!

You see, I began writing the parts after the demo, and I realized something. I really came to love these characters. You know how sometimes the characters tend to write the story thems ...

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Time to Get Things Done!

Spring break is upon me now, and I'll have plenty of time to work on things that I've had to push aside for a while. In particular, I'll be finishing the writing, making a few revisions to the story, and working on another graphical overhaul. I might also have a surprise next update, depending on how things turn out.

But for now, a short update just to prove I'm still alive. See you later!

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Constructive Criticism

I've been pretty busy lately IRL, which makes me glad I decided not to do NaNoReNo. Because it'd just turn out to be either a horribly rushed mess, or I wouldn't get it done at all. My schoolwork has gotten increasingly more demanding, with my assignments being critiqued considerably harsher -- what was once "A" level for me is now only average. And I've learned that, in order to see good results, I need to put in a much greater amount of effort. So, like any good student, I thought about how ...

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Interactivity in Visual Novels

Lately I've been working on what I'd call the more interactive chapters of Detective Butler, and it's gotten me curious about the concept of having an interactive visual novel. I believe it can be good, if done properly, but I'll examine the pros and cons in further detail.

I don't understand the appeal of most sim games. If you are not familiar with those, it should be easy to find quite a few of them on the Internet advertising themselves as visual novels. And I'm not sure what to m ...

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English vs. Japanese Visual Novels

Here's something I wrote a while back but didn't post anywhere. Enjoy:

If I'm playing a Japanese VN I can pretty much assume it's at least decent. I don't question the author's intentions. But for English ones, everything is criticized because we don’t think very highly of English authors. You wouldn't find typos in a professionally finished work. Using words that seem unnatural could be used for character development instead of remnants of the author's mistaken grasping of the Englis ...

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Quality Over Quantity

During the past month I have contemplated whether or not to participate in NaNoReNo this year. Ultimately what I've decided... is that I won't. I'll lead you through my thought process as to why I've decided against it.

The first step to writing a story is to brainstorm ideas for one. I went to a fairly simple VN idea generator and came up with a bunch, only some of which I remotely thought were interesting. In the end I thought that none of them were really appealing enough for me t ...

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World-Building

When I first started out writing Detective Butler, I didn't have much of a game plan. Create some characters and a story and see where things go. But at the same time I was given the incentive to make each chapter a certain length (at minimum). And during the early chapters, where I had little idea of where the story was going, it was incredibly painful to try and make that goal.

However, I have since found the secret. It's world-building. Take some time to elaborate on the story and ...

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Secret Projects and Game Tips

Darn, one day earlier and I would've updated twice in a single month!

On that note, I think I will actually start posting more often. One thing I do want to make clear is that, while I have obviously been discussing fangames and Detective Butler frequently, I am coming up with ideas and stories for future games. My personal preference when working with games is to keep things very much under wraps until I have something close to being finished.

I think one of the more interest ...

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