Hi everyone! I'm very happy to announce that Act 1 of "He's Just Away" is available for download!

I was really nervous about writing something like this and putting it into the world since I've always written silly campy games, like the Bracken game and also Honey Trap! But because I loved sci-fi horror so much, I really wanted to give something like this a go.

In a way, the game was an avenue for me to process my own grief with losing people I loved. I would often say that I'd give anything just to have one more day. To cope, I would often pretend they were just far away and that I just haven't spoken to them for a while. Although deep down inside I knew. 

Taking these feelings, I combined them with my love for 90's and early 2000's scifi anime like .Hack//Sign, Trigun Maximum, Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost In The Shell. I adored the aesthetic immensely and wanted to create a love letter to the things that made up my interests.

The soundtrack in particular is heavily inspired by Yuki Kajiura's work on .Hack///Sign. I presented the ideas to our incredible composer, Gisula who made four, absolutely wonderful tracks. 

Since this was the first time I attempted something long form, I was really nervous and contemplated not releasing it at all. But Rachel and Cath were so incredibly supportive and helpful and their feedback made me much more confident to release it. 

I was also really worried I wasn't able to get this out on time. I work pretty hellish hours so I ended up locking in over my break to pour my heart out in the last week I had. And I was so lucky to have a team that came together. Majeanne and RadicalHoodie were both so patient with my requests, doing extra little things as well to help polish off the story. Aiden helped immensely with finding sound effects that we needed and Safffeine [who also joined the jam with an amazing game] stepped in to do some gorgeous CGs and assisted with SFX finding as well. Additionally MintheDraws also designed Masato and Maki who both turned out beautifully!

Our incredible VAs also went above and beyond, pretty much everyone did their lines in one take, following the direction perfectly. They were so kind, patient and willing to help, I feel really lucky to have worked with them. And our QA folks like RottenTief, Rachel and RadicalHoodie were so helpful too!

And absolutely last but not least were Buku and Elduator. They both stayed up till the wee hours of the morning helping with programming and GUI, with Anne [Elduator] in particular also working on a HUGE project of her own which you can check out here! 

Both of them gave so much time when they didn't have much to spare with a deadline fast approaching and were patient with me learning and properly using renpy for the first time.  

I'm not sure how long devlogs are meant to be, but I really wanted to sing praises for the team, they helped out so so much.

So what's next for the future?

First! Fixing the minor bugs left over! Such as the sprites being slightly off center etc!

But right now, I have drafted the outline for Act 2 and have started writing a bit. In the next act we are introduced to Masato and Hajime and you'll be able to meet them in person! I do however, often work 15 hour days. I will try and be reasonable with updates but I do ask for everyone's patience! At this point in time, I anticipate an update every 3-6 months. Due to this and lack of knowledge on coding in general, there will not be an android build as of now.

This is a longer form story that will span over what I plan to be 4 acts in total. I do hope everyone enjoyed it enough to stick around to see where this goes!

[Also apologies for all the build updates. Buku and I QA'd on 3-4 hours sleep and we very evidently missed some :')!]

Much love, Yinny!