… Damn.

If you’d have told me that I’d be the creator of a successful game a couple years back, I wouldn’t have believed you. Never mind the fact that I’ve just reached a year of continual development, with continual support - and I couldn’t be happier about it. I think past me would go absolutely mental knowing that.

At the end of the day, I’m a creative person. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been making dumb shit. Be that silly superhero comics when I was in primary school, lurid fantasy novels once I entered my teens, and music production and game design over the past half-decade or so. I’ve always had to find something to keep my hands (and mind) busy - and a way to tell a story. And, in a way, ‘Another World’ is just another attempt at that - a multi-year long struggle to end up where I am now. A project that I can truly say that I am proud of. A tangible… thing. And it’s pretty fucking cool, if I do say so myself.

And from the kind words I’ve received over the past year or so since the game’s initial release, I can tell that some of you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have done making it. In fact, I’ve been collecting various kind comments and posts that made me smile through all this time, as motivation to keep doing what I’m doing. I can’t stress enough how important it is to me that people care about my work.

A small collage of kind words I've received over the past year.

My initial love for narrative-focused visual novels started back around 2020, where after hearing so much about a certain viral indie visual novel with psychological elements, I decided to take the plunge (this is the part where you’re meant to be surprised that I took inspiration from Doki-Doki Literature Club - but I bet literally none of you are). I found the combination of building a strong emotional connection with each character, only for it to be ripped to shreds, a fascinating concept - so much so, it stuck with me - for about 2 years, until I finally felt the urge to ‘scratch that itch’ and give it a go myself. I found out about Ren’Py and, on a whim, downloaded it and started fucking around.

The first build of ‘Another World’ began on the 17th of January, 2022 - when I first opened the Ren’Py UI and pressed ‘create project’, naming the game something I’d used for many of my unfinished projects in the past. And, after many nights fucking about with Ren’Py coding and hacking basic things together, I slowly began to learn. To flesh out an idea for a story. To design the characters. To write my first ever lines of dialog. I’d like to say it came easily, but it didn’t. Writing dialog is fucking hard. Creating a story that makes sense is antagonising. Oftentimes, it was like drawing blood from a stone.

Cut to two years later, and here I am.

Anyway - I’m sure you don’t want to hear much more of me patting myself on the back for everything I’ve done - after all, what I’ve made so far is only the beginning. I’m still hard at work on the next update - sorry that it’s taking so long, by the way - but it’s a pretty large update, and it's taking a little longer than I'd anticipated. Anyway - as a little anniversary gift, I felt it’d be a funny surprise to show you where the game initially started - by showing you the test build of ‘Another World’. This was a build of the game I worked on sporadically throughout 2022 - eventually restarting entirely to create the build that made it to fruition. If you’d like, give it a download - you’ll be able to see janky renders, off-kilter dialog and all for the shit I chose to remove because it was, simply put, shit. I'm putting this out in the open not just to show you how far the game has progressed since its inception - but to show you that all creative projects start from somewhere.

Here's a link to the Test Build of ‘Another World’.  Give it a play, if you want. There's also a few screenshots from the game in the link, too - if you're not on PC and can't give it a download. Also, if you're not a part of the Discord already, I'm gonna be doing an additional little thing for the game's anniversary over there in a couple hours - so join if you haven't already!

Lastly, I just want to thank y'all again for the support over the past 265 days - it means a lot. Here's to a successful year of development - and hopefully, many more. I can’t wait to be here again next year :)

Maelstrom