Release XXXX is here!

Release XXXX contains three chapters, sixteen CGs, one bio and four music tracks.

Well, it's 4 AM, but I did it... I finally finished all 100 chapters of Methods. What a ride! Before anything else, I should warn you that this Release MIGHT screw up the casefile until you play the new chapters, so just go straight to them and you should be fine.

This Release also has many other improvements, like some sprite and CG tweaks, but nothing drastic... yet. There was a lot to create for this!

I'm very glad the guitar track for "Circle of Squares" was finished today so that I was able to include the finished version. Whenever I feel like going the extra mile and commissioning real guitar, I always go to Vanja Grastic — in my opinion he's the best guitarist on Fiverr. I've worked with him on a few other tracks, in the upcoming game Blankspace and in Broken Spirits. Check him out here: https://www.fiverr.com/studioarmadillo

And also a big thank you to the saxophone player who did that awesome improv over the Methods theme — Oleg Lavrentev. Check him out here: https://www.fiverr.com/s2/2ba762bef5

Well now the "secret" is out — though a lot of it was sort of already there, it just needed someone to put the pieces together. The idea for the Winner's Square came to me early while writing the novel, and I was aware of it all throughout making this visual novel. Of course, that didn't mean I was watertight with all the hints and stuff.
I messed up a few earlier chapters where it's stated that the Australian competition already happened — that's no longer the case (though I'll have to pay attention to that during my polishing phase to make sure of that).
But I'm pleased that those little squares were on the right characters the whole time, and you would have just needed to realize that the winners of the previous contests were the ones with the squares and voilà! So it may not have been that hard to guess... I don't know!

In any case — Methods will not be "canonized" until it is officially complete, so anything is still liable to change, hypothetically.

This Release had a ton of CGs... but what made it worse was that at the last minute I decided to add five CGs to explain Catscratcher's mystery. I think it was worth it for the clarity.

Back in 2014, I was in a bookstore, picturing what kind of book I would want to see on the shelves. The title "Methods" popped into my head. What I can't remember is if that's when I came up with the concept, or if I came up with it later, but a few months after that, I had written down a few ideas for characters.

Back then, we turned off the internet during the nighttime, which I was very against... I still wanted to be doing something on the iPad at night, but without the internet, what was there? I decided to try writing a chapter a night of this "Methods" idea with the vague notion of completing one hundred chapters eventually. The chapters would be extremely short, like the Jack Reacher novels I'd been reading, so that reading them would become addictive — "one more chapter" doesn't seem like much when they're only a couple hundred words each. And writing one hundred chapters is way less intimidating when each chapter takes only a few hours to write.

The entirety of Methods is 146,702 words (which includes Behind-The-Scenes articles). Though that's not super impressive by visual novel standards, it's still the longest thing I've ever written, so I consider that a success. I promised myself I wouldn't try to add pointless filler like you see in a lot of visual novels and I think I managed to do that for the most part.

So, now what? Well, the game's not quite finished. There are still two updates to come before I can truly say I've completed the game. I will only set the price to $20 after those updates — and by the way, that's entirely up in the air and if I get complaints about it, I'm happy to lower it. In any case, the game will remain free until May 1st so now's the best time to claim a copy.

The next update will be about checking as many things off my big to-do list as I can, and if I don't get to something... that's what week two of revisions is for!

My main focus is updating Chapter 2's graphics and mystery, which is the minimum I'm going to try to get done. After that, I want to make sure all the bonus content is finally in the game — the last Behind-The-Scenes article, the final Interviews, and new features like a Sprite Gallery and a Backgrounds Gallery.

There are many other small improvements I want to make but I'll save that list for when I actually manage to do them — one thing I should note is that the soundtrack is NOT completely final and will change, which is why the high quality versions have not yet been uploaded on itch — but they're coming.

In short, v0.0 is focused on revisions and implementing features, and Week 2 is focused on making sure the game is ready for Steam, which will involve creating and testing Steam Achievements, making a new trailer, etc.

Working on this project has made me readjust how I think about motivation, schedules, and how to complete my projects. Basically — for long projects like this, treating it like a marathon and refusing to let myself do anything else really worked. I have no idea how long it would have taken to make this if I had done what I usually do, which is meander between various projects, making small advancements here and there until after a very long time they are all finished.

It's exhausting to do it this way, but I'm glad I did. I will have more details on this process in that final Behind-The-Scenes article — and in terms of how it will apply to future projects, I'm working on a post that will go on my blog about that (I'll link it here though).

Until next time!

— LockedOn.