Hello, it’s been a while. As promised in the previous post, I’m here to talk about writing and so on. Long preambles are boring half the time, so let’s just get into it.
I was one of the main writers (one of 2-3 of them over the course of the project, as I recall) back in the late aughts, and early 2010’s, but eventually I got pretty burned out on the project and left. Well, almost a decade later, the folks still left on the project tracked me down and here I am. Revisiting something I worked on so many years ago has been an experience; lots of old dusty, compartmentalized memories being awakened. Simultaneously, my life experiences and consuming a decade’s worth of RomComs, Chick Flicks, Eroge, and other less romantic fiction, have obviously changed my own outlook on…everything.
Does this mean everything in ESR is gone? Of course not, but it certainly means a mixture of continuing what was in the plans to begin with, and some adjustments based on my older (hopefully, wiser) perspective. Certainly, it’s different looking back on things I wrote as a college student, now that I’m a full-fledged adult with like, Real People Experience. I’m hoping the things I’ve learned about pacing and diction and the like improve what I write now, but expect at the very least a little bit of a shift towards the latter 25% of the game. I don’t quite write like I did when I was 20; graduating with a literal English degree kind of ensured that.
What hasn’t changed? Thankfully my sense of humor (which I got tapped at least partly for initially) hasn’t changed too much. I haven’t gone back to anything I (or any of the other writers) wrote in the past and been like “I don’t get this joke anymore”. Hopefully my wit, and taste for the absurd, has only gotten sharper over time, but I suppose I should leave that to you, the reader, to decide. No large sweeping plot changes (that would create even longer delays) are planned, don’t you worry about that either.
And of course, my habit of liking the sound of my own voice too much hasn’t changed, so I should probably cut this short before I write a dissertation. Until next time…
I remember reading a Fanfiction where the writer disappeared for two years because of depression and you can really tell where the hiatus was because it’s the place where the story changes from a lighthearted comedy with a sprinkle of romance to a dark depressing romp with a bad ending.
[Sorry posted too early]
Basically what I’m saying is I just hope this game won’t suffer a similar fate.
Though as long as you keep the Spirit of the game intact, it should be fine.
Been following this for years, glad it’s still being worked on. Thanks for the update and good luck!
Titles are overrated anyway.
Just stopping by to say I’m still watching and lurking.
Don’t ever give up. Good luck and happy new year.
@Back: Hey, thanks for the support, and happy new year. Been fairly busy, but still looking for opportunities to make progress here and there.
It’s been about six months, just saying hi (I was just for some reason remembering something about telling someone to stick to one era… and then I remembered it was Koakuma’s writing lesson; weird what randomly jumps out at you sometimes)
Hey, can we expect any news in the summer? And thank you for a wonderful game.
Same as above
Hi! I think this will just be a slow year (certainly on my end at least) so I’m not sure about the summer. Definitely hoping for some progress in the fall, though. Thanks for sticking around in the meantime.
Just another person hopping in to check up on everyone. Got roped back into Touhou after playing a bit of LostWorld. I remember playing the first few demos back when I was 12. I really hope everything to going well with all of you! I hope the rest of 2021 goes by without anymore incident.
Never give up
Good advice.
It’s been a year, any updates? I understand that it’s been a rough year, but it would be nice to hear from you, even if there hasn’t been much progress.
Hey – we’ve all had various personal matters to deal with this year, so unfortunately we haven’t moved much at all in the past months. It’s really nice to see you all checking in, though, thanks! In general, we’re doing fine and will keep looking out for opportunities to refocus on ESR.
Hope everythings currently going well now, Also happy halloween
Ah, hope you have a better time with personal matters for the rest of the year, at least!
Just take it easy. Slow and steady.
You’ll finish it eventually. The past few years have been a nightmare fore us all.
Maybe get some help from redditors? I hate to suggest that but maybe a volunteer team could help speed things up?
Maybe a kickstarter/patreon? Early access Steam?
I’d hate to see this turn into vaporware but ti’s been almost a decade.
Any suggestion is better than none, know what I mean? Good luck and I wish you the best in your endeavors.
Expanding the ESR team does require a high short-term commitment, to make sure we can thoroughly discuss our ideas/direction with new team members, and walk through how development of the game works in general. I do think recruiting could be a very good idea in the long run, but we need a good chunk of availability to make it work in the first place.
Thanks for the encouragement though. At least from my perspective, the current issue isn’t money or motivation, it’s just having one or two too many things in life to juggle. Completing ESR would mean a lot to me, and I’ll keep thinking about how to move things forward.
Yeah, I can imagine that bringing new people in–especially on a project like this, which has so much of it done–wouldn’t be easy.
But, regardless, it’s always going to be something I’m interested in seeing.
Also, Happy New Year!
Forever patiently we wait, but I hope irregardless of progress on the game the team has a good year
have a good year and good luck with the game
I still remember this game. I’m still waiting for this game. What I got from the demos was that this VN was so much of what I wanted from a Touhou VN, and I still believe in your abilities. Maybe I should be even more confident than ever, in a way, since by now you should have all gained a decade worth of experience since you started on it.
I admit to being scared this game will never be finished. I admit I am worried that nothing is happening right now, not just because of COVID, but because there haven’t been any updates since 2020 (although I am reassured that there at least seem to be responses to comments from 2021.) But I will still come back every now and then, even if only to look for some reassurance that you all haven’t abandoned the project, that it is still making whatever progress you are able to make on it. I haven’t given up hope for this game, even after all these years. As long as you haven’t given up on it, then I’m sure that one day, I will play it…. Even if I’m in the nursing home.
I mean… I HOPE it doesn’t take that long…. But I’m still here rooting for you.
Thanks for the kind words! We certainly haven’t had as much time/energy for ESR as we’d like in 2021 and this year so far. I’m really hoping that we can resume a steady pace later this year, though. We definitely want to keep up our quality standards to make it all worth it, but at the same time, we’ll try not to set a record for longest development time!
I think setting the record for longest development time would be damned difficult. You’re not even slightly near it yet. 😛
I personally got dragged into this quite late, I enjoyed the Demo 3.0 very much and was kinda bummed how it just ended but that’s how demos work right?
I did my quick research and found that this project pre-dates my introduction to the internet so that’s something, despite that I still very much enjoyed this visual novel. It’s been interesting getting into Touhou and this sort of fan content is certainly very alluring for me, this sort of extensive fan content has always been alluring for me and I hope to see this project be finished at some point.
From what I read you are all rather busy with your own lives so understandably something that started almost a decade ago may not in the end see the green light of being entirely finished. In my opinion, this is quite expected and I do not expect miracles for this project to be finished, but if you all manage to pull that off maybe this year? I certainly owe hats off to what small team is working on this silly (yet very enjoyable) Touhou visual novel. But if you ever do get back into the flow of genuinely getting content done for this game I wish good luck to you in the development, even besides that I hope the best for you and the team behind this wonderful game. Maybe that good old summer spirit which seems to be a motivator for many summer projects may motivate you to get something done, perhaps? We’ll see, won’t we?
I am surprised if I get a reply to this comment as we are in April, soon to be May. In the end, as a consumer of content, I simply hope to someday receive closure to this fantastic story I embarked myself upon by playing this game, hopefully before I finish my studies at least but a conclusion nonetheless would be grand.
Thank you for giving me such a nice experience! I really enjoyed this visual novel for what it has, the fight scenes were quite impressive and I was not expecting that much when I first opened it up but I was impressed. Nonetheless, I owe a thank you to the small team behind this project, inform of this heart-felt letter to all of you!
Sincerely,
Nil
@Nil Thank you, and glad you’ve enjoyed the demo! It’s certainly been a while since our last update, but I’ll still be checking in here sometimes. Still fighting through my queue of other things to do in hopes of focusing on ESR again – can’t say when at this point, but will keep at it. After all these years, I’d love to see ESR get a proper conclusion as much as anyone!
Yo. Been about a year since I last checked on this project, and despite the lack of any known progress whatsoever, the fact that you still respond to comments in less than a week after they’re posted tells me all I need to know about it’s continuation. I hope progress picks up sometime soon, and I REALLY hope to see a new demo within the next 2 or so years. But this is just my own hopes for it. Time is cruel, entropy is uncaring, as it keeps on moving forward. If it takes even longer, then I’ll wait. Though I must say, this project started when I was 5, I got into it 4-5 years ago, and I’m currently waiting for more. That’s quite the timescale. I really hope regular progress picks up again in the latter half of this year. I do understand the difficulty in balancing this project with real life. I write fanfictions (not that I claim I’m much good at it) and each chapter takes hours upon hours, maybe even days despite only being 2 thousand words on average! Seemingly so little with so much time put into it, and it makes it hard to balance it with life’s problems. Considering the state of the economy, both at home and abroad, and the many different crises with everything from inflation and global politics to a shortage on baby powder, it would simply be wrong of me to assume that you all have much time in your undoubtably hectic lives to devote to some passion project that takes a lot of investment for little gain. If there’s one thing I know for certain, from the less than 2 decades I’ve lived, it’s that you just keep on keeping on, following the current of time, as going against it will only lead you to following it. Keep on chipping away, and eventually you will finish. Time is the great equalizer. With enough time, anything can happen. Which means, even if it’s never finished, throughout the infinite longevity of the universe, eventually, particles will align in just the right way, to for a computer where this visual novel is complete anyway! I hope everyone can at the very least take solace in that until the next progress update!
You’re amazing kirby, and thanks for keeping this game alive!
@Nova Indeed, writing a fanfiction or a game to completion isn’t easy – the amount of effort involved really makes one think of the bigger picture. Thanks for your thoughts and understanding!
Even finishing short stories can be pretty hard; the idea of anything involving team coordination is pretty daunting. xD
I’m also warmly waiting on the next update~
Hard to believe I’ve known about this game for over a decade now. I should really revisit the Demo sometime. But then I’ll just be left wishing for the rest of the story again… Even if we never get it, thanks Kirby for sticking around here and still answering peoples’ posts. If nothing else, checking in here every couple of years is a nice routine!
Merry Xmas!
Haha, actually it’s a little embarrassing to write about this, but in 2020 we decided to make a fan translation of Demo 3.0 into Russian language. Seriously, our translator project doesn’t usually translate demos, but the sheer size of this demo and its quality were superior to many small games and games that come out in episodes. We already released the translation in 2021, and I can honestly say that we have never regretted it… although no, there is only one regret that the full version of the game has not yet been released. Nevertheless, Russian developers and translators are no strangers to this. For example, a game like Labuda has been in development for more than 7 years since the demo was released, and we can wait for decades of translations of certain games. I’ll be honest, if the full game comes out as good as the demo, it will be worth all the years of waiting. Anyway, we want to give you a charge of motivation and confidence!
Even if the game does not come out in the very end, it turned out to be very worthy for everyone who was imbued with the plot and mood of this novel. While our world kinda falling apart and getting crazier and crazier every day, Gensokyo’s craziness seems refreshing and relaxing. Wish you good luck and prosperity.
Hey, thanks a lot for sharing, and that’s an encouraging boost for sure! It’s as you say, recent years have been rough for so many people, and it makes me more thankful for things like Touhou which we can still count on as a source of enjoyment.
Thanks for checking in, all! Happy holidays, and let’s do our best next year.
Hi! Any chance we could get an update on the project? It’s been quite a while since the last one…
@FLAFLA We’ve still been busy with life, so unfortunately there’s no new progress to update on (since our last small progress update on Twitter). I’ve been jotting down minor ideas for ESR that randomly come to my mind every so often, but that’s about it.
Happy New Year!
I’ve recently replayed the Demo 3.0 and it still holds up immensely well, both from a touhou fangame standpoint and an actual visual novel standpoint. It is very evident that it is such a project of love for you. I just hope everything is going well with you!
I’d like to add to the well-wishes. It’d be an honest shame to see this project fade away.
I remember sending an email over ten years ago offering to help write or edit, as I work as an English tutor. It just pains me to think that the project might be stalled, but hey, such is life. What’s more important is that everyone on the team is doing well.
There was a game called Kentucky Route Zero that got released over the course of seven years, ironically enough the first Act was released in 2013, and the final one in 2020. I can’t help but compare the two projects haha, both are highly narrative experiences, and both stories are very compelling.
No matter what happens, I hope all is well with the team. Thanks, Kirby, for responding to fans as you have. It’s reassuring to know that the project hasn’t died just yet.
Thanks for waiting warmly, all! Always appreciate seeing old and new faces still checking in with us.
I’m getting through my life goals one step at a time (just finished moving house, so that’s a big one), and have still got my eye on getting enough hobby-time to resume ESR. One day we’ll be able to talk about it as an active project again, mark my words!
Weird thing on my end–something’s blocking all the links at the top of the page. So, this one, but also the link to the download page. They’re just not clickable???
I got here by looking at the recent comments.
(Heh, I just got a new job too, so life goals are a thing)
… also, the “next post” button is linking to some shady gambling site???
Ah shoot, I noticed the ‘next post’ thing a few months ago and deleted the offending database entries/users, but I guess there’s still some kind of vulnerability if more entries appeared. I think the element blocking the top links is related as well. I’ll see if I can properly investigate this soon.
Going to follow up with a proper blog post, but in short:
– Header links are fixed
– Spam posts and other bad stuff that I could find are cleaned up
– Software’s all up to date, will make sure I don’t slack on that as much since that may have been the cause of all this
– Since a database breach may have happened, I cleared everyone’s blog/forum passwords and you’ll need to reset them by email to log in again. If you used the same password on other sites, then change your passwords on those sites too.