2022 has come to a close. It feels like yesterday that we were bidding goodbye to 2021 with the release of the demo. And it still feels like yesterday that we started working on Her Choice. While we were unable to release the full game this year, we learned a lot and made so much progress, and the finish line is getting nearer each day. With the help and support of so many people, seeing our project grow and improve day by day has been a truly magical experience. 

Let's crunch some numbers before going through a month-by-month summary, shall we? (Ah, the joys of having become a spreadsheet addict)

Hours worked: 2'000+

In 2022, Moon and I have combinedly poured more than 2000 hours of loving work into Her Choice. This does not account for time spent by other team members such as our skilled composer Hiroki Eto, who crafted a number of new tracks, or our irreplaceable PR manager Meri, who keeps our Twitter lively with multiple posts every week. 

Words wrote: 120'000+

I have brought the game script from the 30k words in the demo to 160k, which is about 80% of our projected total for Act 1. The story was initially only supposed to be 150k words, but it now hovers more around the 200k mark.

(Did I really write a full-length fantasy novel this year hahaha)

Assets drawn: 200+

Moon touched up all of the assets you will find in the demo. They also drew new sprites for 5 characters you will only get to meet by delving deeper into the story, and a multitude of alternate outfits for everyone. I tweaked all the already existing backgrounds and rendered more than half of the new ones. 

Devlogs published: 34

This year, I've put out 34 devlogs (including this one!)

January

After getting over the excitement of the demo release, we jumped right back in. In January we shared the sprites of the new characters that would be joining the cast in Act 1. We teased the new Notes menu. I finished outlining the three routes and started working on the new backgrounds (and I'll never get over how many hours I spent on modeling the Tilltelai set only to realize it was the wrong area *facepalm*)

February

February saw many skeptics finally fall under Zan's charms, and who am I to blame them.

Can we talk about those alternate outfits?? (//▽//)

 
Aside from writing Zan's route, I spent most of the month breaking the code and fixing it while calling it "optimizing".

March

In March, Hiroki wrote and sang this beautiful song for Deymera, so Moon and I set aside some time to make a video for it.

I also finished what was left of Zan's route, and started on Hano's.

April

In April we celebrated TotES Studio P.'s 1 year anniversary, and we all took some time off.

Moon continued working on the sprites, while I scrapped most of what I had written for Hano's route and started over.

(This ship will sail someday, but preferably not during Hano's route)

May

In May, Moon finished the formal outfit design for the main cast and drew an exclusive set of postcards as rewards for our survey takers.

I was expecting to finish Hano's route by then, but I ended up scrapping it again. I eventually decided to halt the actual script and go back to the outline. I spent most of the month delving deeper into his backstory, and was finally able to start making progress.

June

In June, I buckled down and started improving my writing. This also meant that script progress slowed to a crawl. While it significantly affected our overall progress, I wouldn't go as far as calling it a downside, since I think the quality of the writing has been improving ever since.

Moon continued work on the alternate outfits for the dinner party, and started on Zan's CGs.

July

July marked a special milestone for us. We participated in the O2A2 Visual Novel Jam, and released our very first complete game (albeit it having an experimental format and a playtime of only 10 minutes due to the jam's rules).

Our Summers is a short side-story that delves into the relationship between Higre and Shur, and is free to play directly in your browser here on itch.io.

While Moon continued with the sprite-life, I mustered up all my courage and — armed with a heapton of tutorials — finally faced my most dreaded enemy: outdoor backgrounds.

August

By August, my brain was turning to mush due to all the writing, but I still managed to more or less flesh out most of the "extras" that we wanted for the final game (scenes from the love interest's point of view, memories for both them and the heroine, more interactions with the side characters and the storybook mode which we had previously removed from the demo).

Moon finished the last items on our sprite list, and transitioned to CGs, while I worked on Hano's route and coded everything we had done up to this point.

Moon and I were both very busy with personal and work-related matters, so there was not much progress this month.

September

September finally saw many of the CGs come to life as Moon drew relentlessly. I wasn't able to spend that much time on the game because of moving, but after what felt like forever, I could finally say Hano's route was complete.

October and November

Travel bans were finally lifted in my region, meaning that for the first time in 2 over years I could go home and spend time with my family. Moon and I agreed that we could use a break, and we decided to go on hiatus until the end of November.

We didn't share any devlogs during this period, but we did make on and off progress. Moon continued painting through the CG backlog. I started on Kanzen's route (at last!) and focused mostly on rendering the missing backgrounds.

December

December is always a very busy month for the whole team, so I'm actually surprised we still managed to be this prolific. We worked on our rebranding, we made steady progress on every front, and we even ran a Holiday Raffle.

We also finally got our looong-overdue logo!

And Erline got her long-overdue debut.

This year I got to get intimate with the characters, fall in love with them, laugh, fear, cry alongside them. I've since written the words "The End" on all three of the main route's outlines (which also includes the whole of Act 2!) and every time I was left feeling a little dizzy, as if I were being flung off an emotional roller-coaster. I was shaken, satisfied, bursting but still craving for more. And if just one player out there will feel the same way after playing our game, we will have achieved our goal. 

From the whole of TotES Studio P., our deepest thanks for all the love and support you have shown us so far. We're looking forward to exciting and flustering you next year too.

See you all in 2023!
- Wavi -