It's Been One Week (Since You Looked At Me)
Wow. WOW. Real talk, I am blown away by the response to Part 1 of Through The Cracks (internally referred to as Phantom Blood). The fact anyone has paid attention to it, let along bring in $91 IN ONE WEEK has left me humbled and proud. I am so happy people are enjoying this story we have been working on. So I want to talk a little about how this project got started, and where we go from here.
- Above; Concept art based on initial character sketches and the idea for the game itself
This game started life as a conversation and a series of notepad sketeches I drew while I was working at a hospital in 2015. I knew I wanted to write a story about women dating, with a strong emphasis on conversation and queer themes. Initially Blaire was only going to be hinted at being trans, and the whole game was gonna be about working up the courage to come out to her parents, something I personally struggled with for quite some time. Obviously the ideas have been evolving but the core itself was always about Sami and Blaire.
I went back to the drawing board and had loads of conversations with Vivid about how the game could work mechanically. While talking with ver it eventually dawned on me how I wanted to approach the game; the act of opening up to someone new. By forcing myself to make all the dialogue choices come down to elements of being "Open" or "Reserved" suddenly the game started to take shape. I wanted the player to ask themselves, "When do I open up to this new person?" I approached every option in the game from that point of view and the story and mechanics began to support each other. I spent a fair amount of time working on the simple-yet-complex system of the game tracking your responses along those lines. It became more about role playing at that point, so in theory the 2 players can reach the same ending by playing similarly enough rather then setting off the right flags. I am really excited to get Part 2 and 3 out, because I feel you will really get a sense of just how open ended this system is.
Speaking of Battle Tendency and Stardust Crusaders, when can you expect Parts 2 and 3? The plan is to release them simultaneously by the end of the Summer/Beginning of Autumn. The intent is that you will get the completed game all in one download. While I wasn't able to implement save transfers, I do encourage you to look forward to a retooled Part 1 when the complete game is out. When the full release is out, there will also be a tier for nice high res versions of all the concept art, commentary, and special messages of thanks from the Gazing Soul Team. Again, I am overwhelmed and humbled by the amazing reception you all have given Through The Cracks and I would be nowhere without the amazing art of Vivid Grim and music from Koichi Maou. I hope you all look forward to the full release, and if nothing else: thank you so much for supporting this game of ours.
May your days be bright, in spite of the dark.
-Kyrie <3
UPDATE: By the time I finished this post, sales just breached ONE HUNDRED DOLLERYDOOS . I am blown away, thank you all!
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