Oh my god, I can't believe we're here, wow. Hi, I'm skai and this devlog is a little bit overdue. HAHA!

So at the moment I'm best known for being in God's Radio Dev, working on our project Meteor Shower, which is a High School rom-com type otome game about a good girl and bad boy. However, I never was one to tie myself down to one genre. I have a lot of ideas and I really wanna put them to page at some point. Kirei was one of them.

I first thought of Kirei when I published Ignis' first demo for My First Game Jam a long time ago in 2019. I was in the headspace where I could twist folktales and fairytales and add my own spin to them. Ignis was based loosely on Cinderella and now Kirei is based on The Crane Wife.

It really was one of those ideas that I thought was never going to be made at all, like ever. I'm just so happy that Moku came in and humored me to join Phantasia Jam and we finally got the chance to make a VN together like we'd always joke about!

Moku is definitely one of my favorite collaborators ever. Working with them is always a treat and they just get me. Not to mention that I just love learning about Japanese culture from a local who also studied history in college, like the wealth of knowledge when it comes to history that I can learn and nerd out about with Moku is honestly insane!

This is the first project where I ended up trying my hand at recruiting team members for the jam. It was a daunting task at first and I had to get over a lot of feelings of inadequacy and impostor syndrome but wow, look where we are now! Moku and I, as well as the rest of the team really pulled through and made it work! We're certainly incredibly proud of what we made, every last one of us.

From here I say thank you to Pyr, Ryan, and Oli for really making the experience immersive through their stellar work in the audio department. It's no secret I love working with Pyr since he's one of my best friends but it's so cool to see such a cohesive work made with three great minds filling in the needs of the atmosphere Kirei deserved to have.

Thank you to fabi, ryu, and rumi for contributing to the vision that Moku and I had of paying tribute to the Ukiyo-e style to make something wholly unique and certainly beautiful to look at when all put together. I'm still amazed at how well the assets blend in every time I look at the build. There's going to be a bunch of UI fixes needed for the future but for now, even as things are incomplete, I'm already very proud of how the entire thing appears.

Finally, I'm here to thank Lys, Elodie, and Janey! Lys is such a funny, kind, and thoughtful friend and editor! Honestly the best one we could have ever asked for-- and we had a hard time picking who the editor was during recruitment, believe me! He also helped us with social media promotion stuff which I suck at alongside Janey who was our honestly super based social media manager. Love her to bits and go read Let's Misbehave if you haven't already. Elodie, on the other hand, I just super admire for being really quick to pick up on how to do things on ren'py that I had a hard time figuring out on myself. She's super chill and I'm just glad she has the patience to figure stuff out and try to decipher my instructions sometimes even when I know I'm not the best with words. Janey's been a help with that too so honestly thank god we have her aboard.

I'll keep it brief over here since Moku wrote something really long below, but I really am thankful for this whole experience. A lot has happened these past three months. Major changes in my life never really deterred me from getting this work out there even if we did have to scope knife a bit due to time constraints and real life happenings to multiple members of the team. Still though, I hope you stick around for future updates. See you there!

First off, thank you so much for having interest in the game, and even peeking into the Dev Log! 

My name is Moku and I mainly worked on the writing in the game with Skai. 

(Also did the ‘looking for references part’ so if you have any questions on Japanese/cultural references, I can try and justify how we chose what to use if there are any questions.)

I’m writing all this before the game is actually completed, but since you are reading, I assume that we were able to finish the demo game. Yay! 

I really hope you did enjoy the game if you gave it a try, or if you haven’t yet, it would mean the world to me if you could give it chance— We had so many talented people who worked on it, I’m sure you’ll find something to love out of it! 

And if you did enjoy it, I really hope you will stick around with us so we can show you more of the game some day! (We have a bit more writing finished already and two more LI’s in the story we’d love people to meet. Exciting!)

Delving into the more on a personal side, it still feels very surreal to me that we actually made a game and even more surreal it is now there for all to see.

I have been writing and drawing as a hobby for a while, but my main experience has been writing stories in a premade setting with other people’s original characters, so this is actually the first time I have done anything fully original. 

I think it becomes harder to try out new things the older you get, and even harder to be able to make something you are so happy about; I am very thankful I had the chance to experience both, and very thankful to everyone who gave me that opportunity. 

Honestly, these few months have been one of the most exciting time I had in a long time, and I hope that at the very least, that the love and excitement shows through the game itself. 

I certainly have places I need to improve on, but I am really, really looking forward to continuing to work on this project, and the whole thing me really excited to continue working on VNs in general.

I also want to use this as a chance to thank all the people who took part in the project as well (as there isn’t a lot of chances you get to do that), but for this section, I will like to end it on thanking you the reader for taking interest in the game and reading this far! 

Thanks again and I hope we can meet again soon!

This project was such a joy to come along for the ride and watch everything come together bit by bit! My role in polishing, tightening, and asking questions doesn't end here, but I'm so proud to have been able to lend my skills for the first leg of our journey! Here's to more beauty, more blessings, and more birdboys as we work toward a complete game! Thank you for your support and I hope to count on it all the more going forward!

won't lie. was really nervous about this at first. but i really liked the concept (it hit ALL the right bells for me) and even though i wasn't much of a background artist in general i was willing to try for this project. and i'm glad i did! taught me how to work alongside so many people - especially my co-background artist, fabi!! watching everyone work on it on their own sections was a treat to wake up to every morning until the release date; as we speak i am shoving everything everyone made into my mouth for safekeeping in the winter. it's very motivational, y'know what i mean? it's been a pleasure being on this team. i hope everyone will come to support us all the way to the end! >wO)b