Sooo, yeah... this is the game that was never supposed to be a game, haha. I had no intention of participating in any more game jams this year, but it kinda happened anyways x3

How it happened...

I was not in a good place at all come the end of October, and I tried to have a bit of a break to just hopefully feel better, but that didn't really happen >.< I wound up away from my PC for a while and feeling useless. When I eventually went on my PC again at the end of November/beginning of December, I was just messing around making music because that's all I felt capable of.

Somehow, what I was making was soothing me somewhat, and the more I worked on the music, the more I saw a sorta story in my head. The entire project was like a form of therapy for myself, haha. It was only because I remembered that Winter VN Jam was on that I figured, ahhhh, screw it, I'll just turn it into a game for the jam, haha.

Unfortunately, it has meant I haven't really had a proper Christmas break because, while I have still been spending time with my family in the day, for a number of reasons, I've ended up working on it at night when they've all gone to bed, staying up until 5am and depriving myself of much-needed sleep like an idiot x3 Sooo, I'm releasing the game tonight and gonna try and actually have some nights off coming up to new year!

Still to come...

Basically, the game is finished, BUT if you play the version where you pick a masculine voice for Snowe, you'll find that many of the voice lines are missing in the current build. The poor VA playing Snowe's masculine voice got ill with festive lurgy before he could finish the whole script. He was able to deliver around 75% of the lines in time, but I've only implemented around 25% of them because I figured it made more sense to prioritise implementing and testing the version with Snowe's feminine voice since I had all of the lines ready to go for fem Snowe in time.

You can still pick a masculine voice for Snowe and play through the entire game, it's just, once you reach chapter 04, Snowe's lines of dialogue will no longer be voiced (but Saffie and the narrator's lines are still fully voiced.)

If you'd prefer to play with Snowe having a masculine voice, I'd personally say you're better off waiting to download the game at a later date when I've managed to implement 100% of masc Snowe's voice lines (which I hope to achieve sometime in January 2024 :3 - imo, all of my games are better with the full voice acting, especially since most of them, like this one, focus on extended dialogue between 2 characters!)

If you're not fussed about voice acting, or you'd prefer Snowe had a feminine voice anyways, then go ahead and play because the fem voice version is 100% complete :3

Signing off

So yeah, this one's pretty personal like Bitter/Sweet! With any luck, if you decide to check it out, you'll see it as the warm and cosy hug that it's supposed to be (and that it was for me as I made it) despite the pretty dark subject matter x3 There are, of course, still yandere-esque shenanigans involved, but like Bitter/Sweet, this is on the softer side. Like I said, more than anything, it was just therapy for myself, haha. I wanted to create an atmosphere with the music, imagery, and story that's soothing.

I've uploaded my extras rambling separately to the game page this time just to help with the overall size of the game download. If you happen to want to listen to them, just know that they contain spoilers, so it's probably best to leave em until after finishing all endings of the game.

I've still included an unlockable CG gallery and music player, and when I get a chance, I'll upload the OST to YouTube too, hopefully sometime in January 2024 after I get the update out to implement full VA for masculine Snowe :3

I'm also in the middle of typing up a big post about plans for 2024 which I hoped to have posted by the end of the year, but that's not going to happen, so with any luck, I'll manage to get it finished sometime in January >.< It's gonna be pretty long, haha. The short version of it though is that I'll mainly be returning to long-term projects and trying to tear myself away from taking part in so many jams x3

Until then, I hope you've all had super happy holidays + that you have a wonderful new year! May 2024 be kind to you and bring you much joy and laughter ^-^

PS. Apologies for all the comments and other things I missed while I was working on this and just not functioning in general >.< I'm gonna try my best to catch up in the new year, but as usual, it's gonna take me a while because I'm just not very good at it x3 Thank you for the support as always <3