Devlog 9/28/2023 ~ Curated ramblings of a mad man

Hey guys,

I have decided today to write specifically to only the Patrons for today. No special reason why, I guess it's just an added treat and I feel like it's a more intimate setting!

Anyway, I am working away at some of the new content for The Midnight Channel. Which, while it's top of mind, I'm considering just calling the game 'The Midnight Channel'. It doesn't need the 'Persona H' Right? not to mention, this would make me sleep a little easier at night instead of the looming spectre of Atlus and Sega's grim reaper coming to take me away!

Regardless of it's name, I"m working on it and I appreciate the feedback from you all. I know some of you are wanting faster progress and I don't really know what to tell you. It takes me time, it may not take you or others time to complete this stuff, but it certainly takes me time. If you need reason why, I could go on about a lot of things, but I think it's reasonable enough to just say that I have a personal life, a work life and also my DarkDemarley life. I would like this to be a 30/30/30/10 splitting (10 being the little sleep I get) but unfortunately this is not really the case.

Some weeks, I get a TON done on The Midnight Channel, as my personal/work lives don't require that much of me. Other times, I get very little done, perhaps some lines of code here or there, or maybe some artwork done, but this is because of the other things calling to me.

I'm sure some of you can relate to this, but I also am a decently creative peson, and this causes me to have 'inspiration' at the most random of moments. I can't help it if I am in a situation where I'm not near any kind of computer yet all my best ideas are flooding my brain! Also, due to my attention span, I get ideas a lot fo the time, some are great and others are awful, but they arer fast and frequent!

Regardless, my methods are to take some time when I can, and write down everything as much as I can and try to organize it. The amount of 'Game Ideas' notes I have written in the last decade is staggering!

All of this is just to say that, yes I'm working on the game and I want you all to be aware that I think about my development and progress frequently. I can get brunout sometimes, but over the years I'm usually quite aware of it. It requires about 1 day or so of not thinking of game development at all. That's usually all I need and I bounce back pretty quickly.



I'm not sure what I have and haven't said about The Midnight Channel yet. I want to make sure I have mentioned a few things about it somewhere so that any of you who are curios, this may satiate your craving.

The Midnight Channel is obviously a reworking of my own game of teh same name. I came back to this idea after trying (and failing) to create new games that I was interested in. The failure was from creating a scope outside of my means, and I paid the price for it by having to remove thee work I have done over the last 6 months or so.

I won't make this mistake again.

I had a strict scheedule with my first iteration of The Midnight Channel. I worked each update on 1 girl at a time, and this really help keep things in priority for me. Each update focused on usually a few new locations, and one girl's progression increasing further and further.

This is something I am attempting to do now, yet I also want to prove that 'yes I am remaking that game you saw or played before' by showing some of the other girls. What this means is you may see less of 'New Girls' in the frequency I was posting. This is due to me needing to buckle down on the ones in the game as it stands.

That being said, I also want to show to you guys Old and New, that I'm making a game to hopefully span multipe Persona games from the series within my means. This means I'm incorporatiing that same philosophy from Persona H Golden into The Midnight Channel. I'm going to be using this sparingly at first howwever, since I don't want any repeat like with Persona H Golden.

So far, Chie has been the larger focus for The Midnight Channel. This isn't a mistake or random coincedence. Many of you know that she is among my favorite, and I plan to felsh out the game's core gameplay through her at the beginning. Any develoepr-minded peopel out there know that once you create that main gameplay-loop, it's easier to iterate on that idea through other sections of your game. I'm essentially doing this through Chie, so you will see progression mostly through her at first and finally to the other girls.

that being sasid, I also want to make sure there is some variety while this game is in it's early stages. So I'm peppering in a little bit of flavor here and there into other girl's storylines in the game.

Alright, as I type this, I"m being whisked away for my work... So yet again, I will need to halt this and go work on things I care about a lot less then this!

I hope you are all doing well, and I'm stoked to show off some more work on the game!

Come join us and talk on the discord if you want to know more, and message me if you have any ideas or things you would like to see added into the game.

Thanks for being a great listener/fan/interested party,

~DarkDemarley