November UPDATE IWBTWR Public UPDATE

Hi everyone i have an important update that will change the future of IWBTWR and the previous updates.

Therefore the update for this month is public, cause i feel like this is also information for people who have been following the comic casually.

In summary, after a long time thinking. the visual novel game being developed for IWBTWR will be the main focus instead of the comic now. The current comic will be adapted into the visual novel.

The goal is 1 year and a half of development, similar to how the Koishi Project was finished.

There is currently a team of 5 people, 1 programer, 1 3D asset artist, 1 sound designer, and 2 2d animators/artists. Once the demo is out we may expand to 1 more programer

Current deadline for the prototype is December 19 and it will be avalible on Patreon and in the Discord server.

Afterwards, a free demo will be released on steam. Ideally 3 months later. These are the short term objectives for now.

I've come to this conclusion based on a number of reasons, but here are the main ones.

• Risk in finishing the comic

There was no end in sight to when the comic was going to end. I felt like I was writing into an abyss with multiple diverging plotlines and it felt really bad, especially when I myself wasn't clear on how the comic would preform when it finally finishes. (5 years??) I sadly came to realise that regular people nowadays dont really read comics anymore, let alone buy physical copies of them in real life.

What sucks is that the main vision was for the comic to be an animated series, but then reality hit. It's a shitton of work. Especially for someone with no experience in an animation series. I was jumping off a cliff and committing myself to years of work for something I had no experience in directing, and no solid team to back me up. With so many of my peers only making pilots and leaving it like that, my gut started to tell me that it was a really really bad idea.

Making it into a game, with a solid deadline, same like how I paced the Koishi Project seemed like a realistic evolution of what IWBTWR should become. The project now has a strict end date, and when it's finished, it's more realistic to sell the game virtually on steam, rather than free digital copies of the comic, and paid physical versions (with no publisher) in person.

• More prominent side characters/ more cohesive storytelling compared to the comic

• Slow Updates

A massive problem the comic went into was the fact that the attention seemed to constantly shift between characters. This lead to a lot of loose ends and undeveloped plotlines. Originally the idea was to slowly tie up these loose ends as the comic goes on, but with the pace the comic is going right now, it's outright fustrating to wait for them to develop fully. I myself am fustrated cause I feel like I've written myself into multiple dead ends (baby formula, wheelchair girl, red Zoey)

This indecision has lead to slow updates and confusing plot development. I believe it's an issue at the core of how the comic is structured, and I need to fix it.

Having side interaction and side character fit much better in a game as the player is able to go at their own pace between these multiple plot developments rather than forcing it all into chapters of the orignal comic.

• Current design rehaul

IWBTWR started off as a newspaper comic featuring Jenny as the main protag. The original intention was to just showcase a girl who never was able to go into college stuck working retail. It went along like this for a while but the "im a poor wagie in an unfair world" shtick felt overused and started to become boring.

IWBTWR over the course of it's run has developed into a cultual commentary about living in asia and the social expectation of people from a city stuck between two very different identities, a old colonial english colony, and a new chinese tier 1 metropolis. This cultural commentary is hidden under absurd storylines of borderline insane characters working retail as a cover.

Now with the game underway, it's a proper time to give everyone and the plot a better foundation in their designs. I will be reworking the overall structure of the story to be more streamlined and linear, while still keeping key story elements in what made the original comic good. (dyslexitard, fish man arc, yellow jenny)

Thank you for supporting IWBTWR! Please put your faith in me because I believe that this is the best direction for the series <3

Sprites

I hope you guys like the new design overhaul of the main cast and temporary npcs for the store :)

Sound Effects

Programming

Main floor point and click system

Product system, Cashier gameplay loop

Slopaloid

I GOT GHOSTED 😭i contacted a potential talkloid sound editor who was interested and they ghosted me for two weeks. Boo hoo. Time to find a different guy. Delayed till i find a new sound editor.

I will be posting the character poll drawing winner Chell (Portal) later this month, also I will have a stream Sat 29th 9:00am GMT+8 on the discord!

See you all later! I will have more thoughts on IWBTWR in the coming updates and will have regular updates of the game as well.