Borealis here!

It's time for the first instalment of the behind the scenes devlogs I promised in my last update!  I'll post them twice a week, and today's edition focuses on the background of my interest in visual novels, and the year I got my first idea to create my own.  Enjoy!

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2016

I first got into visual novels in 2013, and had become inspired to write and create my own pretty soon after.  In early 2014, I jotted down ideas for what would have been a VERY long visual novel that had five potential romance options, each with three endings, but quickly realised that a project of that size was way too ambitious for one person to pull off, and abandoned it, shelving the idea of creating a visual novel altogether.

 However, by early Summer 2016, things would change.  At that point, I was making music and touring with my band at the time, and in the quiet moments in between, the idea of creating a visual novel myself drifted back into my head.  I’m the type of person who really admires things with a DIY approach, and people that expand their skills in order to achieve something off their own backs without having to rely on other people, and wanted to take the same approach when it came to this game.  However, I realised that if I was going to do it basically alone, then the project would have to be something much smaller than I’d originally dreamed up, and spent a while batting ideas back and forth in my mind.  At that point, all I knew was that I wanted music to be a massive part of it, and not long after, the concept and basic image of a girl who played the flute popped into my head.  Without knowing what would come next, I’d imagined Fujiwara Haruka, the would-be protagonist’s future friend and potential romantic interest.

 I remember typing up some basic ideas into a document, mostly covering the concept of a Japanese school and its music club, and two musicians coming together to form an alliance which would inspire the protagonist to try harder to achieve whatever his musical goal was.  The emotional connotations were nowhere near in place at this point, as I had no idea who the protagonist even was and what their motives and life story would be.  The only solid picture in my mind was the long-haired girl who played the flute.  A few months after this, my life got very busy in other areas, and so the girl, and the whole visual novel, went on the back-burner.

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That's all for today's edition!  Monday's post will take you into 2018, where the progress of Venus: Improbable Dream really began!  Stay tuned for more!

Borealis