Spooky season has come and gone! So, let’s look at the progress for Canvas Menagerie in October.
October was a very, very busy month for me so there wasn’t much progress on CM, but definitely some. Like September, I spent some more time working on Lost Lune as well, so my attention was very divided. I’ll be sharing progress on Lost Lune at the end of November and skipping my CM monthly devlog, as there will be a lot to share for it.
But back to CM!
I had a main goal to hit by the end of October—finish the first draft of Act 2, the 2nd portion of the game. And I hit it!
It came out much shorter than I anticipated. I originally estimated it would be around 60k but the first draft came out to be 44k. For reference, I estimated Act 1 would be around 50k—the first draft ended up around 55k and is currently just shy of 58k after further editing.
For Act 2 I ended up removing several “filler” scenes I had outlined and I pushed a couple of scenes at the end to Act 3. Once I write more of Act 3 I’ll be able to tell if I like these changes or not, as I won’t start scripting these parts into Ren’Py for quite a while. Act 2 also still needs quite a bit of editing for some of the scenes, so while the first draft is done, it’s not completely ready.
I’m still unsure on how I want to go about distributing CM. I’ve been back and forth on ideas, ranging from releasing it episodically to releasing it all at once to releasing Act 1 as a standalone game and Acts 2 & 3 as DLC. I do want Act 1 to serve as a standalone experience, as Act 3 will be more ~ drama ~ than slice of life. If you have a preference, let me know!
Now, onto art!
I realized there wasn’t an (updated) key art featuring the cast, only ones for Niko and Ren, so that was my second goal for October.
Fun fact, I did actually draw most of the characters’ parts that are hidden by the others… They’re all on separate layers so I could easily readjust them.
Last but not least… happy (late) Halloween!!
(Niko is a bunny ghost and Ren is a lazy vampire. maybe next year he won’t dress so lazily…)
Until next time, stay safe.
— Arimia
