My dearest parasocialites, welcome to a log of all the devlogs I have made so far! I apologize for not-cross-posting them here sooner but... uh... you know how it is. I'm in time poverty or something. BUT. We're doing it now! Here's everything that's been going on in this project since I started writing Devlogs!

April 12th, 2025

"Amai, what do you do this week?" 

--- 

Firstly, I decided to do a big video push for May! I'm gonna have 4 videos coming out that month -- all going back to the basics of worldbuilding -- so be ready to share them with all your friends so they get into worldbuilding too. Haha! I have 2 of the 4 done. But the last one is that "7 years of worldbuilding" video so I might push it until June... 

Secondly, I did letters 23 through 30. I have to get to 49 for this arc... Which means I am decently close to asking for Beta readers! So if you wanna escape real world politics in a world of fantasy politics where everyone is hot and reasonable, especially if you think you can read about 120k words before the end of the year, then please keep your schedule open to beta read for me! I thrive on feedback and it'll be like this exclusive little open club where you get to critique my work and see if actually adjust in real time! 

Thirdly, I set up my Ko-Fi. I'm gonna announce it in my video on Wednesday but if you wanna be COOL, you can join it now and give me MONEY! Yaaay! Everyone's favorite thing! 🥰🥰🥰 Seriously, no pressure but with the upcoming BIG ANNOUNCEMENT, you'll understand why! https://ko-fi.com/amaiguri 

And lastly, I also did this one background! Yay! Okay, with that, I've gotta get back to work. I now hustle 24/7 so I don't have to grind 9-5. I'm livin' the Indie Creator dream 😎👉👉

April 21st, 2025

"AMAI, what did you do last week?" 

Glad you asked! Today is Monday the 21st. I have started to write out the dates in all my communications so I can be aware of time passing and I'm not just in a haze of passing time. I hear this is good for my psyche. 

Last week, I finished up rewrites and edits on the first half of the Untitled Yssaia Game's story. I really struggled trying to get Ymver's story on the page, I don't know why. I ended up reworking the events and character motivations in his backstory but I don't know if that actually fixed why was hard about it. On the bright side, the story is now in the hands of beta readers! (If you are interested in commenting on the first 100k words of my story, hmu wherever there are DMs!) 

The NEXT big milestone push is to get a Steam page up. It doesn't have to be perfect yet, but it does have to be available because, if you don't know, the key to big money in games is lots of Steam wishlists. (Jk, the key to big money is "Already having big money" most of the time but like... I can dream of being the next Undertale lolol) 

With this in mind, I need to put together a trailer. I started by doing art for another area I want in the trailer and then I started trying to get capture footage of cutscenes... 

...only to realize RPGmaker doesn't have text wrapping by default. WHAT?! That's insane! And you know why that's extra insane? I have a plugin for different fonts (I hear the young-un's these days can't read cursive lol but also, I have dyslexic friends who like dyslexia friendly fonts) and they don't all wrap the same, so I can't do it by hand even. I got a new plugin that enables text wrapping, ONLY for it to break my other plugins. 

Of course. So this week, I'm gonna clean up my tinsy bit of tech debt as well as grind on implementing the stuff that needs to be there for the trailer. Wish me luck!

May 3rd, 2025

"Amaiguri, what HAPPENED last week?" 

I slept. I've mentioned it to a couple of you already but I was like bedridden sick and so I spent a lot of the week sleeping it off. I'm feeling 100% better now, thank you to everyone who was concerned! 

Firstly, art. I did art and some light tech art for the airship interior and exterior. The exterior was a little difficult because I had to figure out how to make the sail animate -- which I accomplished by manually changing the parallaxing on a loop with a wait(120) in there. The interior was IMPOSSIBLE because I discovered chairs. Holy hell, I despise chairs. I understand RPGmaker wasn't designed the way I'm using it but I just wanted people to sit in chairs. I actually spent 8 hours trying to figure out chairs -- I just wanted to make it so if you walk in front of a chair, it is in behind you but if you walk behind it, it is in front. You know, like how reality works. 

At the 8 hour mark, I did, in fact, figure out how to make it work. And I decided it wasn't worth doing that for every chair in the game. I'm sorry. I just don't care enough about sitting in chairs. I hate chairs. Actually, fuck chairs. 

I also did more art for Saegeneime -- finishing both the Selvages, their dark, mushroom-overgrown undercity, and their Hall of Victors, the Bard Academy (because "Victors writes the history"). Saegeneime art is a lot of staring at pictures of rural China and then putting it in pink and black. These big, sprawling human-inhabited zones take WAAAY longer to do art for than the wildernesses did... is that because I'm writing all the signnage in conlang? Yeah. Can you actually read it? Not really! It's too small and blurry! So why bother? Idk, I'm the WORLDBUILDING VTUBER -- it's part of my branding, I gotta do it lol. 

Lastly, I got my Steam Page submitted for review and a preliminary version of the Itch.io page up -- just to start soaking up the SEO and stuff. As you may have noticed, I have a very "Done is better than perfect" mindset so I'm happy to just fix em later. "We'll fix it in post" and "They can't all be bangers" are like my mantras to get anything released. Some people think this makes me lazy. And those people don't have a game dev business so jokes on them lololol 

COMING NEXT: I'm focused on getting all the world art done still because, as I've said, it'll be easier to make lore videos about the world if I can just walk around my actual game world and talk about the lore. But we're also upcoming on my fiance's birthday and I'm taking some time to make him cute things -- after all, he buys my groceries and feeds my rabbits! Hee hee! 

So, my #1 priority is to finish Saegeneime. Maybe I'll do House d'Magnia interiors next because those are small, so I can knock em out faster? And then, as I check my calendar, I realize I'm gonna be doing some wedding stuff for a friend if mine -- so maybe starting on June's video is smart. (It's gonna be the Cannibalism Incest Game video! Woooot! Nooo, don't panic -- it's a video about market research.) ...so anyway, despite sleeping, idk how much I rested. I'm trying really hard to prioritize my body's wants and needs though! I hear that and dancing are the best ways to feel safe in your body or something. 

Soooo yeah! Comment the #1 thing you wanna see in a Bard Academy with a death game. See you on the 14th! 

- #gamedev #indiegaming #rpgmaker #AllThePromisedBurn #Yssaia

May 11th, 2025

"Amaiguri, what is HAPPENING?" 

Okay, so. The theme of the week, once again: Art🎨 

I finished up all the art for Saegeneime (for this game, anyway -- if I ever do a Saegeneime game, it is gonna get a bunch of new maps lol cux Saegeneime is supposed to be this sprawling, multi-level city and I just don't have enough scenes in the main story set here to justify making more maps here lol). 

I ALSO did all the small rooms in the Manor d'Magnia -- just the two big rooms now. I ALSO did my June video. Special shoutout to The Council for their help with that one! 

Then, I took Friday off to prep my fiancé's birthday party! I'm very pleased with how it's turning out! DON'T FORGET that you can Wishlist #AllThePromisedBurn on Steam or follow me on itch.io! 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3727600/All_the_Promised_Burn__An_Yssaia_Game...

[Imagine an itchio link here lol -- but you're already here]

Hope you're all having a wonderful week! 

- #gamedev #gamedevlopment #screenshotsaturday #Yssaia

May 31st, 2025

"Amaiguri, what is HAPPENING?" 

I just got back from a wedding -- the first wedding of my friend group! It's only gonna be more weddings from here and I have no money. So please commission me or buy me a Ko-fi so I can actually go to all my weddings. Haha! 

https://ko-fi.com/amaiguri 

So last week, I DID finish up Manor d'Magnia's art. I then playtested it with my friends who actually know things about video games and now I have a bunch of art to redo. Call it art debt -- but I did learn a lot of subtle things about level design in RPGmaker so yay! 

I also somehow did all the art for Nesa and Cearmine -- two selkies with the same magically-induced chronic illnesses. ALSO, I did, in fact, hire a deaf consultant for Arlasaire's signs. It was not that expensive and now we're hopefully gonna do a little better on behalf of the deaf community. 

Also also, some of you said I should save the money for "important things". Now, I don't know if you know this, but Yssaia is a political-fantasy -- so if the politics are bad, then it will be fundamentally flawed product? This is, in fact, the "important thing" lolol. They recommended that Arlasaire actually have conlang-signs -- so I am VERY excited to learn some real sign language and then work on Arlasaire's :D 

This week, I am going to catch up on said art debt, writing edits, and tech debt (aka. Things I keep saying "I'll fix it" and I don't) as well as do some other producery things to ensure I'm getting the things done I need done. There are 78 days until August 14th, which is my next big milestone due. Top priority probably remains art. But we'll see after I do production stuff. Woot woot! 

Project management ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 

- #gamedev #gaming #indiegaming #gamedevelopment #gameart

June 7th, 2025

"Amaiguri, what are you DOING?" 

I don't know anymore. Sometimes, it really feels like I'm doing all this for nothing because I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing. Or maybe I don't have the It-Factor that's gonna make me Make It TM. Idk. I'm still going anyway. I don't know if this makes me brave or stupid😣 

This last week, I did producery things. This stressed me out, as I realized how much stuff there was to do and how long it'd take to do it, once I wrote up a list. And if everything in the list goes to plan, all the art should be done in October. The problem is: I might be doing a big move in September/October and that is going to throw a wrench into my plans... 😅 Woof. 

Also, after initial tests of the game, I corrected most of the rooms that had you change direction to all flow into each other more naturally. I also fixed some bugs and unclear art and stuff. 

I also participated in a Conlang YouTuber collab so please be excited for that this upcoming autumn... 

...but despite all this, it feels like I'm so behind. 

Next week though, I'm taking a scheduled break from my main project -- wait, don't be proud of me yet! -- to do this creative jam I'm hosting in my Discord. For me, I'm making a Fuafua pet simulator. Why am I doing this? To make something vaguely marketable lol and solve my BUSINESS PROBLEM. Don't worry, I'm not entirely selling though: My game's title is just "I Can't My Pet Demon Runs a Cult!" 

Here is a link if you'd like to join: https://itch.io/jam/amaiguris-april-2... 

Wonderful. See you there! 

- #gamedev #indiegaming #conlang #Yssaia

June 16th, 2025

"Amaiguri, what ARE you doing?"

Well, firstly, this is the first of my devlogs that I am writing and posting on itch.io -- so "getting my life together", I guess. I just finished collating all the other devlogs on itch.io as well. Looking back, I love how you can see my descent into madness and uncertainty through the last few months. 

I've been doing a lot of self-reflection lately and one of the things I concluded about the emotional side of this process is I'm experiencing Gifted Kid problems. I was in a Gifted and Talented program for 1st through 8th grade. Unlike some GT kids who apparently hit a wall where things stop being easy for them, I WAS (thankfully) taught to work hard -- I excelled in school. HOWEVER, I always felt that I needed to do "better than the expectations" or else I was failing. This served me fine in school. Even when my grades starting taking hits in college, I got the absolute delight of having professors I despised -- and thus, did not trust. As such, I concluded, "Amai, don't trust their grades -- trust the results." And in comparison to some of my peers, I was still going above and beyond. (I was passing my classes, I was doing all the tutoring things, I was TAing for classes, I was writing outside of school, I was developing my brand online, etc.)

 BUT NOW... what ARE the expectations? Even with decently intelligent choices, the chances of me becoming a multi-millionaire overnight are extremely slim. I often feel the expectation of an entrepreneur is that they like... make a product that people want and thus, gain a huge following and make money doing it. But I am not making money and my following is just a charming 3k at the moment. WHICH IS FINE. I'm not ungrateful for the people who support me -- many of you are WONDERFUL. But it's also messing with me because I cannot sustainably do this for my full time job yet.

I share this, not to brag about my education or whatever, but to point out yet another way my brain has found to bully me. And maybe your brain is doing the same thing, and you should tell it to be nicer. We have to remember that just because we haven't "made it" yet, it doesn't mean we've failed. And for me, I have to remember that people love me, even when I'm inconvenient to them.

AHHHHH *ahem* ANYWAY! Vidja games! This last week, I worked on the exterior environments for Nouveau Thuille until my wrist got sore. Then I switched to work on my big Genshin Impact video for the year. It's gonna be a big history of Genshin Impact's marketing. I'm debating between calling it "Marketing as Performance Art: A Genshin Impact Case Study" and "History and Analysis of Genshin Impact's Marketing." Let me know which YOU'D click on!

And this upcoming week, I am going to do more Nouveau Thuille art. Ideally, I'd get it all done. But I likely won't (given how much of the day has already been writing this and other correspondence.)

Send me your good vibes by WISHLISTING #AllThePromisedBurn on Steam or following me on itch.io!

https://s.team/a/3727600/

https://amaiguri.itch.io/