STATE OF J.P.D.E. - #01

Hello, everybody! Meinos Kaen here and welcome to the first State of J.P.D.E.!

Considering all the projects we’re currently working on and that you’re kinda funding their existence, I thought it’d be better to start from this month of January 2022 to have periodical general updates on all of them, to show you what your money is going towards now and in the future.

JPDE – Sonata of Fire

The dates keep on coming and they don’t stop coming! This month’s release -which will come by the end of this week for Super Patrons- includes the first date for Penny and Ruby -as you can see from the sketch below-.

Also, this month we’ve only had one submission for the JPDE New Sprite poll so that automatically wins: David as Joker from Persona 5.

Going into the future, we will have another month of normal posting then in March we will open a new Dance Event+Ending Poll. As a reminder, it will be a battle royale between all characters whose 4th dates have been added to the game that far.

JPDE2 – Adagio of Darkness

Work proceeds apace! Still, this needs a clarification as to the releasing schedule. Unlike JPDE1, the pacing of the game and the releases themselves will be different. There’s no weeks of gameplay or new dates to add, here. Instead, what gets added to the game are areas. Areas need locales and NPCs and dialogue, and those need sprites.

So, each of JPDE2’s updates will come when the next area that needs to be added is in a completed enough state to be usable for gameplay and exploration.

Going into the future, as a reminder: as we are in a veeeeeeeeeeeery alpha state of the game, future updates may contain gameplay or plugins tweaks that may or may not cause you to need to reload from earlier points. So I advise you to save and save often.

ONHA – Ore No Hero Agency

We’re almost there! A new artist is in the team and he’s working on the Backgrounds for this game exclusively. Once all those backgrounds are done with, we have everything that’s needed to complete the game’s prologue and first arc.

This is a very far cry from the early releases for JPDE but I’m going with the longer game of waiting until I have all the pieces needed to avoid any new ‘Temporary’ issues… Also because unlike RT, Japanese companies are notoriously trigger happy with copyright materials so better to have everything in the game to be made by us.

ARS NAVIGATIO

Working on fan-games was easy, in retrospect. Now I see why, when making their original ones, so many ideas end up on the cutting board. ARS NAVIGATIO’s entire conceptual stage has been the longest of anything I’ve ever created and as we went on, I had to keep in mind all the assets made for previous integrations and how to use them properly in the next one…

I’ve always wanted the game to be something more Danganronpa and Ace Attorney inspired. Something that was less about an epic developing storyline and more character focused, through which eyes to discover the world I made… Well, thanks to my girlfriend and her love of old television, I’ve now pinpointed the right balance. The trick, in the end, was to go smaller.

The picture you see above is not of any fantasy land but of my home-town: Naples. Neapolis, in the ancient languages… And I want you to keep it in mind. Also, if you got a trenchcoat, wear it.

That’s all for this month’s State of J.P.D.E.. If you have any further questions for me or the team, please leave them in the comments!

- Meinos Kaen