(NOTE: I was supposed to post this in the first week when Cienie's 1st build rolled out, so just read this with that hindsight.)

Did you guys know...CIENIE is out?

Yes! The furry visual novel my partner and I have been working since 2 years ago is finally out! The reviews so far have been encouraging, that it makes all the tribulations we faced throughout the making of the FVN have been worth it. I still remembered how we had doubts that the story will ever going to fly off. We also struggled with finding the right artstyles and workflow. We even had to change characters' species a couple of times!

Writing
1) Jo comes out with a first draft and establishes the characters motivations/looks/etc
2) I start fixing the first draft into a readable script
3) Roth comes in to edit our script and highlight any glaring mistake/inconsistency with the plot/story.
4) Repeat step 1, 2, and 3 until you have a consistent and satisfying script.

Art
1) Jo and I come up with the character's species and pose. Jo would make a rough sketch of his ideas before I tie them in into a first-draft sprite
2) Jo then takes that and clean them with his lineart (I've never had clean linework to begin with :3)
3) Meanwhile I work on drawing expressions and extra details like clothing items, tails, etc.
4) Once Jo's done with the linearts, I take the sprites to add the dark shadows and colours. Or sometimes Jo work on the colours himself so I'm left with adding shadows.
5) For BGs, we basically use royalty-free photos or photos we took ourselves and add posterize filter to give it some style. I then take those and draw in some details like personal items or notes to just tie the BGs nicely. You might notice some little easter eggs I added in the BGs if you have keen eyes.
6) For CGs we decide on which scenes that need it. Then it's up to me, Nopan or Ku to work on it ourselves with our own style.
7) UI is mostly done by Jo, but I did help him out whenever it's needed.

Sounds and Music
I worked on most of the music. I use Soundtrap and just start playing around with some chords. Sometimes I have to use Hookpad, which kinda guides you how to write music based on some chord progressions. The sound effects are mostly taken from royalty-free sound file site called Freesound. There are some in there that we can use straight into the game, but there are some that I need to make further edits such as trimming or adding effects. Last but not least, we ended up recording some sounds ourselves like ambience, rain noise etc. Guess whose voice the whispering noises are from? ;)

Coding
1) For the first build, it's mostly written by Jo and I. Jo mostly worked on coding the expressions while I worked on logic statements in the game.
2) We do have other programmers coming in but hopefully they'll help us out for the next build.
3) We playtest the versions ourselves, so there's definitely some bugs we might have missed out.

That's a lot of things that I've talked about. So, here's the link if you wanna play it. Tell me what you think. We appreciate your thoughts on this. Heck, I might even want to know if you have negative comments on this too.