itch.io

Thanks for your questions.

I’m aiming for 8 to 10 weeks of development time per chapter. Depending on what else is going on in my life, it might stretch to 12 weeks on occasion. Confusion was always meant to be a short story, not a never-ending, open-ended cash grab like many other VNs. I’m constantly amazed by the number of VNs I’ve played where the author seemingly just makes it up as they go along. Or they write their “story” to simply maximize the number of fetishized H-scenes they can present. I finished writing my script almost a year ago, so the lead time per chapter is just creating and rendering the models. I know what’s going to happen and how the story will end.

I tell people this is a visual “novella” instead of a “novel.” The chapters are about an hour long if you take the time to read the individual screens. And it is definitely not meant to be a fap-and-run adventure. Many of those are available here if that’s one’s predisposition.

Another factor is the visual style. I’ve always wanted the visuals to be cinematic in scope instead of simple sprites or static screens spread over tens of lines of dialog each. One VN I recently played featured black screens for a lot of its dialogue, as though the author either couldn’t figure out how to present the visuals or just couldn’t be bothered. Chapter 3, as short as it might seem, required 1,299 renders alone, more than many VNs need for their entire length.

All that said, the first three chapters were expository in nature. Chapter 4 (which I’m working on now) is slightly longer than the preceding ones and coincidentally includes the longest scene in the entire VN. But the remaining chapters are all about the same length except for the final two, where all of the story’s threads are wrapped up (along with several different endings).

I hope I answered your questions!