2021 wrap-up

Okay, it might be a bit early for a 2021 wrap-up but I am soon entering the chrismas-holiday-family hell, and I don't know when or if I will be available later.

So first, I am sorry but, we are behind schedule. Believe me, it’s even more painful for me, because I really want to get things done, but life happened for various members of the team including me, and it can’t be helped. I don’t want to set up a new tentative release date, because then I will just have to watch it crumble in front of my eyes again, I can just say it won’t be in 2022.

Our accomplishments this year:

- Releasing a demo !!!

- Creating our steam page ; It was… something. Hopefully we had some help from our publisher Abiding Bridge, I can’t imagine how people deal with it alone.

- Opening our discord

- Writting 60 308 words for the main story 

- Finishing all sprites needed for the game ; 11 characters with 10+ expression, and a couple of sprites for nameless NPC !

- Finishing the first 3 CG of the game ; the graphist really outdone herself there, they are all so gorgeous.

- Improvement of the outline ; I really had to scope knife this, I am really satisfied now, I feel like I have cut out all the boring stuff.

- Creating 624 tweets ; I don’t have the numbers for tumblr, but I still wanted to include this here, because marketing is actually very time consuming, and unfortunately it matters too in the production of the game, so it kinda shows how much work I put in it?

What is planned for 2022:

- Reveal of the two last side characters of the game.

- Finishing the main writing of the story, I expect ~100 000 more words

- A couple more CG

- Completing proofreading and translation of chapter 2 to 5.

- A little update on the demo ~

Also, I decided, I wanted the newsletter to be a cozy place for people who like Imperial Grace. I realized recently, it’s the only place nobody can take away from me so I want to cherish it more. Starting January, people in the newsletter will receive one mail per month, with little gifts, articles about the game (about the lore, the characters, behind the scenes…) or devlogs (I am thinking to do a devlog every 3 month, since I actually don’t like to write them because they take a lot of time...). Some stuff will be exclusive, other just a couple of month early access, I don’t know yet. All of this is kinda experimental, so don’t hesitate to give me feedback on things you liked or didn’t liked. If you haven’t join it yet, you can subscribe here.

Finally, I have a lot of marketing plans, like revamping a bit the itchio/steam page, doing something cool for #WomensHistoryMonth and keeping posting nice screenshot on twitter/tumblr !

I wish everyone a very happy holiday season, may 2022 be favorable to you!