Thank You - 10,000 Downloads Special

First of all let me just begin by thanking everyone who has played Project Red. 10,000 downloads is a number that I can barely wrap my head around, and especially since I know the demo has been reposted on other platforms I can't even begin to fathom how many people have actually played my game at this point.  All of the feedback and responses have been a little overwhelming but I'm committed to finishing this game and hopefully leaving everyone with an enjoyable experience that exceeds their expectations.  

To commemorate the moment I've made a special illustration of Red in my proper fully painted art unlike the games usual cel shaded vibe. Please enjoy it!

A History of Project Red

For the remainder of this post I'd like to take a step back and look over my journey of actually creating this game. From inception to the current state and the future.  So if that's something that interests you, cozy up and settle in for a bit of a read.  And if not, just enjoy the art above and know that I'm very grateful you've given me so much of your time already.

So, before we begin it's important that I lay out some context of my own history. I imagine the majority of people here are finding me for the first time as a game dev, but I spent most of my online career working on webcomics.  Going from a kid posting comics to deviantart to someone actively posting a story on Webtoons and trying to pursue that as a career while going to college.  In the middle of making my main series, "Checkmate" I found myself wanting to experiment with a second project.  At the time I ran a very small and modest Patreon account and I pitched a number of concepts for an adult comic to be published there monthly.

Contrary to what you might immediately have thought, Project Red was NOT one of those pitches.  But there was a pitch for a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. This story went on to win the poll and so the first look at what would become Project Red was born as "Alice In!"

Alice In! only lasted for 2 chapters (technically 3 but more on that later!), but it was while I was still working on Alice that the idea for Project Red would first come to me in the form of an almost literal fever dream.  

The Dream

It was in midst of a pretty rough summer.  My house had lost power for about a week, and being cut off from all my friends at the time I was left with little else but my own thoughts and the unbearable heat.  And that's when I had the dream that would spark an eventual career shift. If you've played the current build of Project Red then this will be a familiar story to you. A girl in a red hoodie walks laps around a park in the dead of night.  Eventually she's confronted by a man who begins to assault her, only the girl was expecting this. In fact she smiles even, as she confirms the man was exactly who she was trying to run into.  And so she draws her knife and stabs the man, over and over while laughing hysterically.  I woke up as she sat atop his corpse in a suggestive manner and gazed up at the sky.  It was so vivid and the imagery was so striking that I immediately closed my eyes and attempted to resume the dream.  Asking myself "What would happen next?" And with that thought I imagined a massive Werewolf exiting the bushes and approaching the girl and the freshly made corpse.

From there I quickly got up and wrote down everything that I could remember.  I should say I've never really been the type to craft a story out of a dream like that.  But something was special about this.  And I just knew it was an idea that I had to make.  And so I did.  But it wasn't quite a game just yet!

Why don't you just make a game?

The original concept I had for Project Red was as a spin off comic to my, at the time in production, Alice In! series.  A darker, twisted mini story companion.  The girls red hoodie and my brains insertion of a werewolf made it very easy to connect the concept to Little Red Riding Hood, and it just made sense to tie it into my Alice in Wonderland adaptation at that point. It would launch with a full first chapter to set the stage for the plot, and from there updates would come in short bursts, each ending with a choice that readers would vote on.  Choices would be framed by selecting one of three cards (sound familiar?) and then the story would progress based on whatever the top voted choice was.  The idea was more in depth than you likely are imagining so to give an example, a chapter might end with Red encountering a Vile Shroom enemy.  The choices would then be to fight it off using your knife, which would have stats correlating to damage and durability, to use your gun, wiich had damage and limited ammo or to attempt to flee.  The Shroom itself would have a health bar and so if you didn't kill it, you could imagine a loss state or lewd scene occurring as a result.   Likewise you'd be prompted to pick one of 3 paths, where you might find the merchant camp, an enemy encounter or a wandering salesman.  And as I pitched this concept to a good friend of mine he gave me the obvious response.  "Why don't you just make a game?"

And the obvious answer to that was, "I can't make a game."

And yet that question lingered in my mind.  He was right of course.  While it started off as wanting to make an interactive comic, at this stage the comic itself had literal game mechanics.  And I began to wonder about the audience choices and how I couldn't let myself get attached to any one route that I may never end up making in the first place.  But still I pressed on and actually produced the full first chapter, which has never been fully posted anywhere I don't think.  The reason for that stemmed from me actually getting disillusioned with webtoons and comic making as a whole.  As well as finding myself drawing more and more creative energy from Project Red while Alice In! became harder and harder to continue working on.

So  seeing my webcomic itself going nowhere and losing all interest in creating a story like Alice In! where there was no real meat to the narrative, I eventually cancelled all of my projects, including the Project Red comic.  

Why RPGMaker?

Good question!  To answer let's rewind a bit.  While I DID cancel my webtoon, I made the decision to commit to finishing its current arc first so that it would have a valid conclusion.  So while I was working a job, and working on keeping my consistent comic uploads, I began looking into game development. I started with Unity on the recommendation from a friend but I quickly concluded that learning coding on top of my other needs was honestly just beyond me.  The amount of free time I had was very limited and I did not feel like I was retaining anything I was learning.

And then I remembered about RPGMaker.  If you're like me, you have fond memories of RPGMaker horror games such as "The Crooked Man" or "Mad Father."  Some of you are probably expecting me to mention "Fear and Hunger" right about now but the honest truth is that I didn't even know it existed until DEEP into my own production process.  But no the real game that I thought on, and convinced me to TRY this route, was Undertale.  Now that WAS a different engine, but it was the style of game that convinced me that I COULD make something without having to go crazy into the bigger engines.  Luckily 2d art was likewise never going to be a problem for me, as I was an artist myself and with my nostalgia for RPGMaker and the plethora of forum posts, youtube tutorials and other such things, I eventually settled on that as my engine of choice.  And with finding RPG Maker on sale after xmas, I decided, what the hell?  Worst thing that happens is that I spend a few weekends screwing around.

The Project Red Prototype

What you're seeing here was my quick mock up of the original title screen for Project Red.  I repurposed one of my first sketches of Red's design and did a quick coloring pass to give the game some identity, and then went about creating the whole thing using nothing but the default RTP assets.  As you can see not much has really changed for Red's design.  She was pretty locked in place from the moment I first drew her.  Contrary to what you might have thought this was all done up before Zenless Zone Zero was on the way so Red took no inspiration from our favorite shark maid Ellen.  Though I DID end up adding a little flair behind her ear for fun eventually after the 1.0 relaunch.  That's pretty much the only real design change that ever happened to Red.  Oh, well, that and making her teeth consistently sharp after liking the way that looked in a few promo arts I had done.

Now what you're seeing here is two sets of sprites.  The top row is the sprites I used for the very first build of the game.  I'd absolutely recommend using placeholders for a good while as you iron out all the core aspects of your project.  These sprites were all generated with RPG Makers built in character creator.  Eventually I did go back and update the sprites by hand to actually resemble the at then current designs.  The prototype covered the same content as the current full game.  While I had a much larger idea for what Project Red would be in TOTAL.  I knew setting out to make a 12 hour game was beyond me and so I stripped the idea down to the basic premise of the fable.  Red delivering a basket to Grandma. Patrons would get their first taste of the game with the sprites seen bellow.

Again though at this stage of development everything was made as default as possible.  Aside from Red, Witch, Hati and Skoll every character sprite was simply a default asset, and all the maps were made using the default assets.  Heck some of them even started using built in placeholder maps provided by RPG maker as I really had no idea what I was doing at this stage.  I laid out effectively the entire game in this manner.  You'd probably be surprised just how much of this is exactly the same as the current game in terms of story, dialogue and general progression.  Now while the core experience utilized the default assets, I of course needed some placeholder art to better establish scenes and what not, so let's take a look at these early choices.

This was the original Battle screen.  While in a perfect world I would have made an action combat game, I knew that both skill and art wise that would simply be out of reach. But combat was always intended, and if it was going to be turn based, I'd want artowrk of Red that would change depending on her Health (armor was not a mechanic yet.).  Red was drawn in an entirely different pose and the battle menu had TONS of empty unused space.  As you can see I didn't bother with including any clean art at this stage.  There was no shading and nothing was finished.  But I did make sure that the enemies and characters at least had art that was relatively "on model" to better sell the experience.  The battle system at this stage  was more or less just the default RPG Maker system. I had decided to go with the Active Time Battle system since I always enjoyed that from games like FF7 and FF8 but I would come to realize that it didn't have much appeal when it came to my own game.  Red doesn't HAVE party members, and in this version that was especially true with Hati briefly joining her for the Crow quest much like in the current build and Witch joining for a single optional boss fight (Compared to the currently planned 6 playable characters).  This meant that battles devolved into simply waiting to take your turn anyways, and completely defeated the purpose of the ATB system.  I'm almost embarrassed by how long this battle system was left in place but sadly it would not get a full revamp until the distant 1.0 relaunch.

Don't be too harsh on me here!  These busts were the original very early placeholders for the core cast!  As you can see Hati was the only one that went through a significant design change.  The core ideas for most everyone else was already decided from the start though.  Again simple, quick art that I didn't spend any time or care on.  Just enough to sell the idea of the game and show how I wanted the character busts to display during dialogue.  I'm not entirely sure why I wanted full busts like this as opposed to just portraits which would have been FAR easier.  But I definitely liked this more visual novel like approach to things.  It sure has made Red's multiple outfits a pain in the ass though!

And last but not least we had...the placeholder art for events/CG's.  I didn't even BOTHER doing anything more than incredibly loose and rough sketches for these haha.  This was for the sequence where Hati saves Red from the Werewolf.  The final version is quite the glow up right?  The whole game was made up of these and I hope I never drag these out to be seen by people ever again haha.  But yeah this first pass as you can tell was just as simple as I possibly could have made it.  For a prototype like this it was important that the turn around time was quick to me. If I made it, and I thought it sucked, then at least I didn't waste too much time.  And if even in this shoddy state, I felt it had potential, then all I would need to do from there is refine the visuals and gameplay.

Effectively the Prototype build of Project Red ended up being a truncated version of the full game that took around 2 hours to complete.  Starting with Red waking up in wonderland and going all the way to her encounter with Grandma, this version also had multiple endings from the start, though they were much less elaborate than the current plans are.  For all intents and purposes, this was the first game I had ever made. And it was NOT very good.  In fact it wasn't good at all.  But as a concept, I could tell at this stage that it had potential.  And perhaps most importantly, I had a lot of fun making it and getting to grips with the software.  So with the project getting the green light, the next step was to turn this basic, default RPG Maker placeholder into a real game.  Add proper mechanics, add proper art and go all in on telling the story that I wanted to tell.

And if you've been paying attention to the current games version number.  You probably already know.  But the game did not evolve into the version you know just yet.  First we have to look at the original game.  Project Red Version 0.1

Version 0.1 and how I almost released an entirely different game...

What you're looking at now is the updated title screen for what was SUPPOSED to be the games full launch.  At this point Red still uses her original character design and perhaps biggest of all, the game had a subtitle calling itself chapter 1.  Let me just explain why this subtitle was dropped before we go any further.  If a game is titled "chapter 1" it sets up an expectation that there will be a "chapter 2."  Common sense right?  Well see the funny thing is, I was never really planning on following up Project Red with a Project Red sequel.  In fact the "chapter 2" of this story is not intended to even have a playable version of Red in it.  Because the next part of the story would be centered on Alice.  And how her narrative intersects with Project Red, being at various points a prequel, interquel and sequel.  So calling this game chapter 1 when it's follow up is NOT another Project Red game just felt kind of stupid.  It was just a flawed choice that I rectified as part of the 1.0 relaunch.  I think this title screen as well is just kind of weak.  I went through the effort of making it animated with Red's cloak billowing in the wind.  But the art itself is just kind of subpar?  I clearly couldn't decide if I wanted to keep it in the games Cel Shaded style or have a more painted look and the mix here is just rough.  There's also just A LOT of empty space.  Overall the only thing that was added here and survived to 1.0 was the UI elements for the cursor and such.

Compared to the prototype this build of Project Red is actually fairly identical in terms of assets. It still utilized almost entirely default tile sheets, but maps had lighting effects applied to them and of course the CG's were replaced with  fully finished versions that we'll look at in a moment. In terms of the demo that was briefly available here on Itch, it covered roughly the same content as the current demo, beginning with a different version of chapter 1, before lining up almost one to one with the 1.0 build.  The only real differences in terms of narrative is that the current version has been GREATLY expanded on.  For example Cheshire never made an appearance in the original build.  Nor did the Scarecrow. But we'll talk about those narrative changes as we get moving.  For now I'd like to talk about the artwork.

As you can see, the CG's are VERY close to the art that currently exists in post 1.0 builds.  It's not as good as though.  I honestly don't have any real excuses for this.  I'm not entirely sure why the art quality differs so much.  There was just something very FLAT about the original art that didn't sit well with me.  Of course at the time I was more than okay with this visual style, but as you likely already know, I ended up remaking the entire game on a visual level once I relaunched with 1.0.  I won't be explaining WHY I redrew everything just yet though.  For now let's simply focus on the game as it existed at this point.

The original build already included the Armor system still present in the 1.0 version.  But this version had a meter on screen at all times with exact numbers as to what your armor was currently at.  I ran into a number of issues with making this work across different outfits and giving them all their own stats and ultimately I just felt like it wasn't super needed if Red's bust and battle arts were going to update to show damage anyways.  I'm sure some people would prefer to have the exact numbers, but I ultimately did away with it.  You can also see how Red's bust was updated from the prototype.  Of course all art in this build was finished and shaded just like in 1.0 but her bust went through a lot of changes.  One thing I REALLY didn't like about this version was how the Red sprite had her hood up at all times, with the bust having her hood down.  Then there's the fact that she carries her knife in the artwork even though she doesn't even know she HAS it at this point in the narrative.  Things like that are what led to me removing the hood from Red's sprite and removing the knife from her bust once I decided to start over.

The Witch received her design update in 1.0 as well. I won't chat too much here beyond addressing the revamp to the way that backgrounds were drawn.  Again I think it's just quite clear that I was trying to pump out the artwork quickly in the original build, compared to the current art.  But yeah I won't keep showing comparisons like this or else we'd be here all day so let's move this train forward!

This is another small note but in regards to content the original version already had a number of features and mechanics that I've been asked about a lot.  One thing at a time.  Yes the strange monument has always been in the game.  In this version though since the game WAS nearly complete it actually did have a function.  Spoiler for the current game, it's connected to unlocking an ending.  But since the demo doesn't really have any included endings you can't do anything with this yet.  And you won't until the full game really.

Second though, perhaps the most divisive part of Project Red.  The clock.  Time.  Hoo boy, I had no idea so many people were going to be against an in game time system haha.  This was ALWAYS meant to be part of the experience.  As someone who enjoys a good Persona game the idea of making the player decide how to use "time" like a limited resource seemed like a fun way to frame various decisions.  Now as someone who likes Persona let me also say, I DON'T like the way time is handled too much in those games usually.  Being unable to experience content you want to experience because your stats aren't perfect or you didn't have a guide to say the right answers at all times never feels good. Metapor Refantazio I think is perfect on the other hand.  I always had enough time to build and max out every relationship in thatgame while doing every side quest and optional dungeon and with time to spare by the end of the game.  So I hope that reassures some of you that the games time system is not here to PREVENT you from doing things.  

The game takes place entirely over a single night, with the framing device being that Red will die of a curse should she not deliver her basket to Grandma before sunrise.  Now with that setup, and the concept of the game having multiple endings, it goes without saying that running out of time WOULD be an ending.  And I think there's only so many ways to approach that.  So to explain my choices and what I settled on, lets break down some of the options.

1. The game takes place in real time.  This was never even considered.  I have very little love for ANY kind of system like this and while I imagine you still find playing this game stressful at times, it would be even worse if you constantly worried about an in game clock ticking down at every moment.  I want you to explore and enjoy cutscenes and character interactions.  And real time would just fly in the face of that.

2. Time only moves as the plot does.  I think we all saw this play out in FNAF Security Breach and I wonder if anyone really liked that approach?  I don't think it would work well here either because the dead end for running out of time would ultimately have to be tied to some sort of choice or option.  If time only manually moves from the plot the failure state would be a choice to opt into and as a result there wouldn't be any actual stakes to the Time as a system, or any choices you'd make throughout the game.  It would simply be "oh do I want this ending or that one?" And that just didn't feel good to me either.

3. Time is a currency that can be spent on optional bonuses.  This was what I ultimately landed on.  I think, out of context it's easy to understand why so many players see the time system and dislike it. But if I can elaborate a bit here and explain this choice, a major theme of this game is consequences. You are supposed to make choices that will alter the outcome of the story.  Maybe it's just making a boss fight easier or harder.  Maybe it's getting a completely different ending.  Maybe it's just changing what goddess favors you.  But choices are at the core of this experience. As mentioned in the second option, if time running out was tied to a SINGULAR decision.  It would never really be a consequence.  You couldn't mess up and run out of time.  Nor could you experience that ending early out of simple curiosity.  But if time was essentially a currency, like money.  Well then you could spend it as you see fit.  If you wanted to see what happens when the sun rises, you could spam resting at the first camp fire next to Witch and get your answer.

This would then expand to adding a sense of pressure to how you decided to spend your night.  The first time you play the game you won't have a sense for how the clock works.  How much time passes in the story?  Is it worth doing X or Y?  But for a game with 26 endings, that is intended to be run through multiple times, you'll eventually come to realize that you have more than enough time to pursue whatever route you'd like to go on.  

This is the original incarnation of the Tarot Card choice system.  It was both better and worse than the current system I think.  On the one hand, it's IMMEDIATELY clear what action each card represents.  On the other, it's muddy about the card being upright or reverse and well, as the artist, it would mean having to draw new arts for every single card that ever shows up.  In the end I wanted to have a consistent deck of cards that I could potential print and while it's a little annoying to have to interact with a card to understand what action it represents, I think it's important to tell at a glance which cards are upright and which are reversed as the meanings ARE relevant to the outcomes of the choices.  Then with future changes to the full game it'll be even more important to also understand at a glance what card the choice is as you'll be getting extra copies for choosing it.

As for WHY the major arcana are included at all, I just thought it was a really cool and fitting idea.  The journey of the fool in a lot of ways mirrors the journey Red takes in the game.  And well, I've already mentioned Persona 5 so of course that was an inspiration as well.  But I wanted to really use the cards in a way that tied directly to the games core identity.  To have a large presence that connected back to various systems and mechanics.  And that's why I ultimately decided to give them a consistent artwork to clarify that these are meant to be literal cards.  Plus making them real cards let me have fun deciding who would be on what artwork.  What characters I could have appear here well in advance.  And that sort of thing was very fun. 

Battles was probably the absolute low point of the original build to such a degree that I have a hard time understanding WHY I was okay leaving it like this. While the enemy and character artworks were updated, mechanically these battles were still just a bland ATB system with a single party member.  The only REAL change being that some enemy attacks interacted with Red's armor, and that the default TP gauge was replaced with the current Stamina meter.  Red also had her Evocation skills but only Bloody Rondo existed and it functioned like a traditional Final Fantasy Limit Break being unlocked after taking enough damage more or less.  I recently played this build to get these captures and I can say for sure, battles had nothing to them.  All you really had to do was spam attack. It was REALLY bad.  And while combat is still what I would consider the weakest area of the game, my plans for its final evolution have me incredibly excited.

  In terms of style though the game really was pretty ironed out.  The chibi artwork's for collecting items was in place and the general aesthetic for images and how they would be used was set in stone by this point.  It's really just that I decided to give the visuals a complete overhaul and make a game that was just purely my own.  And as my standards rose I ended up just redrawing damn near everything.

Here's a good example of the old level layout.  The Merchant Camp is just super easily recognizable.  The layout is essentially the same just with the tileset and characters being replaced.  I took this screen shot in particular to show how even the mechanics of resting, cooking and creating torches was already decided on.  Of course in 1.0 cooking would be moved to Broomhill Inn and be greatly expanded.  In this version it was a very lazy approach and simply cooked all of your food and meat into cooked versions that were a little better.  It hardly seemed like a mechanic worth using nor worth the 20 minutes unless you REALLY hoarded a lot of raw food since it would always cook everything in your inventory. Overall it was a bad system and needed a complete rework, which it got.  Though it's still not fully finished yet.

As for Resting though, I'm sure this is the most divisive design choice of Project Red.  Saving not being something that can be done at any time is contentious.  And in modern games it's basically what is expected.  And I do get that absolutely.  But for me, I just.  All of my favorite games, don't really work like that.  For example, if I have to quit playing Devil May Cry 3 at any point, I will have to do so understanding that whatever progress I've made in the current mission will be lost.  I will have to redo it.  If I want to do bloody palace I will have to do it in a single sitting.

This is true for a lot of games I like.  Resident Evil with type writers and ink ribbons.  Classic FF or KH with actual save points.  Even Nier Automata stops auto backups as part of the plot before the end of the game forcing you to rely on manual saves should you ever die.  I just LIKE this approach.  Now it's not for everyone, and I get that.  But I feel like there are enough resources for saving that this system can't really be called cruel.

Fear and Hunger as an example will force you to survive a coin toss before you can save, and features very few areas where you are free to save without this mechanic.  Project Red does not have a "risk" for saving.  There is no punishment for saving. And if you don't want to spend 30 minutes to save, restore HP MP and ST and cure all statuses, well, you don't HAVE to. The game covers roughly 9 in game hours.  So even if you decided to save that entirely for resting it would still give you 18 saves.  On top of the 13 free saves for clearing any chapter.  On top of guaranteed Ritual Candles that are placed at specific story moments.  On top of Ritual Candles being potential RNG drops.  On top of Scarecrow being able to draw an infinite use Save sigil in more than one location.  ON TOP OF auto saves being present in case you ever just need to quickly exit the game and don't want to lose progress. The game has over 30 guaranteed saves just from the time and chapter mechanics alone.  So please don't worry about saving and just rest when you need to!  

The forgotten Maiden was perhaps the BIGGEST glow up when it came to character busts.  I don't know what I was thinking not drawing any bangs on her haha.  Narratively her role and the mirror world was well set up here as the fast travel hub however the skill tree system was pretty much unrecognizable.  There was only an Eros skill tree and it's skills had nothing to do with SP and instead had its own point system and it was just pretty unnecessary really.

On February 14th, 2023, I published the demo of this game here on Itchio.  The intention was for this to BE the game. I was satisfied with it and was ready to finish it just like this. So what happened?

What Killed the 0.X Build of Project Red?

I worked on this build for roughly a year and was nearing the end of production.  All that was really let to do was create the final boss and the ending sequences with Grandma.  And then I had a thought.  It would be really cool to have some voice actors for a promotional trailer.

Little did I know that thought would spiral into me completely remaking the entire game.  For now I decided to look into voice actors as well as a musician to compose a "main theme" for the game.  The game still used the default RPG Maker sound library for EVERYTHING.  But I wanted the trailer and title screen to have an original song at least.  Eventually I found some really amazing people.  Hikari Kami was hired to compose the main theme and battle theme for the game.  And I found a number of girls to audition for Red.

When I heard SultryLamps performance I was honestly so impressed.  From the demo reels I had heard she wasn't my first choice for the role to be honest.  But when I heard her audition, I think I instantly knew at that moment.  She WAS Red.  And knowing how well she did in the role my ideas for having a voiced trailer gradually turned into "she should voice Red for the whole game."

Now for a first game ever.  It's probably insane to invest so much time and money into your work that hire various voice actors and go for full voice acting for your main cast.  But I am not one for half measures lol.  I leapt forward and used my savings to pay for Red, Witch and the Forgotten to get voice acting.  And once I had the files and the music I quickly cut together a trailer and posted it on youtube.  I was happy for about 5 seconds.  But as I watched that trailer immediately after letting it go live I found myself over come with a strange feeling.

As I listened to that beautiful music, and those amazing line deliveries.  I saw my game for what it was at the time.  It was lazy.  I saw the quality of these super talented people, who had no real skin in this game, and I realized that I was by far the weakest link.  I felt insecure, I felt regret, I felt embarrassed.  My game wasn't good enough for them.  And so with the game roughly 90% complete I decided to scrap what I had, and start over.

Version 1.0

Project Red Version 1.0 was relaunched on October 31st of 2023.  In roughly 8 months the game had been completely transformed.  Every tile was replaced.  Every sprite was redrawn in a new style that was entirely my own.  Character busts, CG's you name it.  I redid everything I possibly could along the way replacing sound effects and music and completely transforming the game to something I hoped my voice actors and musicians would be proud to be a part of.  And above all, I made it something that I was proud of as well.

With 1.0 also came serious changes to the games mechanics.  In particular combat was elevated with the rough implementation of the Exploit system which would be refined over the next year.  Currently I'm still working on the final touches for that which will greatly change combat but I won't spoil that just yet.

In the end I gave myself the time to refine and refocus the game.  To turn what was a "this could be fun" hobby into something I could seriously put out there.  I reworked the script adding new characters like Cheshire, Scarecrow and the Tinman, and greatly expanded the narrative with new scenes and content. Several more voice actors were approached for roles and the scope of the game increased greatly.  But honestly I wouldn't change anything.  I'm incredibly happy with how things have turned out. I'm proud of what this game is.

And 10,000 downloads well...I can't say I saw that coming.  But I do know one thing.  The game I started with was never going to reach this place.  It wasn't worthy of it. Thank you so much for playing.  For being here on this journey.  And I hope you look forward to the full release later this year.

For now, I've got more work to do!