Wow! It's honestly hard to believe that this is finally happening! I'm Crystal DeForest, one of the two writers on All the Creeps of the Cosmos, and I'm really excited to announce that our demo is finally out! This is the first creative work Sadie and I have ever released, so it's really nervewracking. I figure I'll try and dilute some of the anxiety that comes with "other people can look at my writing" with a short devlog talking about the project and myself.

Work on Cosmos began back in December 2022. Sadie and I had been wanting to make a creative project for a long time. Talking about what we wanted, we ended up with wildly different ideas. Sadie had this idea about a 50s period piece involving a UFO convention. I had an idea about a trans woman fighting to survive in a dystopia. Then we figured, what if we had two separate stories that were connected, one showing the past and the other about the future? Then, through the power of too much caffeine,  old prog rock, and long drunk idea sessions, we went ahead and wrote it! I started writing Side Future in mid December 2022, and with Sadie's contributions I finished writing it in March.

Of course, there's more to making a visual novel than just a script. But why a VN in the first place? Well... because I love VNs! I was really into Umineko back in high school, and I remember how exciting it was waiting for each part of the fan translation to release. But my main inspiration is newer indie VNs from queer creators! Seeing so many people like me out there just going all out and making really cool, amazing stuff made me wanna try as well! In particular, I wanna shout out Ivy May's Coquette Dragoon, with its memorable characters and frank discussion of queer sexuality that made me go, "I wanna make a VN too!" (I am a huge fan of Bell, by the way) But there were two hurdles to this. Programming and art!

We decided to use Ren'py because it was the only VN engine that I knew. The biggest problem was I didn't know how to program! I had never done that in my life! And to be honest, I still don't really know how! I just had to try out different stuff until the game stopped crashing, and somehow we've ended up with a demo that appears to work! The other problem was art. A VN needs sprites and backgrounds. The backgrounds I figured I could do myself; they're actually all photographs! Using Maple Mavica Syrup's "webgbcam" application, I went around the city and took some pictures that we could use for the backgrounds. The filter, as the name suggests, gives it a GB Camera sort of look. I love how it really, really abstracts the visuals, letting you fill in the details yourself.

Then, the sprites. This was a problem as Sadie and I can't really draw. But thankfully, we were able to commission our friend Alexandra to draw the characters for us! Her work has been fantastic and has really informed the look of the project as a whole. Since we had pixel backgrounds, pixel sprites would match up really well! I feel like she's given Side Future a really unique visual identity. It's been really lovely seeing the characters come to life with her designs! For Side Future, we have four characters (and one monster) with designs/sprites at the moment. I'm really looking forward to seeing more of them!

That's about it for now, I'd say. I'll keep posting DevLogs to talk about the project and other related things.  The next thing that we're working on is a demo for Side Past, so look forward to it! 

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy All the Creeps of the Cosmos!

- Crystal