The Ritual: Character Update

It's been a hot minute since we talked about The Ritual. Where to begin..?

About a month after the release of Chapter 2, I was noodling on ideas for how to move the story forward into Chapter 3, and I kept getting caught up in the writing process. I wasn't a fan of how I'd been tackling the story, which felt like it was dragging. I was building this slow burn story, only I hadn't put nearly enough effort into making the writing as tight as I'd gotten used to in the year-and-change since I'd started putting the game together. Sure, Chapter 2 definitely built on what Chapter 1 had founded, but it honestly made me realize how...well, "inconsequential" Chapter 1 really felt.

I made the decision I wanted to go back; start from scratch. Now that I've proven I can build a visual novel, I want to prove I can build a better one. I want to make something that feels not just story-rich from the first chapter, but content-rich as well! With all that in mind, I set to work on rebuilding the narrative from the ground up. Hyper-focused on keeping the game to five chapters, each one filled with interesting dialogue choices, and branching paths, each with reward scenes that actually feel rewarding.

But first things first, we need to fix the art. The game's current art is drawn to publishing scale, which was very pixelated at the tiniest details, and kinda hard to keep tight. While deciding to upscale the art, I'd made the decision to make a second pass on all the characters; really give them a second polish I'd missed out on before. You'll notice that the changes vary by character: Some have changed a lot, while others have hardly changed at all. I wanted to keep what I liked, and fix what I felt could be improved. Art being subjective and all, I hope y'all are as pleased with the results as I am!

Anyway, we've also got the first pass of the script rewritten for Chapter 1, including actual branching dialogue choices that each lead to their own spicy scenes! Your decisions will actually matter moving forward!

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me while I've been noodling on this the past few months. Check out the individual shots, attached below! Hope to have much more to show this year, and sooner than before! Cheers for now!

--Sneaky