Progress Update 08/20/25

Hello again!

As of today, the demo for Bloom has received a major update! 

In just two weeks so much has been accomplished (I had a wonderful vacation and time off from work that allowed me to get lots of things done). In my last post I said that I would begin development on the actual routes for each of the love interests, but that didn't happen. However! I found multiple volunteers to help me with this project, and with their feedback I came to the decision that some major changes needed to be made to the prologue. So, I spent the last couple weeks rewriting large chunks of the script. 

I wholeheartedly believe the result is a better, more polished game and I'm excited to push out this update so more people can experience it  :)

As usual, here's a list of what what I accomplished. 

Game Progress

• Prologue: Chapter 0 was completely rewritten 
  
• Prologue: Chapter 1 had large sections rewritten
• Prologue: Chapter 2 had large sections rewritten
  
• The game now sits at about 12k words (and that's just the prologue!).

General 

• Recruited volunteer writers, editors, and an artist
• Commissioned Velvet's character sprite (super excited about this!)

Marketing

• Created a Bluesky account (@nightlightwrks.bsky.social‬) for marketing and lined up the first few posts
• Created an Instagram account (nightlightwrks) for marketing and lined up the first few posts

I'll be working on the routes for the love interests (for real this time). However, I haven't decided if I want to update the game each time I finish a route or wait until the game is complete. I'm leaning towards the former simply because if I wait until the game is finished then there won't be another major update for at least 6 months. We'll just have to wait and see. 

Bloom is my first foray into the world of video game development, and in just 6 months I've been able to get this far. The more time I spend with this project, the more positive I become that this is something I want to do as more than a hobby. But, even if this stays a hobby, I'm more than happy to be able to make my own visual novel and that there are people out there who want to see it :)

Finally... I can now officially say that Felix's route is the first one being written! Felix in particular has been on my mind a lot recently, and so I'm going to use that natural momentum to write his route first. Apologies to my Albion and Qwynn fans. 

...I hope my favoritism doesn't show up too much within the story (don't worry Qwynn and Albion, I still love you). 

Until next time!