Hi fellas! Long time no see, so it’s time to ✨catch up✨ ever since I’ve announced my hiatus. But as it’s the end of the year, let’s do the usual and have an overview of what was released this year! Admittedly, it should be rather quick this time!

The Dragon Princess

So, earlier this year, for NaNoRenO, I released a game entitled The Dragon Princess, narrating how the friendship Princess Amaia forms with a dragon helps her confront her abuser.

If you guys know, NaNoRenO is one of my favourite jams, but at the same time, the 2024 edition (for which I had released Rendez-Doug) was a rather exhausting experience, so this edition served as one last chance. And honestly, 2025 was much better, and I only feel positive things both for this game and the way things went! I’ve never worked with so many people for a game, and well, I think it shows: the game feels very polished, especially in the VA department (thanks to the wonderful VAs who did an amazing job, but also to my friend Chattercap who cleaned up the lines for me). So, well, I’m not sure to participate again for the jam in 2026, but that’s for reasons unrelated to how it went. I am very proud of the Dragon Princess, and I felt for this game feelings I had not experienced since I released High School Lolita, so yeah, it was promising!

The Blue Skies of Milan

I then released for O2A2 The Blue Skies of Milan, my first fangame (well, I guess second if you count the Shrek one), and well, I gushed enough about this anime in the dedicated devlog, but I insist that you watch Romeo’s Blue Skies, because that’s just the best anime ever, period. So, the goal of this game was to explore the character of Alfredo and, in particular, to explore his dread regarding… spoilers, but I had a lot of fun writing it, coding it, drawing the illustration for this game, and study, from an artistic standpoint, the way the anime approached skies, which are so important for its story. And I mean, I received this review, and that’s all I needed:

Just to think I did a good job with Alfredo and Romeo really warms my heart, because I really wanted to do these characters I ADORE justice 😭😭

What about you, Chimmy-senpai?

Oh, regarding me, well; first of all, I’ve passed my first year of French literature master’s summa cum laude, which is a flex considering I have (well, had) no background in literature beyond high school looool, so yeah, I’m proud of myself; it’s taking me a lot of time, especially since I have to juggle it with my daytime job, but it’s all worth it because I’m really passionate about what I’m learning, especially when it comes to the research-oriented classes.

But also, I did NaNoWriMo with my friends Chattercap (again) and elduator, wrote roughly 70k words in a month and managed to finish a novel I was working on! So yeah, the novel itself is around 90k words, and I have another one at 30k words so far looool. But like, I don’t mean visual novels, but novels, with heavy narration etc. So expect a self-published book on Amazon with an AI cover

More seriously, these stories are written in French loool, and I’m editing the finished novel, and who knows… maybe I’ll try to get it published if it’s worth something; or perhaps I’ll feel like it’s better that I keep it in my files. And don’t worry, we’re still bullying AI frauds calling themselves artists.

Oh also I accidentally deleted all my Ren’Py files lol

Like, that’s not that big an issue for the games I released, since I can just get them back by downloading the games and extracting the rpa file, but for those who were not released, like Waterlily on the Froth… poof, code and GUI gone

But also, well, if you follow me, you know about the itch issue and particularly in my case about the removal of the games from the Daughters of the Sun trilogy from the platform… Well, where’s it at?

*takes a deep breath*

itch

GHOSTED

me

I AM NOT KIDDING GUYS, I AM LITERALLY SPEECHLESS, THEY JUST DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK LMAOOOOOOOOO like, I have other issues like High School Lolita being deindexed, but honestly, I don’t even care about that since, well, at least the game is still on the platform, but for my darling trilogy, I AM SO PISSED BUT AT THE SAME TIME I’M LIKE THE NEUROTIC EQUIVALENT OF NERVOUSLY LAUGHING

So, not to whine like a bitch, but also, I’m a bitch, so I’m going to whine: it has made making games depressing for me lol, hence the hiatus, and ngl, I don’t feel like working on a visual novel in the near future, and even the projects I had that I was really passionate about or the perspective of jams that I really love (or even my own LOL) don’t motivate me.

Except…

Margarêve

I’ve mentioned this on my socials a few times, but never here, so well… Why have I been making games? I wanted to build an audience and skills for my dream project, the one visual novel I’ve been wanting to make and that has been in my mind for 5 years and a half, Margarêve. I do have some recent concept arts/pieces about it:

So, what’s that game about? Well, Margaret is a soon-to-be-16 year-old teenager who could have had a normal life if her parents didn’t want to throw her into a marriage with 23-yo Lawrence Hastings (blond guy on the line-up) against her will. However, and fortunately enough, Margaret quickly finds out that Lawrence is not interested in teenage girls, and his parents kind of force his hand too: so they form an unexpected allyship to put an end to this nonsense. But at the same time, Daffbury, the city the game takes place in, is plagued by the murders of young girls by a serial killer… Time ticks, time tocks, time tiktoks even, and our darling Margaret is obviously on the line, especially since she receives, in her dreams, visits from a strange being, presenting himself as “The Visitor”... is he an ally or a foe? Either way, Margaret will have to navigate her dreams and the situation around her to find a way out.

So yeah, I’ve started more “active” work on it, at my pace however, and that’s the only way I’ll get to work on a VN (truth be told, I wrote quite a lot for VNs too actually, but ngl, that was because the itch incident). This project is very dear to my heart, but it is also very ambitious, especially if I want to bring it to the vision I have. I feel like I have enough coding skills in Ren’Py to try it, and writing novels, even in French, has actually enhanced my writing! Or at least so do I think. Like, a lot of endings, a lot of variations, but I’ll detail all of this in possible future devlogs. So I’m excited to work on it, but please note that even producing a demo will take me a lot of time and certainly won’t be released in 2026… But that’s a good thing, because there is one thing I want to improve for this game…

MY

ART

Like, don’t get me wrong, found out I have dyspraxia, I progressed over the years, my art is cute ya-dah ya-dah, you know the drill, but I spent the year hating my art (except for the Romeo sprite in The Blue Skies of Milan… I love him), so I want to spend the year improving my art while making progress on the demo script (and certainly will go beyond the demo, as I estimate it being around 40k so around 10% of the game, but we’ll see how it holds up in the end), and dealing with my other responsibilities (finish my master’s, doing my job etc.), so yeah. A part of me is like “make a youtube channel about art to force you to draw and hold yourself accountable” but perhaps it’s a parasite thought (that still led me to design a sona, and God knows it was hard considering my aversion to self-insert, so maybe it’s more than a parasite thought looool), but beyond that, do you guys feel like me producing anything? Like, if there’re aspiring VN devs, maybe I can make a “starter pack” with an implemented GUI, character sprites you can use; or any sort of tutorial of things you saw in my games?? (although i think i’m not doing anything that is too crazy loool or that hasn’t been covered, but who knows)

Anyway, I think I just want to spend 2026 being creative, seeing what comes out of it (maybe short games, who knows… but no promises) and building up my art skills in a fun way so that I feel confident enough to illustrate Margarêve!

And that’s it for now! If you’ve read this far, I’m wishing you happy holidays and an excellent year 2026, filled with joy and creativity: you need it, especially in a world that gets more and more uniformised by AI!

Toodaloo!