Hello everyone!
This is Yuki from the P2GA development team.
Thank you so much for all the ❤️ reactions on P2GA Devlog #1!
The response was far beyond what I expected, and it made me incredibly happy.
Today, I’m back with Devlog #2!
As I hinted in the previous entry, this time I’ll be talking about scenario writing—my very first big challenge.
—A Complete Beginner, for Real—
When our director, Fujisawa, asked me, “Want to try writing the scenario for the typing project?” I said yes without a second thought.
But the truth is… I was a total beginner in game development.
I didn’t know left from right, and the whole process felt overwhelming at first.
When I joined P2GA, the project was still at the stage where the overall plot hadn’t been fully created yet.
Some of the previous team members and Fujisawa had already laid out the foundation of the story, but building a full narrative from the plotting stage was a pretty big hurdle for someone as inexperienced as I was.
And so, my real journey into scenario writing began. 🔥
Our writing process goes in this order:
Overall plot
Detailed plot
Book (the full scenario including dialogue)
In this devlog, I’ll share what I learned during each of these steps, along with some of the ideas and storytelling details we put special care into—using Episode 0, which you can play in the demo, as an example!
—The Overall Plot—
The first step was creating the overall plot—the “bones” of the story.
Here’s a small look at how the beginning was written at the time:
The protagonist is once again suffering from their chronic migraines. Their assistant, Rio Maki, worries about them, and the protagonist begins to talk about their past. There was a period after an accident when the protagonist had lost their memories, and the scar on their cheek came from that time as well. Whenever they try to recall what happened back then, a splitting headache hits them. “It’s like… a scab on my memories,” the protagonist says.
A tiny preview of the earliest plot draft.
Reading it now, the writing feels rough and a little embarrassing—but that’s where everything started.
One thing I remember very clearly from that time was that Director Fujisawa reviewed the plot directly.
As a first-year newcomer, I usually submitted everything after having a senior colleague check it first. But that day, that senior was out, so my draft went straight to the director.
When I opened the plot in Notion, it was covered in comments from top to bottom.
We revised it again and again—especially the later chapters.
We went back and forth countless times, debating every little detail:
“What if we do it this way?”
“No, maybe this direction works better?”
I think this is something all creatives can relate to:
having your own writing critiqued can sting a little.
But during this exchange, all I remember feeling was pure excitement—
“We’re really going to make something amazing!”
And what became of that hard-won, heavily refined story ending…?
You’ll have to wait until the full release, planned for Spring 2026, to experience it yourself!
It’s a piece that Fujisawa and I shaped together through endless back-and-forths, and we can’t wait for you to see where it all leads.
—The Detailed Plot—
Once the overall plot was set, the next step was creating the detailed plot.
This meant breaking the story down further, episode by episode, and fleshing out the flow of each part.
And the hardest part was…
✏️ Writing the Word Boxes
In Dive Mode, you’ll see a stream of short “word box” phrases.
My job was to come up with tons of these words and fragments.
At first, I was writing smoothly, but halfway through I hit a wall and found myself slumped over my desk thinking, “I’ve run out of words…” 😇
I had to come up with all sorts of phrases like “I can’t do this anymore” or “This hurts”.
After writing so many of them, I felt like I was about to fall into the darkness myself. 😇
😈 Deciding the Final Words
At this stage, we also decided on the “Final Words”—the core phrase tied to each episode’s trauma.
For the demo (Ep.0), the Final Words are:
“If she’s not here, then there’s no meaning to my life.”
We wanted each phrase to strike at the core of the character’s trauma, while still giving players a sense of accomplishment when they typed it out. So we deliberately made the Final Words a bit longer.
This is the most important phrase in each episode, so we had countless discussions within the team:
“Can we make it hit harder?”
“Does this feel too weak?”
We went back and forth many times before settling on the right wording.
Especially in the later episodes, you’ll see some phrases with a real twist—
the kind that will make you say, “There’s no way I can type this on my first try!”
And if you can one-turn-kill it on your first attempt… honestly, that’s amazing!
If anyone manages to pull it off, please tell us—we’d love to hear about it! ✨
—The Book—
The final stage is the “Book.”
The Book is the full scenario script, including all final dialogue lines.
On previous projects, I had sample scripts from senior writers to use as references—but for P2GA, I had to write everything completely from scratch.
I remember sitting frozen in front of my PC, not knowing where to begin.
When I finally managed to write the Episode 0 Book and submitted it, Fujisawa returned it with a mountain of feedback.
One comment that still sticks with me to this day was:
“You’re not writing the scene.”
I remember thinking, What does it mean to ‘write the scene’?
For a complete beginner like me, this became a major wall to overcome.
After that, Fujisawa helped adjust and refine Episode 0, shaping it into the version you see today.
■ Ep.0 – Behind the Psychiatry Clinic
◆ [Event Mode – Start Event]
Trigger: Auto
Background: Flames rising
SFX: Crackling fire
……
▼……
▼
It’s… hot…
▼Feels like my body’s melting…
▼Where… am I?
▼What the hell… is happening to me…?
▼(Screen fades to black)
??? (Rio): “...ctor…”
▼??? (Rio): “Doctor…”
▼??? (Rio): “Doctor!!”
…
…
…
Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the Episode 0 Book:
In the plot stage, the scene was nothing more than a single line:
“The protagonist is once again suffering from their chronic migraines.”
But once it became part of the Book, that simple sentence transformed into a scene where the protagonist is dragged into a fiery nightmare.
Seeing that difference instantly made me realize—
“Oh… this is what it means to write the scene.”
I also struggled a lot with how characters should appear and how they should speak.
When I finally landed on Fufuka’s line, “You’re so annoying,” it suddenly clicked.
“Ah, this is who she is!”
It felt like I had finally grasped her personality in that moment.
Fufuka’s very first line is, “You’re so annoying.” You can understand her personality in an instant.
Fufuka’s mother, who talks nonstop. She’s an overprotective, overly worried mom.
The most challenging part for me was the game’s unique mechanic:
advancing the story through typing.
In the game’s “Counseling Mode,” you’ll experience the narrative unfolding as you type, a style of storytelling that was born through a lot of trial and error.
I hope you’ll pay special attention to this mechanic when you play — I think it’s one of the things that makes P2GA truly special.
🦀 Writing With Cliffhangers in Mind
You know those moments in dramas or anime when you think,
“Wait—you're ending it there!?”
I wanted P2GA to have that same feeling.
So I intentionally wrote each episode with a strong cliffhanger, scheming away to make players desperate to know what happens next.
If you reach the end of an episode and your heart feels a little shaken… then I’ve done my job.
Even in the demo, we’ve included both the “typing drives the story forward” feeling and a “What!? It ends here!?” style cliffhanger.
If you haven’t played it yet, I’d be thrilled if you gave it a try!
—Comedy Scenes—
These don’t appear in the demo, but P2GA actually has quite a few comedy scenes.
To be honest… writing the comedy parts was the hardest of all.
There were times during team meetings when I had to read a gag scene out loud, and the room went completely silent.
That painful, heavy silence.
I could feel my heart shrinking.
It made me realize just how difficult it is to make people laugh.
Another team member and I handled the comedy scenes together.
We poured our souls into them—shaving off pieces of ourselves along the way—so if the full release makes you smile even a little, it would mean the world to us.
All in all, it took nearly a year to finish writing the full scenario.
It was a winding road, but the sense of accomplishment after reaching the end is something I still remember vividly.
And above all, it gave me real confidence.
But the relief of finishing the script didn’t last long—
writing the story was not the end of development for P2GA.
If anything, the real challenge began after that.
From there, my days were spent implementing the script into Naninovel, adding illustrations, hooking up dialogue, and figuring out systems that were far more unfamiliar to me than writing ever was.
It was a whole new frontier—and yet another wall to face.
I’ll talk more about that part of development in the next entry!
Thank you so much for reading to the end again. 🙌