Backstage, where the performers prepare and stave off the December cold...
Hard to believe it's been a year and a half since I started working on VERISMO.
I thought I’d be much further along in development by now, but the extra time has given me a lot of inspiration to polish everything I’m working on. It will be worth the wait.
This year I started tracking my hours more diligently, and I did over 400 hours of work on VERISMO. That includes art, programming, writing, music, the whole shebang. Also:
17 fully animated character sprites
Over 100 unique animations
Finished most of the additional demo maps, 13 new ones + all night scenes
Hired musicians to recreate classical and 1910s-20s melodies as MIDI files for my remixing pleasure
Wrote a couple original tracks too
Wrote a lot of the final script + many optional interactions
Lots of stressful coding to get the world interactable, collisions, all that jazz
Implemented a custom, simple UI
Fixed bugs and QOL mentioned in the current demo, to be updated soon!
Sometime next month I'd like to make minor updates to the current demo. Nothing major, just some bug fixes, music additions, and possibly the new intro.
I’m hoping to finish it by early summer. Could be sooner, could be later, I’m realizing it’s impossible for me to say when because everything is in active development. Once I settle on design choices and some programming things, development should go much smoother.
The town square of Lacrime.
I have a Youtube channel where I was posting weekly development shorts. I'm taking a break for a month or so, but definitely follow me there to see more behind the scenes and progress.
With that said, have a lovely rest of the year, and I can't wait to share more of this story with you in 2026!