How do you do, everyone? Mangoku418 here!

And welcome back to an all-new devlog for June 2021! The new demo for Dear Mom: My Letter to You is now available here on itch! You can play now on Windows, Mac, and Linux! We've got 50+ downloads after Week 1, which is a big improvement from our demos from last year. If you haven't played it already or know anyone who'd be interested, download the game, spread the word, and try it for yourselves!!!

Without further ado, let's go over the development that happened this past month!

Kawasaki Family Voice Samples

We have some voice samples of Ayame's family! If you haven't played the demo or heard the voice samples on Twitter yet, you can listen to them here!

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Ginta ----- Akio ----- Nao

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UI Updates

The first thing I want to talk about is the Backlog screen! What's so cool is that the lined paper moves along with the text, mimicking an actual notebook. The trick to doing this is creating a background frame for each block of text (in this case, using thin gray lines that you'd see from lined sheet paper. With text positioning and line spacing in mind, I was able to create a seamless loop when scrolling the backlog. I was honestly very surprised I was able to pull this off. But I have to take the folks from the LoveVN Discord for suggesting the idea! Thank you! 🙏

Also includes voice replay buttons if you loved the sound of the characters' voices!

Tutorial Text Menu. Almost like writing notes. :)

Updated Phone Messaging Screen. Big thanks to ds-sans for providing the cellphone frame!

Major upgrade on the Diary Pause Menu. :)

Kawasaki Home Map. Big thanks to Arctic Fox again for designing this!!! :)

How I'm feeling now--

First off, I'm happy that I fulfilled my goal of releasing the demo by the end of June! And I'm happy that friends, streamers, and Let's Players have tried out my game and genuinely enjoyed it! I hope that if you try the game you enjoy it as well! It's a huge milestone to release a  demo such as this after 1 1/2 years of development. I never really got this far with my older projects. To see that I've actually reached this step makes me really proud of myself, and very grateful to those who've helped me through this journey!

The next plan of action is to run a Kickstarter Campaign to help support the full development of Dear Mom. I know mentioned last month that I'll be doing a 600-follower special, but that will unfortunately be delayed to give me time to prepare for the Kickstarter. While I'm happy I released the demo, I know I've only scratched the surface. I've made it over a big hurdle with the demo, only to be presented with a bigger hurdle called Kickstarter and Marketing. At the moment I'm pretty exhausted and can't exactly think straight.  This past week had me going in circles with waves of fatigue from full-time office work. But for me to run this campaign efficiently and strategically, I need to rest. I know I can't dawdle for too long, but it might turn into a disaster if I don't stop to recover for a while. 

What's Next?

• Plan for my Kickstarter Campaign.
• Work with my writer to continue the story.
• Tell myself to actually take a break.

And that's it! You can get other updates throughout the month by following me on Twitter and joining my Discord server. This is Mangoku418. Have yourselves an Omega Awesome Day, and take care. Cheers! ^^

P.S. To those who celebrate July 4th, Happy Independence Day!!!