One Week's Worth of Memories

Lots of things have happened in the past five years, good and bad and everything in between. I thought I'd write about some stuff I've been holding out on, about looking back to all that has passed, and about what I feel now that we're finished. This will be a series of writings on all of these things, one post per day, for every day this week.

First of all, the aftermath of the release has been, in a word, insane. We've been absolutely flooded by all the response to the game release. Forums, message boards, email, IRC, blogs, social media... thousands and thousands of comments, thoughts and discussions. It's been completely impossible to keep track of everything, not to mention reading all the feedback and comments and whatnot and we've managed to respond to only a microscopic part of it all. There's no way we can ever take in all of that, so here's something of a response:

Thank you, everyone who wrote a comment, or a piece of feedback, or words of thanks. Thank you, everyone who waited for KS and followed the development. Thank you everyone who played the game and were touched by something in it. Thank you everyone, for all your support and love.

As for ourselves, I suppose we are trying to ride the wave still, and getting used to the feel of the project not being there anymore. It's a strange feeling, to not have to care about any of the things that were such a big deal for years and years. No pictures to draw, no words to write, nothing to review or discuss. It's all finished. Maybe it is a kind of a momentary emptiness. Some of us turn to self-reflection because of it. Some of us quickly pass through it, without worrying about it too much. Some seek to aim themselves somewhere else. Either way, I think we are quite satisfied, right now.

One other thing I'd like to comment on is the unfortunate choice of words in the release post. The announcement that we are "disbanding" has caused a lot of questions and confusion. A better word might've been "frozen" or "hibernating" or something. So what does it mean? Making KS is what we set out to do, it's what brought us together and it was our only goal. Now that we've accomplished that, the future is open. Some things are for certain, however:

1) There probably won't be any more KS. No sequels, no extra disks, no content patches, no side stories, no spinoffs. We've always felt that KS was this one game, this one project, and it seems unlikely that we would change our minds.
2) We have no plans to make other visual novels. That doesn't mean that we never will. We might, or some of us might, at some point in the future, but for now there are no plans.
3) We are not just going to disappear, and neither are the KS sites. You can still contact us just as before. It's possible that some members eventually depart permanently, but for now we all are still together.

Anyway, we are not disbanded, as in "we won't see each other ever again", we just don't have any current plans to work together.

Tune back tomorrow for the next part of this series, which will be the tale of a certain member of Four Leaf Studios.

- Aura

 » Discuss this post on the forums