26 Nov November 2022 Update
It’s starting to get cold over here in Japan but there is no other perfect time to crack open a JRPG than this! We’ve seen some people talking on Discord about replaying some of the previous games Kaneko-san and Machida-san have created and it continues to inspire us!
Campaign Updates
We have largely finished organizing our survey questions and the Backerkit store is under construction. Unfortunately, it’s taken a bit longer than expected so the Backerkit store launch won’t occur until December. To set expectation the Backerkit store will be different from the main campaign in the following ways:
・It will no feature any of the in-game premium rewards
・Most rewards will be about 10% higher than they were for the main campaign
・All “combo” rewards will NOT be available so you would need to purchase things a la carte
As always, all additional funds go towards development of the game and are really helpful at this stage so if you know anyone interested in great JRPGs please do point them towards the Backerkit store once it is open. We have heard from many people that they missed the original campaign but want to support the projects so word of mouth is absolutely essential.
◆2022.11.25 Penny Blood Project Diary
Hello everyone! Machida here with this month’s update. Autumn leaves have fallen, and the frigid temperatures of winter have begun to exert their dominance. Midst that, all of our staff members remain passionate and in good health.
・Project Overview
As I mentioned last time, we’re working on the walkthrough along with reformatting the project overview document. A lot of our staff members came together in November to keep things moving ahead. In order to take another look at the different specifications of the game, various members were assigned to their official planning posts. Together, we’ve all been exchanging ideas on how we can make it more fun to use the Psycho Sigil in battle, how we should use sanity points to make the melees of madness more exciting, how to make events scarier, how to display symbol encounters to make them more thrilling, as well as fun ideas related to mini-games.
Meanwhile, we’ve also finished lining up the milestones for the walkthrough production schedule, and that’s moving along smoothly as well.
・Story
Penny Blood is an adventure that will take you across the world – to places in America, Asia, and Europe, but we’re still working on readjusting all the main characters while selecting detailed candidates for the exact areas and countries where the story will take place.
Through my work in deepening my image for each character, I ended up coming up with a bunch of new ideas and discovering new sides to the characters that I hadn’t even considered before. But if I let things get too out of control (and make them all crazy freaks) then it’ll move things away from the hard/serious feeling I’m going for, so I plan to frame things within a comfortable balance. Gotta be careful not to go too far. (I’m saying this to myself)
・Design
Kato-san is currently working on the Hellhounders. The truth is, she isn’t working on the initial members, but a new addition… Seems like they’ll be getting some more help. Watching her add detail to them really stimulates my imagination. I’ve become so attached to them by this point that I feel like they could hold their own as main characters in their own game!
Hanya-san, our monster designer, is working on Cthulhu mythos monsters. I’m having him prioritize quantity right now, and then categorizing things as small, medium, large, or flying based on what he’s drawn. I’m deciding on their elemental affinities as well. It’s a lot of fun to see the Penny Blood rendition on famous monsters who appear in the Cthulhu mythos.
Watanabe-san, our image board artist, is currently shifting away from the majestic, symbolic landscapes he drew up until now and focusing on creating stages that will actually match up with the content for the game. They won’t be nearly as striking, but they’re extremely important in terms of creating concrete images for the landscapes that will actually appear in the game and unifying our vision so that the actual background models can be created.
・Sound
Later on in this update, Hirota-san will be giving you all some more details on the madness remix project, so please check it out. I’m personally really excited to see the results as well, and I’ve really been enjoying what I’ve seen so far!
・Other
In the shadows of big projects, producers work day and night to add costs to everything, along with the content, timeline, man-months, number of staff members needed…and so on and so forth. They’re constantly thinking about all the details related to the budget. The same is true for Penny Blood – we’ve decided the production schedule into separate phases and are planning the most effective way to split up our staff members and budget. It’s not as simple as it sounds, and I deeply respect all the producers and managers who’ve been working with us. Thank you so much.
Lastly, Kato-san drew an illustration featuring a turkey who managed to survive Thanksgiving.
See you in the next update!
Matsuzo Machida
◆New Thanksgiving Illustration
“My allies are all dead. But I still need to live.”
◆Music Update
Hello! Hirota the composer here. Welcome to my second update regarding the madness remix project.
Regarding the original song that’ll be used for the remix: Since I uploaded madness sample song from “Vicious 1923 (Normal Battle01 -Proto Ver.)”, it seems that some people thought they’d be doing the remixes based on stems from that song. They were like “Hurry up and share the stems, man! The song’s done, isn’t it?!”
But that song was just the PROTO version of Vicious 1923. I still plan to add new instruments and adjust the arrangement a bit, and I’d like to have people base their remixes on the version of the battle music that’s actually going to be used in the game, which means that I won’t be able to share those stems for a while.
As for those who have questions about how they should actually do the remix – there aren’t any rules in particular. You don’t even need to use any difficult music editing software. You can just turn the volume on the rhythm part up to max and play.pause it while you record yourself kicking an oil drum and screaming if you want to.
If you Google search “how to remix” you’ll get a lot of information aimed toward beginners, but you don’t need to think about it that much. I’m actually really excited to see what people come up with for “madness” that doesn’t require music editing tools, like what I described above.
I recommend that you submit your files in this format: 48kHz/24bit/wav, but if that’s difficult for you, you can send it to me in any format as long as it can be played on a PC.
Of course, I’m also excited to see output from people who are experienced in using music editing tools and have done remixing and arrangements in the past.
It’ll still be a while before we need this yet, but at some point I’ll need to decide on where I want everyone to upload their remixed files. It’s possible to send and receive files on Discord, and it might be fun to do it in a way where everyone can hear them.
Keep thinking about your remix ideas, and I’ll see you in the next update!