The year comes to a close, making this a fitting moment to reflect back on how this game's development got started in the first place.

For a few years before The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, I had been dabbling in making visual novels as a hobby by entering visual novel jams. These were month long jams with no specific goals other than to create a visual novel from start to finish. I entered maybe once a year for... uhhh?? four years? I don't remember, and you don't care. My point here is that it was enough so that I noticed a pattern...

If a jam allowed additional gameplay in the visual novel, the entries utilizing it were often among the most played ones. "Huh." thought little ol' me, and schemed a wicked scheme. The next jam that came around (and I had time to enter) was Nanoreno, and time had come to test my hypothesis.

I only had a month, so I knew from the start the story had to be a "bottle episode", as in the whole story must be contained within one location to save time, and limit how much art I needed to make.

So who were the characters, why were they there, and why wouldn't they switch locations? The easiest answer was the classic "they're locked in and must escape" which is a story everyone and their dog has written at some point. Whatever, it's just a game jam I thought, and carried on.

Then came the characters, at first Ashley was going to be a silent protagonist named Player (yeah, you read that right). I wanted to toy with the idea that players tend to do the most unhinged things when allowed. So there'd be the Player, and one support character whose sole purpose was to spout exposition, and react to the player doing player things. Oh, the humor that would ensue.

There is one small remnant of this idea still in the game. It's at the very beginning when the player wakes Andrew up. He explains something, and "Player" responds with an emoji bubble thing, and Andrew then says "Quit your complaining!" despite the fact that Ashley hadn't really complained out loud. Now, imagine if the entire game was like this........... It would've sucked so bad. I dropped the concept pretty much right away.

This original concept is also why the narrator addresses "you" (the Player), instead of being in pure third person or first person point of view. I did enjoy this game master type format though, so even after making Ashley an actual character, I kept it.

Since Ashley was now a character, she needed to have a story. Cue the whole childhood incident (again, generic, but whatever it's a game jam). This also elevated Andrew to a character status, rather than a mere exposition spouter. Great! Now I knew who they were, and had a story to tell other than "unhinged room escape". (Which is a game I'd still want to play, as long as it isn't made by me.)

This is the first ever sketch I made of the two. Almost final design straight out the bag lol.


This was me still figuring out the UI. I don't remember what was the idea behind having the names off to the side, but thankfully I decided against it.


I drafted rather lengthy character sheets for the duo, as the more I wrote, the more they revealed themselves to be curious little jerks, with a lot going on between them. The story formed almost on its own after that. I knew I couldn't go too in-depth though, as the game jam imposed a hard time limit. So I shelved most of it thinking "well maybe I'll tell this story later on my own time", and left a sequel bait at the end of the story, to give myself an opening to get back to it "one day" that I assumed would never come. And also to give myself time to see if there really even was an interesting story to tell, or if this was one of those "really cool idea!!!"s that emerge out of the blue, but rot away as soon as you sit down to write them. If you're a fellow storyteller, you know what I'm talking about.

Leaving an "in" to continue later is something I've done plenty before. I might very well get back to my other game jam novels one day, which is part of the reason I took them down. For now though, there is no room for such endeavors, as The Coffin of Andy and Leyley must be completed, and will remain the sole priority until then.

Back to my "visual novels with gameplay perform better than pure visual novels" -hypothesis! I entered the game jam with my corny-ass bottle episode organ harvesting edgelord romp, and lo' and behold!!

It did gain more attraction than my other (gameplay-less) visual novels! In fact, it gains enough momentum to leave the visual novel scene. The new influx of people turns my data useless, and the hypothesis goes out the window. So in the end, was it the gameplay that attracted people? Or was it purely the oh, so scandalously unhealthy relationship the duo has? You tell me.

Somehow the game got caught in a shitflinging contest between the self-appointed morality police, and the people sick and tired of being told what kind of fiction they're allowed to read.

Suddenly, life gave me two choices, much like a visual novel would.

Do I take the game down to appease the people telling me to kill myself?
Or do I create the story I already wanted to create and get paid for it?

Boy oh boy, what a dilemma. I contemplated it for all of two nano seconds!

I dug out all the stuff I had shelved, and soon had the draft of the full story all ready to go. I went over it a few times, deemed it to be a lot of fun, and begun production of the full game. Episode 2 released on Steam in October 2023, and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley wrecked havoc across social media! And I thought there was a shitstorm before? HAHAHHAHAHA!!!!

And here we are now.

I want to thank you, my dear audience, for all your support. And I also want to thank the people who tirelessly pissed and moaned about some crappy indie game for months and months and months, helping it gain popularity beyond my comprehension. I would've never, ever gotten this far if it wasn't for you! The kinder thanks goes to the audience though, obviously. Thank you for weathering the storm with me, I hope you'll like the terrible little story you've helped to subsist.

The development continues, unchanged. I can't wait to show you the next episode. It's just awful, I really like it! Hope you will too.

Have a wonderful end of the year,


- The Author of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, Your Least Favorite Person.

• Discussion Thread
  
• Technical Support

Last month I asked if you'd prefer getting episode 3A (Decay part 1/2) straightaway, or later when episode 4 (Decay part 2/2) is ready.

Unexpectedly, the overwhelming majority voted to wait.

There were also 2100+ comments. Same pattern, overwhelmingly Poetry with a few arguments for Gotta Have It.

As per majority wishes, episodes 3A and 4 will be shipped together, after episode 4 is ready. When will it be ready? Who knows. Making 3A has taken a year, so... Well it'll be a while.

Thanks for your input. I'm glad I asked.

I was fully prepared to release 3A alone, had the majority expressed they don't mind a cliffhanger. Now I know that would've absolutely been the wrong call.

Enjoy the wait. It's going to be a long one.


Ever worsening regards,

The Author

• Discussion Thread
  
• Technical Support

Given the chaotic roadmap ahead, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain the current reporting format. In our monthly meeting with the author, some decisions have been made about trying a different approach to our posting format. We will be moving away from focusing on progress reporting.

Posts will now be some variation or mix of things such as teaser content, major announcements, surveys, responses, and sometimes author commentary, if time permits.

This added flexibility will help with what to publish at month's end, as there isn't always enough interesting information to report in specific areas of work.

This will be the last "Progress Report", and titles will vary with the content provided.

We'll conclude this old format with some entries in the new format. This month, the author's account of the episode work, and a survey regarding release options. The dividing point of the episodes is resolved, but a delivery dilemma still remains.

• Episode 3A far exceeds the estimated playtime (6 hours and counting).
  
• Episode 3A is split in two to alleviate the discrepancy between episode sizes, creating Episode 4.
  
• Episode 3A and 4 are still meant to be shipped together to provide a conclusive narrative experience.
  
• Team considers releasing 3A alone to keep the game alive.
  
• Author refuses, as Episode 3A ends on a cliffhanger no matter where it's cut.
  
• Author flip-flops between releasing 3A alone, versus forcing everyone to wait until the entirety of the branch is complete.
  
• Decision is reached that if the audience wants to torture themselves with a cliffhanger, let them.
  
• [YOU ARE HERE!]

Do you want to torture yourself with a cliffhanger?

No, I'm patient.
Yes, I'm a masochist!
Or to put it another way:

Would you rather wait for Episode 3A and 4 to be shipped together as god intended, or would you prefer getting Episode 3A early by itself, even though it ends on a cliffhanger?

Wait until the entirety of the branch is complete (Episodes 3A + 4).
Release episode 3A alone, despite the cliffhanger.
By the way the episode is Decay. Development of Burial (3B) hasn't even started.

Cast your vote in the discussion thread.


Worst regards,

Author

• Voting and Discussion Thread
  
• Technical Support
  
• YouTube Clip

The gameplay portion that was recently completed was fully reviewed this month, and special attention is needed for handling the new division between episode 3A and 4.

Previously, the amount of game related content needed to execute on the script expanded way beyond its container, and it was decided that a large part of episode 3A should be split off into a fourth episode. However problems with finding a graceful transition point persisted with no good solution. There is no satisfying or sensible end point between the episodes currently, and it is very likely the case that these two episodes (3A and 4) require being shipped together as a result.

The author has stepped back to re-evaluate the best approach.

While we labored optimistically towards providing a release date, a hard decision to err on the side of quality has been made. Keeping to an arbitrary deadline with what exists currently, would hurt the final result.

The development cycle will be prolonged by some additional months to address this entangling work between the next two episodes, and to avoid development burnout.



With previous projections having partly gone out the window, it may not be insightful to continue with the content estimations just yet. As it isn't known yet if episode 3A and its follow-up episode 4 are released at the same time, or if episode 3A can be delivered before episode 4's completion.

Once some details shake out, there might be a better picture of how this dilemma will resolve.

Additional information and consideration is needed to resume providing the graphs for how this situation is moving forward. Work still steadily continues, but the horizon has moved out of view for the time being.

The next release is going to be considerably larger than the previous two combined, and it will simply take longer to finish.

• General Discussion
  
• Technical Support
  
• YouTube Clip

The work last month has been steady and routine.

One milestone worth mentioning is that the core gameplay for the next episode has been completed from end to end. This gives a true count of how many art assets will be needed to finish off the episode.

Until this point, it was unclear how many audio tracks, cutscenes, backgrounds, and character dialogue sprites would be needed. It's not possible to guess ahead of time how many art assets are required to best stage and convey a written scene ahead of time.

As alluded to in past reporting, with this information a more accurate progress report can be made available.



Now that there are placeholders for everything, the internal progress tracking is fully mapped out. To provide context, a summary infographic has been created of the work that remains. While no time estimates are possible, it should give a picture of how things are moving forward in the months ahead.

Certain areas of work take a significant amount of the total time.


An overall timeline update is still needed, but that will have to wait until work begins on those episodes. Everything mentioned here covers the next episode being released, which is one of the three still remaining.

• General Discussion
  
• Technical Support

The recent patch broke some translation data. A hot-fix has been applied.

Note to translators: No action is required, everything should work fine from this version forward. To support both versions caused by this build issue, these dialogue hash IDs are now interchangeable.

[v 2.0.12] - [v 2.0.13]

w7ZvbBvC - yrrRQ30Q
4yhN4h9P - lcmDVkXT
DCRBH5zy - cT2mmJwp
DxhMltBG - GXCRgnRB

Please use the Bugs, Typos, Issues, and Support board to report any problems.

Thanks for all the feedback for the new episode 2 bad endings. While it appears that the yays have it, a lot of fair points were raised by many for and against it.

It was decided these gag ends would fit best as bonus content. This allows them to stay as is, but not be too jarring to the main story experience.

As it turns out, there already are plans for a game feature that provides unlockable bonus content. It's something that will start becoming accessible in the next major release, and these endings will get moved there.

Given how well the thread discussions went, we're likely to create more of these on-platform polls. There are occasionally things we're on the fence about that could benefit from getting some initial impressions.



Worth mentioning.

Additional endings such as these are never intended to replace any existing content. If they went in as is, the other options would still exist, and all story branches would remain unchanged.



The technical work that is currently in progress is updating the translation tool. It needs to be overhauled so that it can at least provide an easy way to update existing translation files to include newly released content, as well as better handle any new lines that may get added or fixed along the way.

Additionally, some other helpful features will be added to help with troubleshooting, and CSV compatibility problems.

It will release with the new episode, with updated documentation.

• Discussion Thread
  
• Recent Patch Notes
  
• Technical Support

• Fixed an issue with a missing line of dialogue.
  
• Fixed a bug where clock didn't stop ticking after removing batteries.
  
• Removed an unnecessary clock ticking background sound in Episode 1.

More fixes to come.

Please use the Bugs, Typos, Issues, and Support board to report any problems.

This is not a monthly progress report, but rather a small bonus for fun.

Below is a short video clip of what might have happened if a certain someone accepted a certain offer...



The developers would like to know if these choices should actually be included when the next episode releases.

Is this something you care to see in the final game, or should it hit the cutting floor?

You can cast a vote using the following badges on this thread.

Keep it.
Cut it.