March is done which means the annual NaNoRenO visual novel jam has drawn to a close. While we had a few road bumps, we were able to finish A Pinch of Magic on time! It’s currently playable right here on this page for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

The Steam and Google Play builds are coming in a few weeks. For Steam, we need to make some additions such as Steam achievements and submit it for review. For Google Play, we need to make sure the GUI works for mobile devices and submit it for review.

We had a little over 30 people helping on the project, including over 8 people who submitted guest artwork. You can see who all worked on the project here.

However, with the time constraints we had to cut some content in order to finish on time.

Kiana’s route had to be shortened to finish it within the time limit, for instance. One thing to remember when making a visual novel is that the work isn’t done once the writing is complete. The first draft of a route being done is great, but it still needs editing (second draft, proofreading, etc.) and programming (scripting in the sprites, adding in the artwork and sounds, etc.). We thankfully already had the artwork complete for the route (the sprites and ending CG) but it still needed editing and scripting after it was written. And, of course, playtesting!

Another thing we had to cut out was ending CGs. The CG sketch artist, aukiyyumu, sketched 2 CGs we had to cut for time reasons.

During March we released 3 devlogs on how each of the characters were designed, which you can read here. We have at least 2 more devlogs lined up by members of the team, so stay tuned for those.

It's been a fun month, and we all hope you enjoy the final game! Thank you for checking this out.