2024 was a year I set out to tie up loose ends, but 2025 ended up being a continuation of that. I still had several projects that needed wrapping up in 2025 and was able to make great progress on them. …As well as a few side ventures.
Releasing the full (longer) version of Asphodelium was my main project for half of the year alongside further development of Crimson Waves on the Emerald Sea: Amaranthine Moon, my first commercial otome game in years, and releasing several games I was doing marketing for such as A Tithe in Blood, Upwards, Rain!, and more. A long time goal was to run my own Kickstarter, which I did in the later half of the year. It was both easier and more stressful than I imagined. I also went back to Offkai Expo in the middle of the year for Studio Élan, where I got to meet even more streamers and vtubers I’ve watched (some who’ve even played my games!)
2025 was also the year I began trying more new things and setting up new routines. In late 2024 I began attending an in-person bookclub and have since become a regular as well as going to the library to work on writing frequently. It’s nice to get out and have a different workspace—especially since it’s free to sit at a library as opposed to a cafe. 2025 was my first full year of doing full time game dev & freelancing after being laid off mid-2024, so I had to be more budget-conscious this year.
In April, after months of declining health, my baby boy Leroy passed away in my arms. He was a chubby (due to health problems) Chihuahua who was almost 15 years old and had been with me through high school, college, multiple moves, losing my father, and so much more.
Speaking of getting out of the house, I also started volunteering locally at a handful of places. Just small things every so often—but good work takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight.
Something else that certainly didn’t happen overnight was my first Steam festival, Otome Games Celebration! I had wanted to run my own developer festival on Steam for a while beforehand, but I finally took the leap in 2025. Twice. Later that year I ran the Fall in Love VN Festival with Élan, which was basically the same festival again but for every type of romance. I was able to run not 1 but 2 Steam festivals for romance visual novels, 1 of which got on the front page of Steam.
Projects
Lilacs in the Breeze
2025 started off very dour, given our recent change in leadership at the end of 2024 here in the US. I have lots of trans and fellow queer friends and wanted to bring a little joy in the world—so, with my friend Stella, we created the Trans Joy Jam, a jam focused on making games about trans characters getting happy endings. Participants were encouraged to write about any subject matter relating to trans narratives, so long as there was at least 1 hopeful ending.
To go with the jam, I made Lilacs in the Breeze, a short otome game about a trans woman leaving her old life behind—only for her childhood friend to show up out of nowhere. It has a lot of tropes I’ve written before and will write again. I’m also bringing it to Steam in 2026! No major updates and will still be free, but wishlists are appreciated~
A Clown Girl Teaches You How To Make Visual Novels
April 1st is a special day in visual novels. Aside from Valentine’s Day, it’s probably the day that gets the most visual novel releases (don’t quote me on that). In this March, I had a really funny idea… What if I made a visual novel that looks like a joke but is actually kind of educational?
I’ve actually had this idea for years, but I was talked out of it on at least one occasion because it’d be “quickly out of date” and “not worth the effort” and whatever other excuses were thrown at me. I threw this game together in around 30 hours to get it out by end of day on April 1st and had fun with it! Some parts will surely become outdated a few years from now but I think it’ll hold up decently and be educational. And I got an excuse to put Rimia in a clown dress and make everyone see it!
Asphodelium
As a complete departure from the prior games listed here, Asphodelium is by far my darkest game (yet) that focuses on cults, trauma, and identity. A lighter version of this game was made for Winter Jam 2023 but after getting incredibly encouraging responses I knew I wanted to expand the game even more. I set out to release the “director’s cut” of the game this year for Steam and did just that! …I also had 2 other game releases I was marketing that week and flew out to Offkai Expo that weekend, but that’s all in the past…
The finished version of Asphodelium is now a little under 70k words with a handful of CGs and 2 main storylines with the single love interest to go down and I think it’s my best writing so far. Despite the dark tones of the story, it was fun for me to make, and I hope to make more like it in the future. (it’s also my best selling game so far)
I also bundled it with my friend Nia’s game Fearbonding at launch which has done well for both of us! This was my first time bundling with another dev on Steam so I was able to learn how to make it work.
a fae’s whim
O2A2 is a popular visual novel jam you’ve probably heard of if you’re in Devtalk or know of ongoing VN jams. It’s a unique theme—you can only use 1 of every asset and only 1k words. Creating something bite-sized is a great practice activity and I was eager to join this time around.
I ended up making a fae’s whim, a micro visual novel where you’ve freed a fae king from his imprisonment—but what now? I’m not sure why I like using speech bubbles so much in short-form visual novels; I used them previously in both Witch You Want and Starlit Regrets. I doubt I’ll ever make a commercial game with speech bubbles in them any time soon, but they are a fun departure from ADV and my beloved NVL.
Mari’s Magical Deliveries
My final release of the year was finally finishing a thorn in my side. Over 2 years ago I was jumping from project to project and as a “treat” for myself I decided to join Ludum Dare once more for old time’s sake and make a game with all of my oldest OCs in it. That became the demo for Mari’s Magical Deliveries, a lite dating sim around my 3rd oldest OC, Mari (I don’t remember the 1st and 2nd anymore…). I originally wanted it to be similar to the mechanics of the old Tradewinds series, a point-and-click management game series I loved as a kid. The end result was…not exactly that, but eh.
The project ended up being pushed to the back of the backburner, mainly because I never had a clear idea of the scope of the project (I want 3 love interests and lots of side stories you see during deliveries! no I’m not going to calculate how many days it should be or how many side characters or) and it was just too fluffy for me to enjoy working on for long (I have a tendency to get bored of writing no/low conflict stories fast). I decided to finish it this year, but kept flip-flopping on exactly how to do it. Should it just be a free game I shove out there? Should I polish it up some more and make it cheap? As you can see, I ended up going with the later. I do wonder how well it’d be received if it were free, but we’ll never know… Sometime next year I’d like to push a small content update. Maybe some chibi epilogue art, maybe new deliveries…we’ll see.
Oh, and one more thing. I primarily wanted it out this year so that I’d be free to work on Mari’s actual main game, a timeloop action otome game, at some point in the future. Probably not 2026 given all the scripts I have half-started, but eventually.
Articles
I was sad to see I didn’t actually write that many articles this year—it was a busy year for me in other departments! I did get some fun articles in, though.
Once my first Steam festival, Otome Games Celebration, concluded, I wrote a lengthy postmortem about how I ran it and how things went. I had several people supporting me for the festival so I didn’t go in completely blind, but it was one of the most challenging things I’ve done. And as soon as Otome Games Celebration was over, I went straight into planning Fall in Love VN Festival…
Like last year, I was able to interview some of my fellow visual novel enjoyers! One interview fell through, but I was able to interview the amazing team at Nth Circle, who are currently releasing of the Devil. It was a fun (and long) discussion about their great art direction, how they work as a team, and why Morgan is just so cool.
Since both Asphodelium and A Tithe in Blood released on the same week and had almost the exact same word count, I thought I’d compare the 2 games in terms of scope, development schedule, and release efforts. A lot of people don’t quite understand what releasing a visual novel looks like, or have antiquated ideas of it from the Japanese side, so I wanted to give a look at my experience with it.
Media
This is my blog so I’ll add however many sections I want!
This year I really dived into reading novels (without visuals!) and seeing even more plays in person than I typically do, so I wanted to list out what I’ve read & watched along with the ones I really enjoyed. I already talk about visual novels enough, so I want to show I have a life outside of anime talk about something different for a change.
Italics means it was good, bold italics means I absolutely loved it. Red means don’t bother with it. No stylization means it was just okay / I don’t have strong feelings about it either way.
Books
Includes novels, novellas, anthologies, and light novels, but not manga or visual novels.
- Crooked House by Agatha Christe
- Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
- Snatched by Karin Slaughter
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
- Third Girl by Agatha Christie
- Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
- Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah
- The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry
- The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters
- A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap
- The Nightingale Affair by Tim Mason
- The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Sasaki and Miyano: 1st Years by Kotoko Hachijo
- Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
- The Lost Manuscript by Cathy Bonidan
- Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
- Murder at Rough Point by Alyssa Maxwell
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
- Murder takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman
- My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
- Murder, She Wrote: Madison Avenue Shoot by Donald Bain
- The Shining Sea by Koji Suzuki
- Night of the Living Queers (Anthology)
- Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
- Fullmetal Alchemist: The Land of Sand by Makoto Inoue
- Harlequin on the Moon: Commedia dell’arte and the visual arts by Lynne Lawner
- Fullmetal Alchemist: The Abducted Alchemist by Makoto Inoue
- The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie
- Christmas Cookie Murder by Leslie Meier
- Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier
- Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests by KJ Whittle
- Death on the River Walk by Carolyn Hart
My hottest take of the year: My Cousin Rachel >>> Rebecca
Plays
Includes only in-person performances I saw regardless of where they were performed (touring, on Broadway, etc).
- Hamilton
- Some Like it Hot
- Hadestown (x2)
- The Wiz
- Austen’s Pride
- The Neil Diamond Musical A Beautiful Noise
- The Notebook
- & Juliet
- She Loves Me
My mother has gotten really into watching live performances of bands / plays / whatever, so we went to a lot more this year.
Art
As expected, this year was another year full of asset art. I didn’t do much fanart art all this year, but I did a few pieces here and there. I did several new key art illustrations (February, July, August, September), some of which took me 10+ hours to do.
Goals
- Release the extended version for Asphodelium: Accomplished!
- Release Crimson Waves on the Emerald Sea: Amaranthine Moon: …Not accomplished. The game is currently pretty far along with all but a handful of art assets finished. I’ll be busy scripting the game come January and hopefully releasing it in Q1 2026, but a 2025 release just didn’t happen.
- Fill an entire sketchbook: …This also didn’t happen. I made good strides to fill the sketchbook with studies, but only got about halfway through it. Maybe next year…?
- Get back to kanji studies: Yeah, kinda. I did study more kanji, but I need to set up a routine come 2026 in order to make good progress in my studies.
- Document more doujin games: Definitely! I restyled my neocities a bit to accommodate more games—as long as they’re indie / doujin and not have a popular Steam page they can go on the site. I added quite a few Touhou, Type-Moon, and Rozen Maiden fangames to the list.
I also had a few “shadow” goals for 2025, things I wanted to do in 2025 but didn’t want to hard commit to, like:
- Running a Steam festival (done!)
- Finishing the 1st draft of Lost Lune (done!)
- Write 80k words for scripts total (final count was over 90k across all scripts)
2026 Goals:
- Release Crimson Waves on the Emerald Sea: Amaranthine Moon and Lost Lune: This should be pretty achievable, as both games are over halfway completed. I hope to release CWES:AM in Q1 2026 and Lost Lune around Q2 or Q3.
- Announce my next big otome game: My next main otome game has already been started, except this time unlike with CWES:AM I’ll be writing it! It’s currently around 20k out of an estimated 60k, and might feature a few clowns…
- Run another Steam festival: Ideally I’d like to run 2 Steam festivals again in 2026, but we’ll see how the year goes. Once it’s midnight tonight, I’m no longer beholden to my self-imposed restriction of not planning any festivals until the new year~ I hope Otome Games Celebration will be even bigger and better than the 1st year!
- Start making videos: One thing I’ve wanted to do for a while is to try making my own YouTube videos. I’m unsure if I’d want them to be about visual novel development, marketing, or the doujin games I play, or all three, but I want to try making a handful in 2026.
- Become net positive: As 2025 was my 1st full year of doing full-time game dev and freelancing, I spent a lot of it finishing up older (long) projects that I started when game dev was a hobby and used my savings to fill in for months where I wasn’t net positive. In 2026 I want to be able to get to a position where I’m able to make a living from visual novel development & freelancing.
I want 2026 to be a year for me where I’m able to release some great visual novels I’m proud of while also helping bring visual novels to a greater spotlight through my game jams and Steam festivals. Gaming is bigger than ever with more and more visual novels popping off, and I hope to help share even more VNs with people than before.
2026 seems daunting, but I hope it’ll be a good year overall for all of us. However, it won’t be if we don’t support the people around us and the people who need it. Please look out for the people in your life and reach out to those in need of assistance—even if we don’t all see eye-to-eye, we’re all on this planet together.
— Arimia