After a bit of a delay from my original plans I finally got this mini-project released (and on my birthday too!).

“Glass, Shatter” is the prelude to a much larger story (the same one I’ve been nicknaming “Hologram”!). It’s meant to be a teaser and so if you find yourself with a lot of questions about the characters and their circumstances then that’s good because that’s very much my intention ;)

(The protag trio as their age in the main story. They're very baby.)

Vanessa, River and Cyen are the main protagonists of Hologram and thus the main focus of these short stories! I’m very fond of this protagonist trio and I hope to make that known as I go along! All three of them have their own stories to tell: so much so that despite following the same timeline you’ll be amazed at how much context each route gives to the overall story!

That said, this game is very much a first look at what I want Hologram to look like! A lot of things I’ve implemented here - from the animated illustrations to the route selection to the secret menu appearing after a certain progress point - are stuff I want in the final product. Furthermore, I’m hoping in the future to implement things that didn’t really make sense to add here: namely, interactive choices!

Since this story is so short it didn’t feel right to add it but in the future when I get the first arc of Hologram out my hope is to allow players the opportunity to interact with the world through exploration options seen in most point and click visual novels (albeit in text format). 

Through the use of text buttons, my hope for the full story is to allow players a chance to guide their chosen protagonist through the world around them. For example, you can have Vanessa, Cyen, and River interact with their peers to learn more about the world. Or, if you’d prefer to skip to the next piece of plot and ignore the optional chances to expand on the worldbuilding you can do that too!

In this respect, while “Glass, Shatter” is very much a prototype to my main project, it has the core idea of what I want to add to my stories! 

Furthermore, as you can guess, the narratives told here are very integral to the core story of Hologram. While they’re kept intentionally vague and short so as to not spoil the more deeper plot threads this story has, I very much want this to be a piece you can revisit as each arc is completed to watch how the context laid in here constantly shifts according to one’s understanding of the story. 

That is: there’s a lot of foreshadowing and tongue-in-cheek references buried in this short piece and I’m hoping that will add to the future rereadability of it!

This all said, thank you so much to everyone who has both played this game and reading this devlog now! I know Glass, Shatter is merely a fragment of the actual story I want to tell but I’m hoping it’s enough to draw interest to the protagonists themselves ^0^

You’ll definitely be seeing more of my protagonist trio in the future (especially on my Twitter which I’ll try to keep active!) so while I work on the first arc of Hologram’s main story I would love to hear any feedback, comments, or thoughts on “Glass, Shatter” and the characters I’ve briefly introduced!

Also, as a parting fun fact about this piece!:

"Glass, Shatter" may seem like an irrelevant title considering there's nothing mentioned about "glass" or "shattering" in this piece. That said, this title is a Very Intentional reference to the actual name of this project AND doubles as a metaphor and reference to canon shenanigans. You'll see what I mean by this when I finally get to release the first arc of "Hologram" :>