I spent most of today thinking that the 5th anniversary of the release of version 2.0 was today.  It was, in fact, yesterday.  Oops!

I thought today I'd talk a bit about what thoughts went into v.2.0 as well as what has happened in the 5 years since.

While the game itself is actually closer to 9 years old, the older version was a lot of me trying to slap what was popular in RPGMaker  games at the time on and seeing what stuck.   With the Renovated edition, I tried to scrape it down to the bear essentials and also refine parts I thought were weak.

Production began basically in a lull while I waited for my friends to beta test The Witch's Puppets.  I thought that possibly, the release would bring eyes onto the original Living Playground, which wasn't really holding up to my personal standards for what I wanted my games to be.  I wanted to polish it up and also flex my newfound RPGMaker Skills (tentative).  Considering most of the bust portraits were drawn then after The Witch's Puppets was finished, they're actually a little better looking than the "sequel" game which is probably not the greatest idea, but this is how it is!!!

2014 -> 2018

The sprites also mostly received general enhancements.  The first version of Living Playground was my first major foray into pixel art in general.  Though I did things that made my pixel artist friends scream internally even through the production of the remaster, I think I learned how to improve my spritework and also better understand the way RPGMaker's hitboxes(?) work.  Though admittedly, the best example of my improvement is probably my tilesets.  The 2014 version was rough and I didn't fully understand RMXP's tilesets until like midway through.  Meanwhile I now had a combined  2.5 games to learn about making good(????) maps and also learned my fun little fog lighting trick.

While making the game prettier was a priority, I also wanted to fix up a lot of the weird and "I'm in my early 20s and making my first game" writing things that went into the first version.  I realized midway through the original version that I was not really able to make it scary and sort of abandoned the full-fledged horror aspect of it without adjusting for that change, so it just kind of... stopped.  Instead I opted for what Queenie once dubbed "Halloween horror" and went with the vaguely spooky but not actually scary flavoring it currently has.  Any sort of gore was almost entirely removed, the bad endings were cut, and some other "Ow the Edge" factors were toned down or changed to something that fit the general tone better than me trying to jam a slide into a coffin-shaped hole.

Post-(re)release and beyond has been kind of a wild blur of time.  While true of the original as well, I am always shocked when people outside of my immediate friend group play the game.  I'm a shy little creature and as a solo developer, it's always fun to see other people talk about a thing I made...  Admittedly there hasn't been as much game development since 2018 due to a variety of personal factors, I have taken the things I've learned from Living Playground and tried to apply it to future projects.  Some of it is just knowledge of my limits.  Some of it is jumping to RMVX Ace because XP is a wild nightmare engine.  A little is the knowledge that I use too many gotdamn words in my games but that, unfortunately, won't be changing.

I also recognize a non-zero number of people have wanted a Spanish translation of this game since the initial release and I wish I could provide that directly...!  Unfortunately, I know absolutely no Spanish and I definitely do not have the funds to properly pay a translator and have to ultimately rely on the kindness and sheer power of people willing to look at my script and consider it worth the brainpower of translating in their spare time.  If anyone is interested in this for some wild reason, I have made a Translation Kit (which is just me providing templates and noting font usage and the ENG game files, I do not know what a formal translation kit probably needs).  I know that maybe demand for this isn't high five years out, but I figure it's been long enough that I can probably release this.  This is by no means a command, but I figure a public option is good!

Going forward, I have several projects that are on the backburner due to irl circumstances.  If I get to a point where I can talk more openly about those, I will!  For now I suppose the most I can do is assure people that I'm somehow still kickin' and I am forever indebted to everyone's kindness and support in these 5(+) years.

Thank you all, and I hope to see you again on a new project!
-meaka