Et le grain mourut Devlog #1

Hi everyone! So. I decided to steal my friend @/Dracupa's idea (with permission. dw) and try to make regular-ish devlogs for Et le grain mourut. Maybe this will be a monthly thing. Maybe not! No idea, it will depend on whether I have updates to share or not, really.

What is Et le grain mourut?

Et le grain mourut (ELGM) is a visual novel I'm developing in Ren'Py. If you aren't familiar with the plot and cast yet, you can check this Toyhouse folder; tl;dr, it's a character-driven story set in 1920s Paris! It is meant to be released as a free game and will be available in both French and English. 

What is ELGM's current progress?

Well, I have wonderful news! Some people are already aware of it, but ELGM is not a new project at all. Actually, I finished writing the first draft of it recently, in October. I'm currently revising it, and I'd say I'm... around 30% done? It's hard to tell, but my current goal is to be done with this step sometime in January.

If you're curious, the Scrivener file for the ELGM is currently around 70,000 words long; the actual in-game script will probably be a bit shorter since my current file also includes a few notes and the like, and you won't see everything in a single run either. ELGM has three hugely different routes (and other choices that will affect which scenes you'll see) so I'd say you will only see 25,000 to 30,000 words per run.

What's next?

Lots of things! First off, let's address the elephant in the room. Graphics. There's a reason why this post has no pretty screenshots acting as a proof of concept for this project. ELGM has been "in development" for years, but I haven't started working on drawing the necessary assets yet for a simple reason: I knew writing was going to take long, and that if I started drawing clean assets early on, I would feel the need to redraw them all once the actual script would have been finished. But now, the time at which I'll finally allow myself to draw stuff for the game is fast approaching, which is part of why I feel more comfortable making devlogs now.

What else is next? Well, I'm afraid that's a story for another post. This one is only an introduction, after all! In the meantime, if you have questions, don't hesitate to send them my way o7 

<This devlog was originally posted in December 2024 on my Bluesky and Toyhouse>