Hey all, and welcome to my first dev log post. If you haven’t already checked it out, I’ve been able to announce my 2nd visual novel, Our Ephemeral Nights, with the pages up on Steam and Itch.io. I don’t have any formal structure planned for this dev logs, I’m just thinking that I’ll dedicate these posts to whatever I want to write about regarding the development of my work. In this post, I wanted to talk a bit about the background behind Our Ephemeral Nights and a bit about the content in the demo that’s released with the store pages going live.

While VTuber Connect was more of my answer to the immediate events and feelings that were relevant to me at the time, Our Ephemeral Nights is the story that I’ve always wanted to write – a reflection on many of the thoughts and feelings that I’ve had throughout my life. The exact storyline of Our Ephemeral Nights hadn’t always existed, but it came about as a product of two central pillars: the love and pursuit of dreams and the act of creation in the face of the world’s callousness, and the romance story that I’ve wanted to write for a long time. It just so happened that I was able to intertwine those two in a way that just seamlessly comes together thematically.

On the first point, I’ve always been enamored by the act of creation and the ways that people express themselves through the various arts. It’s one thing to attempt to express oneself through merely telling or explaining, but it’s an entirely different world to express that through art. For me, I’ve always had many thoughts about the pursuit of dreams and how the world doesn’t often reward those that pursue certain fields. I could probably spend this entire blogpost and more to just be able to explain that, but that’s entirely different from conveying everything through Our Ephemeral Nights. There’s something special in how we interact with media, immerse ourselves in worlds, and endear ourselves to characters – it’s why I consume media and why I’m writing about all of this.

On the second point, I won’t go into too much detail on this because I don’t want to spoil the story. What I can say is that I have a lot of strong views on relationships and the romance that’s portrayed in Our Ephemeral Nights is built on the foundation of much of what I believe in. While I don’t think there’s only one way that a relationship should form and progress and there isn’t really such thing as a “perfect” relationship, I still tried to portray much of what matters to me through this story. It doesn’t encapsulate every single aspect as I think there are many ways that relationships can bloom – this is just one of the many forms that it can take.

Ultimately, Our Ephemeral Nights is a deep, intimate part of myself that I’ve been able to approach much differently than my first VN. I’ve had much more time to reflect on the work and I’m in a much better headspace overall. If you’ve played my first VN as well as the demo for Our Ephemeral Nights, you might’ve noticed that I’ve taken a different approach direction wise, with certain choices such as camera panning, more cinematic/atmospheric progression of scenes, and just generally showing a bit of restraint with the writing (hopefully). While there will always be that constant tug of “maybe what I’m writing isn’t going to resonate with anybody,” I’m generally feeling a bit better about what I’m writing this time.

With the demo of Our Ephemeral Nights, there’s a specific “essence” that I wanted to capture – it’s what all the different approaches and techniques that I mentioned above is working in service of. I believe it’s best described by one of my favorite quotes:

This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive, and you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song and that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment I swear, we are infinite.

– Charlie Kelmeckis, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Ephemerality is the quality of being transitory or fleeting, and though it’s not often included in its definition, I also think the term captures the beauty that comes with a temporary existence. Much of what makes up life is impermanent: the time we might spend in our current location, the happiness we might feel at a time, the relationships we’ve come to know. It’s something that I think everybody, at some point in their lives, will experience and likely will continually come face to face with. It’s not exactly a “problem” to solve, but rather an inevitability that we eventually come to accept.

It’s in that acceptance and embracing of ephemerality that I believe there’s beauty – a beauty that I think Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower very aptly describes as feeling “infinite.” When we think of fireworks, it’s in that moment where the light ascends to a single peak, blooming into a glimmering light, that everything seems to feel “right.” But it’s also in those moments when those sparks recede into the dark that we can truly come to appreciate the beauty in that brief moment. Though we know this moment must eventually come to an end, there’s something beautiful to be found in spite of, or even because of that.

It’s that overwhelming feeling in the moment that’s very difficult to describe in words. When you’re in that moment, none of the worries in the world weigh you down, and you can truly be yourself, maybe in ways that you normally wouldn’t. It’s that moment in Cyberpunk Edgerunners where they’re launched out of the back of the ambulance on a stretcher, dodging incoming cars as all the lights flash past them. Or when, in Whisper of the Heart, a spontaneous violin-singing duet crescendos into a rapturous music performance of Country Roads.

This feeling of “infinity” in the face of “ephemerality” might not be something that makes sense purely from a logical standpoint, but it intimately captures almost what I’d call the “essence” of what it means to be human. The world can be harsh, and it can often feel like we’re crushed by the weight of everything, but it’s these moments of “infinity” that give us something that we can hold onto. Although our underlying problems might not be resolved because of those moments, they might give us something more than what any answer could provide. And, I think that’s a beautiful thing.

There’s much more to be explored on this topic throughout the rest of the story, so please look forward to when the full game comes out! I don’t have a specific date yet as to when that’ll be, but I’m hoping everything will be finished by mid/late 2025. I’ve underestimated the amount of rewriting/editing I’d be doing for the story, but that’s made me feel a bit more satisfied at what’s been able to be crafted so far. The timeline for the art has also been different from my expectations, but that can mainly be attributed to what’s been going on in Ukraine recently (both my sprite and BG artists are Ukrainian).

And that’s all okay! I’d rather not have the development be rushed if I’m compromising on the quality of the project in any aspect, so Our Ephemeral Nights will be released once it’s ready. I’ll try to make updates on the progress of the project, as well as talk about whatever topic I might want to talk about, similar to this post. Until next time!