A Week of Memories part 4: Four Leaf Studios

[Hanako-San]

In b4 "dev harem route plz"

No. No no no no no. No.

[Palas]

I envy you guys so much. You had a good time together and all. Seriously, working together (when that's spontaneous) is the best way to make friends with someone.

[Nagatoyuuki]

"And then there was me"

Ah, I see.....

.....

:3c

[imperial.standard]

With all the buzz you guys have generated be prepared to receive adorations and offers to take on bigger/sequel projects! Enthusiasm begets bigger enthusiasm and now that the fruits of your labor has come out, it is time you guys get the appreciation you deserve!

Thanks for sharing the great stories and it would be good to introduce the character avatars of the 4LS team

[Csihar]

I think now we need one of the other devs to write something cute and pithy about Aura.

[Moekki]

Aura is a really heaps cool guy who was like my internet dad. even when fights and stuff went on he stayed neutral and managed to help resolve them. i think we would've all gone crazy or launched a nuke without him

[NomadicElectron]

Being someone who is constantly mocked for using really antiquated phrases (and not usually realizing it) I can feel for cpl_crud.

[gebyy-terar]

You were an artist, right?

Yes. I was surprised to see my name in the credits. The sprites I drew are almost 3 years old. I think I only drew like, 4 characters.

I really hate myself for wasting these past 3 years doing nothing but gaming and watching anime. I'm really sorry for randomly disappearing when you guys needed more artists. I fell ill and was under a lot of stress, which lead to a massive depression phase for me. I did not draw anything during the time I was away from KS. And when I look at moekki, weee, and kamifish's art, they have all improved so much while I was away. It made me think to myself, what the hell have I been doing these past 3 years? Nothing but browse /a/ all day everyday. Even my dA gallery has a gigantic time gap. One post was in 2008, the next one is in 2011.

This year, I'll work extra hard to make up for that lost time.

[nabaal]

Thanks Aura, that was a real interesting look into the personalities of 4LS.

[pineapple]

Such a sweet post, oh my goodness. I've always been curious about the 4LS team.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

So... are we supposed to just assume who each person is in the image?

[Synoptic]

Sounds like an awesome team. If not THE PERFECT team. With all kinds of personalities and extremes and in-betweens. Sounds like fun. Seriously. I feel kind of jealous. Damn.

[Quitch]

It's sad reading the blog post so I can't imagine what it's like being on the team, working with these people for five years like some kind of weird family, and then everyone breaks up and goes their own ways. Like graduation in this game, sure some of you might keep in touch but it's unlikely you'll all ever come together in that way again. The experience is over.

Very sad.

[Xybaro]

That was a great blog post.

As have been all the other recent ones, as well.

Thank you for all of this, 4LS.

[Akira]

Hmm, is Kamifish the "real Rin" then? The personality sounds similar with the short, "matter-of-fact" reply and the art marathon. Just wondering if there was any inspiration for Rin's character there

Can I live in Pimmy's magical kingdom? Earth can get too boring at times

Also, just out of curiosity, does Aura really have heterochromia?

Putting aside my odd sense of humour for now though, I'd like to say thanks for writing those posts. For all the people who wanted a "Making of Katawa Shoujo" documentary, maybe this could be a text-based one.
It's interesting to read. I learned about the existence of the project from a forum post somewhere (I forget where though) just after the first version of Act 1 was released and decided to download it just out of sheer curiosity. I didn't expect much, to be honest, but was very pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a PROPER VN, with a very very well-written story (even though it was only the first version of a demo of an incomplete game at the time, and therefore could have been forgiven for being a bit patchy) that pulled me in and refused to let go.
Like some others I decided to hang around and wait for the full version which I (wrongly) assumed would be sometime later that year... The rest is history, and a long one hehe.

From the point of view of an outsider who didn't know anyone working on the project, it didn't seem like much was happening, beyond an occasional new translation or blog post or change to the demo and part of me did grow weary of waiting, thinking nothing much was happening. Though, knowing a bit about how the game development industry works, I suspected that there was still activity behind the scenes. Invisible signs of life within 4LS, only hinted at by blog posts.
So rather than add my voice to all the people shouting for a release date and asking if the project was dead, I left the forum and wandered off to other things, keeping a regular check on the blog.



TL:DR?
Basically, I never doubted you guys. Even though I didn't know you, I always got the feeling you hadn't given up on this. And having played the full version now, I'm glad you didn't.

While I'm guessing you're enjoying being able to relax after all that and don't intend to work on anything else for a while, if at all, I hope you do stick together at least, 'cos you make a pretty amazing team!
And even if you never work on any more VNs together... Well, you can still never have too many friends, right?

Thanks for everything!