Updates

Monthly update #5

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Happy New Year 2026!

I moved out to the other side of the city just as the year changed, and most of my January has been about cleaning, re-arranging and getting used to this new place. It’s very different from what I have gotten used to but mostly for the better, and despite the financial stress the move has put me under I do feel much better than I have in ages.

Unfortunately this is going to be yet another update void of visual imagery, but I’m happy to announce I have made good progress on the Fish Hook script! Currently, after removing all the deleted scenes from the document, I’m at a bit over 49 000 words, and over halfway through my first round of revisions and general structure overview. I’ve been ironing out some plot details, clarified and worked on some crucial story points, and also collected a separate list of all sorts of little things I have noticed that I could use on my first proper round of edits to strengthen the narrative. I have also added some previously missing scenes in proper script format.

When I started reading the script from the start I was honestly feeling pretty defeated, because those parts are obviously the earliest I have written, and I didn’t have as good idea of individual character voices as I have now. So it was kind of miserable to go through them and think “man, this is not a good game at all”, but somewhere around chapter 3 the overall quality improves so much that it admittedly caught me a little off guard, lol. That was around the time when I created my specific documents on Juri’s and Adrian’s character voices and mannerisms, and it’s obvious that side track of creating those files paid off big time. I know characters change and your confidence writing them improves the further in you are into your project, but I would still highly recommend making those kind of documentation files for your characters regardless.

Personally, for me the structure of “overview -character’s personal history -outside impressions -character’s speech” is pretty useful so far, alongside a section of references from other works of written media that I think match my vision of the character. For Adrian, as an example, I have a list of quotes from Frankenstein, The Count of Monte Cristo, Dracula, and William of Newburgh’s Historia.

Here’s one example from Juri’s file that has been particularly useful for me:

And that’s it for January! I don’t have any specific goals for February, other than to continue working on the script at least once a week during the writing sessions my friend and I share. I’ll have to start preparing for the next round of doctoral candidate applications so that’ll take a good chunk out of my February, but I have also plans on beginning to work on Fish Hook on a more regular schedule.

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Updates

Monthly update #4 – December 2025

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Happy (almost) New Year! I’m making this post a few days earlier than usual because I’ll be officially moving out on 31st, and too exhausted to do anything afterwards. As expected, moving preparations have kept me busy this December, but I’ve also thankfully been able to write consistently at least once a week.

The script’s word count has reached ~48 000 words, and I have now written out all the parts I reasonably can within this first draft. The missing one and half chapters are near the end of the story where I must tie up all the loose ends, and these are something I will feel more comfortable writing out in detail after having gone over my first draft at least once. These are not edits as much as they are just personal notes both in and out of the text to keep track of all the moving parts, and after having gone over the prologue chapter like this I can tell it was a good idea. Fish Hook is not a long game by visual novel standards but it’s still a lot of text and story beats to memorise, and especially the characters themselves have developed further over the course of many months.

Juri’s character voice has definitely changed the most from my initial impressions of him

Instead of focusing on the artistic qualities of the prose I have mostly been focusing on intent, both in terms of what I as an author am trying to communicate to the reader, and what the characters themselves are trying to convey with their lines. I also want to work on the overall structure, pacing and the actual plot points that need to be in the story. Rather than being the first round of edits proper, it’s instead a little step back to see what I have have written out so far and what I still have left.

January is going to be a big transition stage in my life as I try to get used to my life in a new place and starting preparations for the next doctoral candidate application process. I’ll probably write a lot or very little depending on how things go, but I would definitely like to launch the new Fish Hook website at the start of January, and also work on UI mock-ups. There’s also something Juri related I’ve been working on quietly for some time now, but I can’t make any promises on being able to deliver anytime soon. Just know there is Something coming at some point. …

Updates

Monthly update #3 – November 2025

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This month I was busy with apartment hunting, but I’m happy to say that I found one and I’m looking forward to moving out at the end of the year! My original plan for November was to do my usual 50k words challenge (particularly now that NaNo 2.0 has risen up to fill some of the void left by NaNoWriMo), but this also ended up being my first month of sick leave, so I decided to take it easy and instead ensure that I work on Fish Hook every day at least a little, regardless if it’s writing, drawing or something else.

For this month, I managed to reach a total of ~39,000 words and more or less finish chapter 6. I have now passed the halfway mark, and much of my word count this month is coming from the build-up before the climax of the flashback story, which have been some of my favourite parts to write so far. Every part of me wants to go back and start editing the earlier parts already, but by now I know from experience there is no point doing it, because by the time I’m done, I already want to rewrite them anyway lol. So I’m entirely focused on finishing the first draft and only then start the first round of edits.

I also started my Fish Hook website coding project, and I’ll probably be able to roll it out within a few days! I’m not much of a coder and I’ll be using the visual layout style of the current carrd page so I don’t need to start layout planning further, but I’m happy about the freedom html+css are giving me compared to carrd’s features. I’ll likely make it look prettier in the future when I have the game’s UI nailed down, and after I learn a bit more about what bootstrap can offer me. I’ll also have to decide whether I’ll give Fish Hook it’s own website, or whether I want to attach it under the domain of what will one day be my main website.

That’s about it for this month, I think. Here’s also some art I drew earlier in the month while trying to decide a visual style for the game’s CGs. I’ll probably going to be using this style for the game proper, since I think it perfectly balances the feeling I want to convey while also being somewhat time-efficient in terms of lining.

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Updates

Monthly update #2 – October 2025

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I’m still burdened by intense migraines and paperwork, but I’m glad I managed to write despite that!

  • This month I managed to hit the 25,000 words mark and now I have 4/10 chapters done, with the 5th chapter at roughly 70% completion! 🙂

  • I spent some time growing my music and sound effect collection, since I like to write while listening to music meant for each scene, and there are very specific sound effects I want to use and remix into things.

    This part used to be SO easy back when I was working on Sinfonia, but these days, thanks to generative AI, I have to vet every single track and composer individually to make sure I’m not tricked into using AI music. It genuinely makes me so upset that AI users won’t even disclose their use of it, since they all know we wouldn’t listen to them or use them if we knew. Perhaps the only positive side to this is that I have intentionally started looking up music that’s been uploaded a long time ago, like even in the 00s, and I think it’s been providing me with a very interesting library.

  • This is more of a research thing, but I watched a bunch of movies and anime OVAs partially as inspiration for Fish Hook 🙂 Would like to highlight The Lighthouse for its delightful madness, since it’s something I’m deliberately analysing and studying for Fish Hook inspiration spesifically. Very fun movie. Pattinson really was giving his all in his role and I love to see it.

  • I’ve been writing a character highlight post about Juri, but it still needs some ironing out. Should be out in November, hopefully alongside posts about Adrian and Lysander.

NaNoWriMo as an organisation/site no longer exists (and I think we can all agree this is a good thing), but I’m planning on writing in November anyway! I recently learned about NaNo 2.0 and I’m interested in participating in it, since I did miss that feeling of having some kind of larger community aspect involved.

Sorry this update ended up lacking in visuals, I didn’t have the energy to photograph and edit some of the traditional doodles I have drawn lately, and the digital ones are still big wips. Hopefully in the next update I have something visual to show, possibly even some UI suggestions. …

Updates

Monthly update #1 – September 2025

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I spent most of this month doing paperwork for IRL things and having a migraine, but I still managed to work on Fish Hook at least once every week 🙂

First, here is my rough roadmap for this project. I’m currently at the first working stage and prioritising the first draft of the script to get the ball rolling, but I like to work on other stuff alongside it as well. Sinfonia taught me that sprites and the art in general are my biggest anxiety point in game development, so this time I’m leaving them for later stages so that my art style doesn’t change three times between the writing of the script and actually putting the pieces together.

If you see a windows watermark: no you don’t.

For the actual progress of this month, I realised that majority of my script has been written during September! Friend and I have been having weekly remote writing sessions and it’s been really helpful in ensuring that I actually do sit down and write!

Currently at the time of writing this post the script has 13,131 words, and I’m comfortable stating that I have 30% of the script’s first draft written out so far. Technically I have more, it’s probably something closer to 40%, but it’s easier to state it like this. The actual game will likely not have chapters, so this is a system I’m only using to keep some kind of track of progress. These “chapters” are not equal in length either.

This month I also put up both the info site and this development blog, as well as a mirror on tumblr for reposting things here.

There is a slight chance that if I lock in and my health situation improves I’ll be able to finish the first draft of Fish Hook during October. My life is still in an incredible unstable and transitory state due to my graduation, health problems and the absolutely abysmal state of everything in Finland right now, but I’m praying and actually also begging on my knees that I get to have a peaceful and healing October. Please. I’m so tired. …

Devlog

Devlog #1 – First look & overview

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I actually wanted to dedicate this first post to all my main inspirations for the story, but then realised I speak so little of the game itself that I’m better off starting with an actual overview of what Fish Hook is and how it will play.

Fish Hook is a frame story, which means that there is a story inside the story, and these stories are divided into two distinct time periods. The present day sections are narrated by Juri as he listens to Adrian recount his tale of what happened to Lysander Burnett three years ago. This other story is narrated by Adrian, whose memories Juri is able to see as if he was physically present in them. As such, these sections feature present day Adrian as the narrator voice, while other dialogue is presented as flashback scenes where Adrian from the past is also represented. I promise it’s not as complicated as I make it sound to be, the visual novel advantage of using sound and visual images really helps with clarity here when it comes to the actual game.

There are also going to be choices throughout the game that will influence the amount of information you get, as well as the importance of them. I have a lot planned for it and I would love to share a photo of the choice notes and visual propositions I have made for it, but I feel like it’s something I’d rather have the players to discover themselves. Just know that even though the choices will not affect the ending, they will have a pretty massive role in how the game is going to be experienced 🙂

I have decided to classify the game as a horror game because that’s the closest it’ll get to the core of the story. I generally gravitate towards literary fiction as opposed to genre fiction, especially because these categories kind of straight up don’t exist in Finland, at least not in the way English-speaking communities use it. Cosmic horror isn’t necessarily the subgenre I’d confidently use but I suppose it might still be useful as an indicator of what kind of tone it will have, except that some core principles of cosmic horror sort of clash with my own more academic posthumanism angle that isn’t super keen on all its aspects and interpretations. But this will be a topic of a different post.

My initial plan was to turn Fish Hook into a pixel art game, but after drawing the website character portraits I realised this is the kind of visual look I want to feature in the game. I’m a little sad about it, but at the same time it will also make a lot of things like the UI editing much easier, and most importantly “feels” like the right choice. I’m going to come back to this post when in a year or two I’m working on the sprites and lamenting how much it sucks to edit non-pixel art sprites.

This is the first visual UI proposal I have made, back when I was still heavily considering the pixel art presentation.

It’s by no means the final version and will undoubtedly change a lot as the project advances, but I thought it would be nice to share it anyway. My main inspiration were old cigarette boxes, at least in terms of composition, and to a lesser degree PC-98 era visual novels with their decorative frames. Looking at this now, I definitely want to make it less cramped. I plan on returning back to UI brainstorming once I’m done with the first draft of the game script.

Thank you if you made it this far 🙂

Next time I will actually talk about the inspirations and context stuff related to the game, as well as elaborate a bit on what the mysterious “companion game” to Fish Hook is 👍…