Hello everyone! It's been a while since the full release of Coalesce! Thank you so much to everyone who has played (and even paid for) the game! It warms my heart that this game I poured a lot of effort into is receiving positive feedback. Someone even said that it's better than WTTFM?? And I still consider WTTFM to be my magnum opus so far BAHAH so that's definitely a praise.

I'm always happy to know that my work grows together with me and that there's a visible improvement. Sometimes, it feels like I'm stuck. Both in my life and in my works. Nowadays I feel as though this is all I'll ever be, and this is all my work will ever be. Stagnant, unchanging, god maybe even dull, I don't know.  But having people tell me otherwise always makes me smile, so thank you.

Enough about that though, onto the usual stuff!

Concept & Original Lore

As you might've read either in my author's note or in my art book, Coalesce features many original characters that I've had since I was little. Since visual novels are what I'm most known for and since it's one of my favorite medias, I really want to include those OCs that have been with me and accompanied me throughout my life. Most of the cast here means a lot to me, so I really wanted to do them justice. Thus the development for Coalesce began.

At first, the scale of the story only involved Asa and Arvin having a beef for each other. Arvin was jealous of Asa's intellect, so he sabotaged things and got Asa to be the subject of his own experiment. However, a LOT of things change, as it usually did with most of my projects. The cast expanded, the story became more complex, and before I knew it, the scale of the project grew 3x bigger...

I don't regret it though, far from it. Creating Coalesce has been really fun and I actually learned a lot of things that I can utilize for my next project. That and this kind of extraness is just right for my long time OCs. After all, their original lore is far longer and more complicated than this one (a lot worse, too! I was around 11-14 when I developed most of their original lore). The original lore is titled Overgrown and it's.... very unnecessarily long.

For comparison's sake, Overgrown is basically about a post-apocalyptic dystopian world where Vien (now known as Arvin) decided to ruin the world, develop a new one, and rule the new world. He was a tyrant and his rule caused some people to rebel, with the leader of the rebellion being Vince (now known as Luka). Outside the big, domed country that Vien led, there were also people that lived outside it. They were either kicked out of the dome or left out of their own accord. Asa was the child of a scientist couple that fled the country, Cyril was a bit of a mystery but turned out to be a child of someone who lived outside, Auriel (Al's robot) was just a normal girl who lived outside, and Alonzo was a former city guard that went rogue. They, along with Luka, teamed up to take down Vien together yayy. All of them were teens when the story happened and the story just screamed dystopian YA book since those were my main inspiration at the time LOL

Anyway,  Overgrown was just me being very self-indulgent. I had a lot of fun with it as a kid growing up, and I'm sure teen me would absolutely jump from joy knowing that these characters have a full fledged published game about them now. You're welcome, little me.

Process & Technical Stuff

Coalesce took the longest for me to develop, mostly because I was taking a lot of breaks to focus on other things as I was doing it. I roughly started developing Coalesce at around December 2023, but I officially began focusing on it in February 2024, right after I resigned from my first ever job. I remember how cathartic I felt and I immediately wanted to jump in Coalesce as my escapism.

Looking back, somehow I'm still surprised that I managed to finish Coalesce off, actually lol

As usual, my process roughly goes like this: rough plot planning > character designs > UI implementation > resource gathering > sketch sprite art > writing the script > sketch CGs > polishing the art once the writing is set in stone. Some parts are kinda interchangable, like I'd get new songs if I feel like I need more, I'll add more sprites if I need it, etc etc. 

For the UI, I didn't really customize it THAT much for the menu, but I'm still very proud of what I've made! From someone who whined constantly about coding and UI design, I think I did well this time! In fact, I actually had a ton of fun implemeting the UI for this one! Maybe because I took my time with it, but the happiness I felt after I've successfully implemented the blue bars, the chapter names on top left, and the icons is immeasurable.

Those placeholder sprites I used in the rough designing phase were made by Ev/Spader (honglu_meng), he was also my playtester for the first part of Coalesce! He also did March's design! I really owe him a lot. Thanks Ev if you're reading this!

Banger ideas from Ev too btw nevermind what he said about his doodles being shit.

Once the UI was done, I got to sketching the sprites and writing the script interchangibly. Oh I also did that opening cinematics, because why not LMAOO. I did different poses for some characters and also had 16 characters in total, it was a lot of art to draw. I would be lying if I said I wasn't overwhelmed, but I really took my time with it, focusing on smaller goals for shorter period of time, and that helped a lot. I was able to be more focused and was able to chew down on this little by little!

I also had a lot of fun writing the character interactions in this game, if you couldn't already tell! I'm really big on characters, so Coalesce has just been pure joy to write, especially when someone is bantering with another character! Inserting past characters and showing how much they changed or how they act now was also incredibly fun!

Lots of things also happened during Coalesce's development... a lot can really happen in a year huh? Here's some highlights:

• A small...ish earthquake happened while I was writing Coalesce at 3 AM, it's hilarious tbh
• I worked on my thesis, did my defense, and graduated
• Went through a few, REALLY bad mental breakdowns, got out of it fine surprisingly?
• Found a job! One that I suck at but I'm learning.....
• Finally got the guts to make a community discord for people to talk about my games (thanks to Cherish, the creator of The Retrospection of Tomorrow, since she's the one who inspired me to do so)!

Speaking of the community...

The Community

I first started the discord server at 7th March 2025. I didn't expect a lot of activity nor a lot of people coming to talk, but I was surprised! There are now 41 members and while some of them are lurkers (which I don't mind at all! I'm also a huge lurker myself in communities), some of them also are very active in the community. It has been absolutely lovely to interact with each and one of you!

Here are some people's OCs that they created in the same universe as Project 1316 that I drew as thanks (and also... they're so creative? Shout out to you guys honestly, these are banger OCs)

I've also name dropped a few of them in Coalesce! There's Dr. Jones (the one with orange, fluffy hair), Dr. Aspen (the one with red hair, in the mind subdivision), and Dr. Lasnam (the one pulling the middle finger besides Dr. Jones). I do want to include more if I can! They're all lovely OCs and I'm happy to be including them in small cameos in my games! Since Project 1316 is filled with many researchers anyway, I do consider these OCs to be canon!

For credit of the parents of these OCs, please refer to this link!  If you're curious to learn more about them, you can go to their accounts! I know some of them posts about their OCs.

Anyway, I do absolutely love each and every one of you and I thank you for your support!

[Heavy spoilers for Coalesce and Where the Two Flowers Meet from this point onwards.]

Project 1316 & Coalesce's Story

Speaking of Project 1316, the universe Coalesce and Where the Two Flowers Meet is in... 

Here is the new, updated sheet for the worldbuilding!

I initially never planned on elaborating on Project Metempsychosis as a whole. I planned on just making it a one time thing in WTTFM and never elaborate much on it. But then someone became really curious about the worldbuilding, and it made me curious too! I saw the potential in the concept and so I wanted to expand on it! Besides, by that point, I've already grown attached to this universe and characters. It makes me happy to put in Seven and Caleb in  Coalesce, just as a way to know how they're doing now. It's like revisiting and catching up with old friends.

I had initially wanted to mention the higher ups more, like who they exactly are and their motivations, but at that point I really might just bloat the whole story, so I abstained from it. I do have a plan on making a seperate thing for that, but I'm still unsure about that to be honest. I don't want to make any promises.

I know that death is a reoccuring theme in my visual novels. Before the 1316 VNs, there's also For Amerta too.  I don't know, a part of me is just really fascinated by it and the effect it causes on us. I want to showcase the many types of deaths, not just the death of a loved one, but the death of self, the death of a moment, the death of... everything? I guess more than death itself, I was more interested in the idea of something being over. Finality or loss maybe. With WTTFM, I explored the loss of a loved one. With Coalesce, I explored the loss of autonomy. I can only hope you're not tired of it because I do have one more loss-themed game in store... and that is Skin-Deep Ligature! (shortened to SDL)

Future Projects

Now, what kind of loS̶s will it talk about? I'll leave it to you to theorize and figure out before I eventually release the demo, someday! All I will sA̴y is that I've L̷eft crumbs throughout Coalesce, both in game, outside of the game, and in the art book. I'V̵e probably also already yapped a bit more about it in my discord, or bluesky. 

I have the plot plA̸nned in my head and I don't T̸hink I'll be makI̸ng majO̴r chaN̶ges to it like I did with Coalesce when I announced it back then, so here's a little summary on what it's going to be about!

Luka Kekoa had always lived a cursed and wretched exsistence. Thinking of himself to be incapable of redemption, he had resigned to live the rest of his life and die as a lowly sinner. Despite that, it took him an untreated stabs to the abdomen for him to begin to repent.

He prayed. For the first time in forever, he sincerely clasped his hands and closed his eyes to pray. Not to ███, but to ██

Ther̸̓efore, █ ████ ███ ██ ████ ██ █████ ████ █████ ███ ███████ ███ █████ ███ ███████ ██████████ ███████

What was I saying again?

Right, Skin-Deep Ligature! 

It'll be a BL once again, because I'm sorry but I truly am a BL writer at heart. Now I acknowledge and accept that wholeheartedly. 🙂‍↕️

If I had to compare... it'll be kind of an antithesis to WTTFM. The other side of the same coin, I guess? While WTTFM is trying to resuscitate, SDL is trying to kill. It will also be heavily inspired by Happy Saint Sheol (yes I love HSSH,  yes this game is my main inspiration for SDL, and I don't want to hear ANYTHING about it), NitroChiral games, and the Zero Escape series. Take that information how you will! I think I've given so many hints that I think you can figure out what the entire story will be lol

Other than SDL, I've helped out with other projects developed by other devs. If you're interested, please check them out here! I might try to collab with more people as I'm developing SDL, so look forward to that as well!

Wrapping Up

Once again, thank you so much for reading my incoherent yapping. I really do appreciate you reading this far! 

Coalesce is, I think, my biggest visual novel so far with how much character and plot to keep up with. I wasn't sure if I'd ever finish it due to the scale, but I did! There were times I wanted to give up, there were times where I doubted myself over and over, but I pulled through and made a story I'm proud of. Even though I didn't finish Coalesce 100% true to my vision since I had to cut down a lot of stuff if I wanted to even release Coalesce at all, I'm still very happy with what I've made! I hope you've enjoyed Coalesce or WTTFM or even my other VNs as well, and if you did, I truly, deeply appreciate your support! You'll always be the reason why I haven't given up on storytelling as a whole.

Thank you and I hope I can see you guys soon! In the meantime, have a good life!