Saninsakin!

Been a little bit, hasn't it?

We're happy to announce that S&M has resumed active development, though it may not be in the form some of you may have been expecting.

 In previous devlogs, especially our second, we've talked a bit about the path of development that S&M navigated. Still, we thought we might be able to provide clarity behind some of our recent changes and decisions to overhaul large portions of the story if we dive into that with a bit more detail.

With that, let's take a look at v0.313, the upcoming version of S&M that'll serve as a relaunch of the entire project.

S&M v0.3 was initially planned to include changes to the overall script–these were made with the cutting of voices as detailed in our eleventh devlog. This was when we started to cut a lot of content, as reading it was a drastically different experience to having it be read–blame this on our backgrounds of writing scripts, not novels. However, as we began to cut things, it became clear that S&M was struggling with something that countless earlier iterations of the project had attempted to solve unsuccessfully: who's telling the story, and why? This was a hurdle that we failed to clear time and time again–until landing on the structure seen in the versions released to the public. The style we settled for, something akin to an anthology, remedied this problem, at least in part, for the contents of the original plot of Episode 1. But, much to our dismay, we quickly discovered that moving forward in the timeline, it became challenging to maintain. This was made worse by the members of the cast we chose to focus on, and the way their stories were planned to collide.

That's a lot of words to say something really obvious: we wrote ourselves into a corner.

Of course, there were ways to turn the ship around–but it would not have been an easy task, and it would've likely turned Episode 2 into filler that would try to keep things above water. We're not interested in wasting your time with things that won't move the plot forward, so this was where the larger framework of S&M pre-v0.313 sat while we worked on The Mirror Eater.

That brings us to v0.313–we don't plan on repeating our mistakes, and are frankly a bit embarrassed to have made them with our flagship project. No one likes a relaunch, especially when things you've already invested energy and time into have been removed. But, we're confident that the decision to start over, though difficult to make, is the right decision for S&M.

Broad strokes, many of the events and details explored in S&M pre-v0.313 remain canonical, though retcons and other alterations to the story during the rewrite have changed specific events and characters. With how early we were in the story, this'll only be really obvious with Özbey and Fermi, though those of you who've read TME likely already picked up on this.

The rewrite also pushes forward the timeline to where many of our older drafts previously planned for it to start–roughly 20 years after the fall of the colonial administration under Kirițescu. This places S&M's 'present' events around 30 years after the events shown in TME (and a few years before our upcoming projects). The rewrite also axes the multi-protagonist anthology setup we had established, instead focusing on one character. This'll prevent the often-times confusing shift in perspectives that troubled our previous versions.

We'll save the details of what happens for you to explore when we release v0.313–there's no fun in spoiling it all.

TL;DR: Pre-v0.313 S&M had to get Old Yeller'd so we could provide you all a better experience.

(And also if you have an older copy, congrats! You have lost media. We'd prefer if you deleted it as it is inferior to v0.313+, but it's obviously not up to us.)

But, in the meantime, enjoy some concept art!

JENSEY HEGEDŰS

FERMI BETOM

THE PACISTOJ

Obviously there's plenty more where that came from, but we'll save it for the devlog when we release v0313.

S&M also has a brand new trailer, which is featured on our page! It can also be found on our YouTube channel, alongside the OST of both S&M and TME.

We'll be releasing v0.313 sometime in July–we don't have exact dates yet as we're all still figuring out our schedules, and need to wrap up TME's second part.

So! Thanks for tuning in to another transmission from us.

'Til next time!

-Lajos

Got a question? Want to chat? We can be reached at ProjectUlysses13@gmail.com.