Katawa Shoujo Forums

Hello there, don't really post here much but i question occurred to me when I was reading through the archives about various stories of KS touching people and helping them out in ways I can't Imagine.

My question is this: Has the rate at which KS has spread and been played surprised you? Not sure if that's the right way to phrase that but in a long sense: Has the game done better that all of you thought it would, both on the internet and through the forms via fan fics and art? Its truly incredible all the people I've seen and talked to here and all that it's done for them, had you foreseen this?

That was probably the longest possible way to ask there question but there it is.

It has. Before we had anything out, we didn't think too many people would care about KS. However, the Act 1 release turned out to pretty popular. People thought it was good and it gave us some indication of our popularity and a morale boost for working on the rest of the novel. So we kinda knew that the full game release would be big, just not how big. Even so, it exceeded our expectations in every possible way. Even in our most optimistic dreams we severely underestimated how widely it spread, how big an impact it made and how lasting and enthusiastic the fanbase would be.

Or to put it another way: "holy shit what are you kidding me".

And I'm still wondering what kind of splash we'll make with the JP translation.

Do you have any sort of stats indicating how many people have downloaded the game? (And if so, how many?)

I was reading through a few of the questions and I've ascertained that each dev was responsible for the story path of each of the 5 girls (which makes sense I guess). With characters such as Kenji and Yuuko (EDIT: And Hisao, come to think of it!), however, was this left to each writer's own devices, so to speak, or was there quite a bit of conference between you all to ensure they were as consistent as possible? Sorry if this has already been asked, only 3460 posts is a lot ^_^

Also, I expect you get bored of people telling you this after a while, but I just wanted to extend my gratitude to you all at 4LS for making this, it truly has been a life-changing experience. Thank you <3

The free dissemination of KS makes an actual count impossible, and I think we stopped counting even our site downloads a long while ago.

I'm a bit curious about that myself, so while I'm waiting to see if some fellow dev has harder data available, I think I can say that we have passed the millionth-download mark even by the most conservative estimate.

AaronIsCrunchy wrote:I was reading through a few of the questions and I've ascertained that each dev was responsible for the story path of each of the 5 girls (which makes sense I guess). With characters such as Kenji and Yuuko (EDIT: And Hisao, come to think of it!), however, was this left to each writer's own devices, so to speak, or was there quite a bit of conference between you all to ensure they were as consistent as possible? Sorry if this has already been asked, only 3460 posts is a lot ^_^

Also, I expect you get bored of people telling you this after a while, but I just wanted to extend my gratitude to you all at 4LS for making this, it truly has been a life-changing experience. Thank you <3

Of course we developed all the characters to be as consistent as possible no matter who wrote them, with the exception of Hisao who is somewhere between a variable character and a consistent one. In some cases (like Kenji) a single writer who was deemed the "best" at writing the character wrote most of their dialogue, even in other stories.

As for the number of downloads, there's no hard data for the entire two years KS has been out, so knowing the actual download count is even more impossible than just having to estimate or ignore sources that are not us. It's of the order of hundreds of thousands though.

So, with it having been done for a good while now... do you miss working on it?

Ever find yourself thinking "aww, man. This would have been a great idea for the game if I had come up with it several years ago,"?

For the various artbooks, who comes up with the themes for them? Is it put to a vote or what?

Oddball wrote:So, with it having been done for a good while now... do you miss working on it?

Ever find yourself thinking "aww, man. This would have been a great idea for the game if I had come up with it several years ago,"?

For the various artbooks, who comes up with the themes for them? Is it put to a vote or what?

Yes and no, sort of. I guess I can feel nostalgic or whatever, but I have plenty of fun working with my current projects too.

At least I don't get KS related ideas. It's done and wrapped up, pointless to keep thinking about it like that.

The art book themes are decided by the main coordinators/art directors. It's often been me and/or weee.

Oddball wrote:So, with it having been done for a good while now... do you miss working on it?

I still got the TL project going on, and an offer to join something, and I MIGHT at some unforeseen point in time (circa 2099) want to try doing my own thing too.

Therefore: miss what?

Oddball wrote:So, with it having been done for a good while now... do you miss working on it?

Ever find yourself thinking "aww, man. This would have been a great idea for the game if I had come up with it several years ago,"?

To the first question, I have enough going on with my own projects and whatnot that I don't really miss it (I do miss having the sort of free time I had back then to work on it, as finding time for side projects with a job is a lot harder than finding time for side projects in college). Sometimes I miss working with a team, if only because it was good to have people pushing me to improve/actually deliver stuff on time.

To the second question, not really. I used to think of how I could have done things better, but eventually you stop worrying about that sort of thing.

Silentcook wrote:I still got the TL project going on

The what project?

TL is short for translation. I'm taking part in the Italian TL project and doing editor support for the other projects.

With a Japanese translation in the works, is any special thing being done regarding the word "katawa", since it's such a taboo and all? Like an authors' note or anything?

You'll have to ask the JP TL team for that, but as far as I know nothing's being done, and I don't think we would be happy with any special treatment. The Act 1 graphics weren't modified either.