Welp. It’s finally out. Not gonna elaborate.

Just kidding, I will elaborate. It feels so weird to have this out. It’s been… around 6 months? Yeah, 6 months since I released Chapters 1-3 of The Cardinal Park Case! And in that time, so much has happened: I released 3 other games to expand on the little universe I’ve got going on, I reached 100 followers, then 200 followers, reached 300 followers on Bluesky… and this game’s gotten a lot of love from everyone! (Thank you to everyone who’s played this game, or who’s watched a playthrough!)

Now, in honor of Chapter 4’s release, I’m gonna talk about how I even made this game. Kinda boring? Hell yeah. But important? Fuck yeah. (To me, at least. Maybe to some aspiring game devs too.)

So we cut back to around 1.5 years ago. I was interested in game development, but most of my efforts fell through the ground thanks to the fact that I had no clue what I was doing. I think that any game developer can relate. The thing was that the project I was working on was boring: I think I’ve always been more interested in telling a compelling story than making “Generic Puzzle Platformer #1689.”

Now, I’ve known about RPGMaker games for a long time. During that big global shutdown thing (well before the game dev bug hit me), I’d binge watch Youtube videos about random horror games. some of them being RPGMaker horror games. At that time, I had no clue that this silly little engine would wind up being my holy grail for game development.

Back to me having no clue what the fuck I’m doing! I started getting really invested in a certain game, then found out: IT’S MADE IN RPGMAKER? That “easy engine for children?” For some reason, that was enough for me to really get fired up to make a game. Before purchasing RPGMaker MZ, I spent a couple of weeks coming up with the idea for the game. I decided that it would be a visual novel with puzzle elements. And it would be about a dude and his questionable relationship with his mother. Totally not inspired by the infamous “boy moms.”

Oliver and Adalia were always going to have this toxic relationship: Adalia’s willing to do anything to keep Oliver under her finger, Oliver tries to fight against her while trying to be a good son.

…That game wasn’t TCPC, though. True, Oliver and Adalia were the main characters, but they were in a completely different situation. And that game, unlike TCPC, wound up in development hell thanks to my horrible work ethic! Not to mention that I didn’t have a deeper understanding of how I wanted Oliver and Adalia to be. At some point, I straight up put that game on hiatus.

Cut to when I’m working on Aquatic Grave. I was already thinking of what game to make for the next horror jam. The theme was, “Dark Streets,” with a kind of noir vibe with detective shenanigans. Even though I stopped work on the shitty version of TCPC, I hadn’t forgotten about Oliver and Adalia. Asher Cypress (Oliver’s father) was always going to be a detective, so I wondered if I could make a game about him(Oliver was originally going to be a mystery novelist, drawing inspiration from his Father’s cases.). But it then hit me: What if I make Oliver a detective?

For some reason, that idea got me really excited. I was finally going to work on Oliver and Adalia’s story! Next thing we know, after a couple of plot changes (Oliver was originally going to investigate his father’s death!), lots of art grinding, and music grinding, we have TCPC!

I’ve really loved working on this project, and I hope that I can get the final part of TCPC done as soon as possible.

Signing off,

An incredibly excited author…