Hiya! It's Madeleine, the namesake of Studio Madeleine Chai. Now that the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam is actually over (we now have the ending credits in the game!), we can celebrate the conclusion of another amazing project. Congratulations to everyone else who participated in the Spooktober Visual Novel Jam!

Tim asked me to write a few words for the release of PROJECT: Halloween. The written word isn't my forte, but I'm nonetheless happy to speak on behalf of the studio.

It's been over a year since Tim and I formed this studio to help realize his creative vision. We started out working on only The Wind at Dawn, but have since participated in several jams and released some wonderful visual novels. Snapshot, Splinted Wings, Promenade, and now PROJECT: Halloween all probably wouldn't have happened if we went full steam ahead on The Wind at Dawn like we'd originally planned. In fact, I was against every single one of these other projects. Looking back, it's strange at how vehemently I argued against these "distractions" to our studio's main project. Now, I recognize that each work we produced was another step forward. Being a creator, I've learned, is not about reaching a destination: it's about establishing a beautiful process.

As a tourist to the visual novel world, I got involved with indie visual novel development because of my desire to see a dear friend thrive in this space. Since then, I've met so many talented individuals in the community and made so many happy memories. And this has all been because of the detours we took along the way to releasing The Wind at Dawn.

Detours cannot continue forever, of course! Tim and I will now be focusing all our efforts on telling the story of Gale Jones and a mysterious young woman he calls Dawn. That is not to say that we will not work on other projects when inspiration calls (in fact, I've been getting an itch to try my own hand at directing / writing a project . . .), but we feel that it is now time to give our first project — our first child — a proper delivery into the world. It has taken on a new form since what we'd expected, and it has become all the better for it. Creation is, after all, a beautiful process.

That's all I have to say for now! Thank you for reading this dev log. Until next time, beautiful stranger <3