Rainshade: Expanding the Team

[Wow, that's a lot of text! Here's the short version: DebugDrawRay is joining the team part time as programmer in order to save me from myself. We're currently restructuring everything to make the rest of development smooth as possible]

3 years ago, I announced a project with the working title "Once More." it was intended to be a very different game. It was meant to be a small little project that I could finish in a year, as a break from Puro. No major gameplay besides puzzles, a compact story, and no usable umbrella whatsoever.

Of course, plenty has changed.

Within the first year of development, an umbrella was added to the player's toolkit, to solve a "catching" mechanic feeling both tonally and mechanically wrong, and I came to discover that Once More was very close to being exactly the sort of game I wanted to make all along. Within the next few months, Puro was officially shelved, Once More rebranded as Rainshade, and both the gameplay and story were expanded into something I truly adore.

Unfortunately, things have been... slow. I went though plenty of personal trials. I embarked on a fun and ongoing gender adventure. I even got hired to work on Deltarune of all things. And all of these things have taught me one valuable lesson: I can't make this game on my own.

So, unofficially since late March and officially as of today, Ray, or DebugDrawRay, who is a familiar face in the Patreon discord, has joined the team part-time as a programmer! I've known him since 2015, the same year I got into game development myself, and he's got a lot more experience than me — Almost immediately, he concluded we needed to throw out huge chunks of code that have been halting progress, has helped me re-write how collisions are stored, and is currently re-writing the player character, almost entirely from scratch. It was... humbling, to say the least, but also a massive relief to discover a massive roadblock was being removed.

This has been a huge boon, allowing me more time to focus on planning, designing, and art assets. I want this game to be the best it can be, but I understand concessions have to be made, especially in the areas I have less experience in.

As things continue to be restructured, updates may seem... thinner for a bit longer, and I sincerely apologize for that. I also hope to expand the team further in the future, but with my limited time and budget, I can't say for certain when that'll happen.

Oh yeah it's very likely we'll be able to get the demo out this year, short of complete catastrophe. Finally. Thank you for your patience!!!