The past

When I started writing Animus Non Grata (beginning of 2023, back when it was still called AAIA-#27167) I did so mainly for myself, to explore themes and a unique setting I hadn't seen in other games. On April 19th, version 0.0.2 of the game was released to the public for the first here on itch.io, containing the purely text-based version of the game with only Sequence 0 available.

Around June I decided I wanted the game to be more than a text-based experience, even though I still wanted the writing to stand on its own. My own artistic skills are practically 0 (...just look at Jessica's Plight...), so I posted on f95zone forums,  asking if there was someone out there who'd want to join me on this project. I'm so glad I was contacted by Synthetic Rush, whose enthusiasm for the project throughout these months has been incredible! The images look truly stunning, bringing the game to life in ways that are beyond what I could've hoped for. A huge thank you to Synthetic Rush for all the hard work up until this point, and for still continuing to "chip away" at the mountain of images that are still needed!

The present

At the time of writing, ANG has now been added to almost 200 collections, is being followed by 100+ people and has over 15000 browser plays. And that's all thanks to you, the players, the fans who enjoy playing the game as much as I and Synthetic Rush enjoy writing and creating art for the game. Thank you for all the positive feedback, it means a lot :)

I do, however, recognize that there's valid criticism of the game. It's not for everyone, that's for sure. I've added the "Psychological Horror" tag to the game in an attempt to make it clear, in addition to all the content warnings both in-game and on the itch.io page. The story can be disturbingly dark, but as an early commenter on the itch.io page puts it also "Surprisingly wholesome at times".

The future

We'll be finalizing version 0.7.0 soon, with Synthetic Rush hard at work creating the remaining art for sequence 1 (only 13 images are missing!). Meanwhile I've been fixing some typos and bugs, and playing around with image preloading cache mechanisms for speeding up the image loading times on the web-version of the game here on itch.io.

Hopefully it won't be long until the next devlog, and with it, the release of v0.7.0! Stay tuned!