Just letting you know that I have completed the first story for TEWCW, "Experiments".
It does everything I want these stories to do: bring dimension to the characters, create truly perilous, nail-biting situations, add a level of immersion and fun to the action, and innovate within the visual novel genre to create something truly unique. The Evolving World Dating Simulator #435 this is not — it avoids many of the tropes visual novels tend to descend into.
I will say, though, that judging by this first story, this is much darker than what I've put out so far. However, because the stories are interconnected and yet distinct from one another, their tone can vary considerably. I may do a Teen Titans-esque thing where lighter stories have a different opening sound over the title of the story than the serious ones. Not sure how many light stories there are, besides the original animated episode's stories. Everything else is pretty serious. Knowing me though, it'll never be completely depressing.
Even in "Experiments", a gruesome story with many disturbing elements, I put some humor into it somehow. Hopefully I can do this with most of them, so that it doesn't completely veer away from the action-oriented tone of the original.
The next story I will be toiling away on is called "Stories From the Catalyst, Part I".
I hope you enjoyed that sneak peek above of one of the game's backgrounds — as you can see, there's a lot more detail than usual because of the ultra-HD format.
I have also added a new element to the game's page on this website. It now has a picture of the new version of the mechora Oliver fights in the first episode, modeled after one of the first designs I ever did.
Stay tuned for more progress.
-- LockedOn, 2016.