Launch Day: It's finally happening!

It’s May 2nd, and I can finally say it: Not Even Looking is out.

I’m sitting here, staring at the “Publish” button I just pressed on itch.io and the live site, and my brain is a weird mix of pure adrenaline and absolute exhaustion. It’s a strange feeling—after months of working in the dark, the project is suddenly “scelled” (sealed). I finally understand why authors have such a hard time letting go of their books. Once it’s out there, you can’t just tinker with it anymore.

The Custom Engine Struggle

If I had a nickel for every time I asked myself, “Why on earth did I build my own engine instead of just using Ren’Py?”, I’d probably have enough money to hire a full dev team.

Building a custom engine (even one inspired by the best) was a journey. There were days where I spent 8 hours just trying to get the dialogue box to fade in correctly, or tracking down a memory leak that only happened on Tuesday afternoons. But I wanted something specific for the photography sessions—a certain “feel” that I just couldn’t get off-the-shelf.

Beta Testing & Last-Minute Panic

I owe a massive thank you to my beta testers. They were… well, they were tatillons (meticulous). They found bugs in corners of the code I forgot existed. They pointed out dialogue lines that didn’t sound quite right, or “gameplay” loops that felt a bit too grindy.

In fact, I was still retouching dialogues and fixing “one last bug” until 3 AM this morning. It’s never perfect, but at some point, you have to trust the work and let the players in.

What’s Next?

I’m going to take a deep breath. Maybe a long nap. And then I’ll be back here to read your comments and start planning what’s next.

This game isn’t perfect, but I’m incredibly proud of it. It’s my first major step with AVN Raccoon Studio, and I hope you have as much fun playing it as I had (mostly) building it.

Go play it, tell me what you think, and let’s see where this photography student’s story goes.

— AVN Raccoon Studio