First of all, thank you for 500+ views. I never thought that, even without a demo or much images to look at, I'd get this far, especially with my luck on social media. I'm not that popular of a person and considering how (kinda) well my game is doing with simply a huge soundtrack and 3 images to see, I think I'm finally accomplishing something here.

When I first posted Pinori to GameJolt, I never thought I'd get far with this project and I thought for a while that this would be another one of those projects that I'd have to trash.

(I once made this really crappy series on RPGMaker VX Ace called Connection Lost, which how the game went was almost exactly similar to Escaped Chasm, with the world deteriorating at the end, except the main character got killed by her evil twin, which she was actually an only child, this twin was a demon of some sort. Anyway, the game was so short that I wanted to make a sequel, but I thankfully scrapped that. Fun fact, what was supposed to be "Connection Lost 2", had a soundtrack made of Konami VRC7 in FamiTracker. I used to have Connection Lost on my itch.io, but I took it down at somepoint. Someone was talking to me on Discord about how they wanted to give CL a try, and whew, I'm glad I took the game down in time, I helped them dodge a bullet. Anyway, I'm getting offtopic.)

I at first intended for this game to have a NES only soundtrack since I was going for a retro style. This was another one of the things that I got from Temmie Chang's games (Escaped Chasm, Dweller's Empty Path) that I wanted to try out myself. The reason the SNES OST became a thing was because I saw Vince94's Cave Story SNES OST mod, so I decided to remix one of MY game's songs in OpenMPT with a SNES style, how I did that was I took instruments from several SNES games and recreated one of my songs with them. I thought it came out good, so I confirmed that the SNES OST was going to be a thing. The graphics were kinda in between NES and SNES anyway, so why not? Couldn't hurt. Then I learned(ish) how to draw pixel art. I tried to base my art off of Studio Pixel's Cave Story, and it came out decent. So, then I confirmed the Organya OST, since ORG was the music format Cave Story used. Now we're here, and I've just confirmed GXSCC because we hit 30 follows.

Now, putting soundtracks aside, the climb to half a thousand viewers was at first slow as hell. https://youtu.be/YMM9vrIZVk8 As you can see in this video here, from around a year ago, I was looking at a weird filename bug with the soundtrack player. At the time, the game had only 3 views to go until reaching even 100. Since then, I feel my game's been growing a tad bit, considering that I've been getting views every day, whether it's 1 or 11. I'm grateful for this even though it's a tiny amount. Thank you. I hope we can get more views more often someday, but maybe that will only happen if I post content. Like, videos and images, not "oh I added this and this".

https://gamejolt.com/p/dev-moment-lmfao-i-laughed-at-my-own-message-anyway-enjoy-my-shitty-byhfnnzp For example, this image. THIS is image content. This is the stuff I want to post more often. And, for those who click the link, please. "enjoy my shitty sense of humour". Whoa, such a surprise, I cussed. Yeah yeah, it happens. I do it way more on Discord, so this shouldn't be much of a shocker, at least if you're friends with me there.

https://gamejolt.com/p/game-font-upgrade-notice-any-difference-wqdj4ukd This, once again, is an example of the type of stuff I want to post, but lately there hasn't been much that's worth doing so. I wouldn't go out of my way to post every 5 minutes "hey guys new dialogue" and take a screenshot of what's inside. Maybe I'd post occasionally like that, for example the Shadorako message, but not EVERY dialogue message. If I did that, it could potentially be spoilers, especially if it's dialogue from the end of the game (hah, we've got a long way till then, the game's 10 months old and we're only getting started here).

https://gamejolt.com/p/god-damn-60-audio-files-whoa-simcv3zp Warning, as shown in the URL, I used God's name in vain. Sorry, Christians. Anyway, this was 4 months ago and the soundtrack, as said in the link, had only 60 songs. Fast forward to now and we have 85, soon to be 89 (2 songs with 2 variants). Oh, and, notice how I confirmed two MORE variants of the OST. That's going to double the DOUBLED size in the soundtrack, so whatever we have now (minus the title theme that's global), the NES OST alone, that will be QUADRUPLED by the other variants of the soundtrack. NES + SNES + ORG + GXSCC. If I happen to do a MODERN variant of the OST, that will literally make it a QUINDRUPLE. Jesus Christ... (sorry, Christians... again.)

Up to this point, I believe it's been the soundtrack (and my constant posting recently) that's given my game so many views, because people come to the game page to view the posts, and then the soundtrack. With how big the soundtrack has gotten, and putting into consideration that it's not even done, despite it being absolutely gargantuan, there's a lot to listen to, and I think that's what a majority of you viewers have come to my page for. And, honestly, that's what I prefer. I love making music, and I love hearing feedback about it, even if it's negative. "Whoa, this is awesome", "meh, [timestamp] this part needs improvements otherwise it's decent". I love getting these messages, because even if it's negative feedback and I need to go back to fix something, it's worth the kinda stressful process. Unless it has to do with dissonance. I HATE dissonance. "But Sana, what's dissonance?" It's basically two or more notes that don't harmonize. If it's really noticeable it's a pain in the ass. One of a friend's recent songs that I'll be using for Pinori has that really noticeable dissonance, and I don't know how to make it sound good. I don't think I'll focus on that for a while till I know how to make it better.

Speaking of "make it better", I'm proud of myself for how good I've gotten at using FamiTracker. I remember around 2-3 years back when I was working on map packs for this Mario fangame I played a lot, I made this custom music that sounded like, TERRIBLE. Terrible music on top of terrible graphics because I was never that skilled. Hell, to this day I'm still not that good (graphics-wise). Maybe if I had practiced for all those years, I'd have gotten somewhere today, but I miss a lot of opportunities all the time, so whatever, back to the main topic.

https://gamejolt.com/p/https-youtu-be-7mpqvfo9nha-piracy-discouragement-message-weeeeee-xeudeffv Another kind of content that I wish to post more often. This is a piracy discouragement message. "But Sana, piracy? I thought your game was going to be free? Did you lie?" Yes, piracy. And yes, my game IS going to be free, no I did not lie. Piracy isn't always illegally getting a hold of a program or game (or movie, song, etc). It actually extends to "any illegal use" of such things. I don't want people making mods of my game without my permission, and I want people to respect that. So, on top of "make sure you downloaded the game from my itch.io", I put "please ask for permission before modding my game" and attached my email address. I don't know if just doing this makes modding without my permission ACTUALLY illegal, because, how could a 16 year old enforce a law? lol. And... yeah, I'm actually 16 (was 14 when I wrote this). Shocker, right?

https://gamejolt.com/p/400-views-thank-you-hr2veiru
400 views as of 1 month ago. No demo, barely any image or video content, and we made that milestone. Once again I have to assume this is because of the soundtrack, nothing else is that interesting to be honest.

https://gamejolt.com/p/222-away-from-666-o-7d2kqqbk
21 days ago, 444 views. So, in about half a month we were halfway to 500.

https://gamejolt.com/p/holy-crap-the-last-time-i-remember-checking-the-views-was-when-the-8jyxmqfm Just 11 days ago, the game hit 490 views. And now we're at 540. 50 views in pretty much a week.

https://gamejolt.com/p/no-way-thank-you-all-so-much-this-is-crazy-my-game-doesn-t-eve-enm7n7e3 Just about a week ago, when we hit 500 views.

This growth is astounding to me. Even if it's just the slightest increment in views, it's still amazing how quickly it happened. We might reach 600 views by the end of next week, 700 by August (hopefully), and maybe 800 in September, the boring old month where school starts back up for me. (I actually start high school next year and I don't feel ready for it lmfao)

If my pattern is correct, we might hit 1k views by November, assuming the amount of people coming in per day/week is at a constant amount. If I'm correct, then... I'll be surprised.

I never knew some random teenager with not even an ounce of an idea of what they're doing could reach such a milestone, and I'm proud to be that teenager. Thank you for the support these last 10 months, and I hope we can reach 1k soon. I can't promise that I'll be able to release a demo when Pinori reaches 1k views, or 50 followers, etc (especially because the game's 10 months old and I've barely even finished the start point), but I'll try to post more content that you people find entertaining.

I think that's all I have to say for now. If you read through this entire article without skipping anything, and you've reached this point, you're truly a good person. Not saying those of you who skimmed through are bad people, but like, an extreme thank you to those who read through the entire thing. I think this post is larger than the game's soundtrack, haha. Thank you for reading through this, thank you for 500 (+40) views, thank you for everything. Please share this game with your friends if you think they'll like it, and even put a like on the page, follow the game, follow me, or even friend request me (I'll gladly accept friend requests, unless you intend to be an asshole and be rude to me in DMs, then no, lol).

I hope this game can reach more milestones! See you next time for another post that's likely to come out within the same day!