Happy June! Wow, we're well into summer now! Are you keeping cool? Do you know how to make a wind tunnel in your home? If you live well into the bottom half of Earth, please send some cold this way.

We've got really cool news this month. You may notice that the bars on two sections that normally don't move much have gone up!

Writing

There has been writing progress! (SFX)

We've been working on the outline! The current state of it is that it is complete in broad form, with the major events for each route's day lined out. We've also written up a list of possible bad endings. The next thing to do is work on the finer details of the days before moving on to actually writing scenes. A method we've started using is putting concepts that need more research work to be done in [brackets]; this is what has pushed the outline to the state it is in now. Previously, we had been planning research days, but with the main subject (generative AI) being so broad and constantly evolving, things needed to change to prevent the plot from getting lost. This should help maintain focus and funnel what needs to be studied into more specific silos, which will also make any library visits a lot easier since we'll know what we're looking for.

Related to the outline is equally as exciting news, and that is in the category of...

Programming

7388 is still a fairly linear experience, but we have been prototyping various ways in which information can be shared to add to the experience of the game. We want a mysterious, atmospheric experience, and so with that I'd like to introduce what we've been playing with to make that experience ludonarratively consistent.

"Prompt"* Choice System

Implied by the summary we revealed when we announced 7388's return to development, the choice system in this game—the player's primary way of reaching endings—is entirely made up of what the protagonist inputs into Rhode to have it "generate" phrases to speak with Merope. To keep the scope within a reasonable range, not every instance of phrase generation is done by the player (the protagonist has a degree of autonomy), but expect prompts with major impacts to require the player's choice.

*The player is not actually prompting an LLM with this system; they pick prewritten choices using a standard visual novel choice system. All results are manually created by a human in a fixed narrative.

Point-and-Click Investigation

This exactly what it says on the tin: a very barebones point-and-click system that allows the player to learn more about the world around them. It's not sophisticated enough to have an inventory or use actions—we'd just like to give players the option to decide how certain segments flow. We're working on where we'd like for this mechanic to pop up. It's liable to be taken out if we feel it impedes the story or turns out to be fundamentally uninteresting.

Inline Glossary

The final mechanic we've been playing with is an inline glossary. This is, essentially, a glossary where the player can read more information about a concept right within the game rather than having to visit another menu by clicking on highlighted words in the text. As 7388 has a strong focus on the sociological impacts of the information age, we felt that a glossary system that's a little more in-your-face is a good way to recreate that feeling of being bombarded with knowledge.

We didn't come up with this on our own; this is heavily inspired by Saihate no Ima, which uses such a system to similar ends. We're ironing out the kinks on how this will be presented (as much as we'd like to use Ima's layered remove-player-from-narrative-to-visit-higher-context blog system because papaya thinks it's soooo cool, we acknowledge that this probably won't work for our own purposes), but we're really excited to play around with this and see how far we can go with it.

Something we'd like to do in the near future is give all $5+ Patrons access to a prototype that utilizes all of these for the purposes of collecting feedback. Up until now, all of our games have been kinetic novels, and while papaya has gained some experience with designing complex branching paths and SLGs with map movement through private projects, this is a pretty ambitious step we're taking. We'll let everyone know when the prototype is available, so if you're strapped for cash right now, feel free to just wait for the announcement rather than subscribing right away so you can drop the money then to check it out!

Artwork + Misc

And of course, we've been diligently plugging away at the artwork. Yulia's latest sprite stream happened earlier in May for Patrons, and now she's well over halfway done. Aside from that, we made a slight change to how we render human eyes, which has gone a long way in adding beauty and depth to our characters...also, we fixed Diana's shoulder!

The latest public key artwork stream also happened in May. I, papaya, would like to formally apologize about how it was pretty much just me drawing a bunch of lines to make datacenter towers. My hand hurt so bad at the end of that. This is why we keep trying to learn Blender beyond morphing basic shapes and creating arrays. I'm sure it looks cool sped up though.

That took me a whole hour to write. I don't think we've ever had this much information to share before! Very exciting. See you next month!

…But There’s One Last Update!

We’re in the Power of Pride Bundle with Three Lilies and Their Ghost Stories!

Created after the Queer Games Bundle dissolved, this bundle continues the tradition of supporting queer creators throughout Pride Month. Like always, you can buy the bundle at $60 or $10+!

If you haven’t checked out Three Lilies yet, this is a great opportunity to do so! It’s a 3 story anthology centered around ghosts, taking place in various time periods with various genres! Each story has its own unique yuri couple (and one throuple). And if you already have, there are plenty of other titles to enjoy in the bundle (including more yuri)!

$60 Full Price Bundle: https://itch.io/b/3682/the-power-of-pride-bundle-2026-60-edition
$10 Pay-What-You-Can Bundle: https://itch.io/b/3684/the-power-of-pride-bundle-2026-10-pwyc-edition

Thank you in advance for your support!