It's been about three years since Inciting Incident was released, and we're more than aware of the growing anticipation for the second part. When we first started this project, we never imagined we would spend such a considerable amount of time on it. Still, we trudged on, and we're now seeing the results of all our years of blood, sweat, and tears. We're finally nearing the homestretch. 

Prologue Scenes
In October, we mentioned that we would release the prologues for the heroine routes. Currently, they are all scripted and just need a bit of editing and small revisions. We're already implementing some of the assets into the engine, and will release them on Steam this month or in July. We'll ask some of our regulars in our Discord server to beta test them when the time comes. 

Heroine Routes
Since the writing for Airi's and Elizabeth’s routes are nearly finished, we've come to a  decision to release them first, with Akira's and Misaki’s coming at a later date. While some of you may have been looking forward to the latter routes, we've felt it was necessary given the amount of time this project has been in development. For those who were excited about Airi and Elizabeth, we are hoping to release their routes this year if all goes well.

To summarize: things are going to be released very soon. And we'll continue to work hard to finish the entirety of Lucid9 until the very end. Again, thank you all for your patience. 

If you're ever wondering about our progress but the blog hasn't been updated in a while, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook. You can also join our Discord server and speak with us directly. There, you can also get early access to some of the stuff we've been working on. 

- David A. "CardioPen" 

~ Via

I was going to write this post yesterday but remembered that it was Father's Day. I hope you guys had the chance to spend some quality time with your old man/father figure!

Writing progress has been consistent, and we haven't had many issues in the writing department as of late. But given how some of our writers have been around longer than others, those that joined us just recently not only had to focus on catching up on their route, they also had to read the other writers' work and provide feedback. Naturally, this became increasingly difficult, and a lot of our writing meetings ended up being one-on-one sessions with Dia rather than an open discussion. Dia suggested the writers spend two weeks reading, commenting, and leaving suggestions on what was currently written without having to worry about writing their own routes. We'll be scheduling another meeting next Monday now that everyone is caught up with each other's work.

The writers are also planning to experiment with the phone system that was present in Inciting Incident. Our hope is to include phone applications—such as Patter—where the reader can learn more about the world of Lucid9 and its characters. It's still in the developmental phase at the moment, so we'll share mock-ups once we make more progress.

Concerning art, all of the main characters in Lucid9 (with the exception of Shigure) have completed sprites. Of course, there are still varying poses/clothing that need to be done, but those will be finished in due time. Dizzy, Elphaze, and Eufonie have been fairly active, and we're always excited to share some of their work with you guys. Below is a mock-up of the heroines and background art!

 
Ziassan, one of our composers, had also uploaded a few drafts for the sequel's soundtrack. This one will be played during the darker segments of the story, and will have a two other variations of intensity—a bit similar to the Melancholy tracks in Inciting Incident. We'll be working to harmonize the tracks so they don't transition too abruptly, which was an issue in our first release.

That's about all the news for now! While these past few months weren't easy, we've made quite a lot of headway despite the changing of so many writers, so a big thank you to DJ Horn, ReddlyB, and Via for helping us out in that department.

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to write us here. You can also reach us on our discord channel. A lot of our members are very active there. discordapp.com/invite/q3fyjT2

Until next time!

~ David A. "CardioPen"

Hello folks, Diamonit writing, it’s been a while!
It has been a while since we last shared substantial news about the state of progress for Inciting Incident’s sequel, and an even longer time since I wrote a blogpost (the two are more or less related, to tell the truth). There’s a lot to say, so you can expect this post to be pretty long.

1 - Thank you
First of all, I wanted to thank you all for the amazing reception we got at the release of Inciting Incident. It couldn’t make us any happier to see people read and enjoy the story we’ve prepared for them. Still, to this day, we regularly receive messages from people telling us how they felt when reading Inciting Incident, and even though we are not always able to reply, we’re extremely grateful for your support! Of course, we do realize that Inciting Incident created (rather high) expectations for the sequel, and this is partly why things have been taking so long.

2 - What we’ve been up to for the past two years
Long story short; when we finished Inciting Incident, we more or less had a vague idea of the story’s direction. More precisely, I knew how the sequel would start and how it would conclude, but everything in between was still a work in progress. That’s when issues started to arise. We’ve had creative disagreements regarding how the rest of the story should be handled. Our Inciting Incident main writer, Luna, also left to pursue her own project (I really recommend you to check it out here if you haven’t heard of it already), which left me trying to find a new recruit to fill in her shoes for her route, something that would end up becoming quite the difficult task.

In the months following the release, we continued to discuss the continuation of the story. We continued to become more and more frustrated after discussions, especially since we were ambitious and wanted to create something that wouldn’t let the readers down, but proposed concepts were often debated over. We didn’t share the same ideologies in terms of story writing. Frankly, all of this was really getting to me, and I was getting really tired of it all (add the fact that I had worked nearly non stop for half a year in order to make sure Inciting Incident release would be a success), and I ended up losing motivation and becoming less and less active. It’s at around this time that I asked David to temporarily replace me since I needed a break from Lucid9. Truth be told, I sometimes considered to quit at that point. After all, the release of Inciting Incident was a success and left me really satisfied with what I had accomplished. But there was always the nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I couldn’t really let it all remain unfinished like this, and that a lot of people were actually waiting for the sequel. I couldn’t let them down.

Months passed, and a number of writers came and left. Elizabeth’s previous writer was replaced by Via. Nugget took over Suna’s role as Akira’s Route writer but was eventually replaced by Reddly. Clestae was also bogged down by real life commitments, and as a result, had to resign from her writer position to become an editor. DJ is currently filling in as Airi’s writer, who has done some very good work so far, and you can all expect him to do Airi’s route justice. Via joining the team is what motivated me to get involved in Lucid9 again, as he had a good head on his shoulders, shared (or at least understood) my thought process when creating or commenting on the content, and was always willing to work out all the details for his route and the world lore in general. Eventually, at the end of 2017, I was fully directing Lucid9 again, and here I am now writing this update. I’m also extremely grateful to David who held the fort while I was not motivated enough to work on Lucid9. Without him, the project would probably have died back then.
​
3 - What concrete progress has been made so far?
Here are how things stand currently for Lucid9’s sequel :

• Quite a lot of background art has been completed. Expect to see Yama visit new places that were only mentioned previously in Inciting Incident.
• The writing is finally showing progress. Of course, the amount of progress varies from writer to writer, but most of them have gotten a good grip on their characters and how to naturally write them so that dialogue and narration remain close to the one in Inciting Incident. The lore has been greatly expanded, and every route is planned out. So really, from now on, it’s a matter of writing regularly (and I’ll be here to make sure that progress is indeed done regularly).
• Music hasn’t seen much progress at the moment, but we’ve been trying to remedy that. Expect more music in the future.
• Most of the male characters have their first sprite done while the female cast is still mostly in development. Dizzy, the female characters artist, decided to improve her drawing style, so the female sprites might look a bit different than what you got used to in Inciting Incident. Here is a sneak peak of the current Airi’s design for the sequel :

~ Via

(PS David is an awesome dude)