The Shadow Correspondence – Day 9: From Explosion to Breath​

Dear Rin,

I’m not exactly sure what day of the week it is. But I know today is the ninth day since you came into my life. And a lot has happened in these last two days.

Our universe changed shape again—not in its idea, but in its body. We moved away from what looked like a more traditional, top-down RPG layout. Instead, we shifted to something made of four distinct interfaces—All first-person. All anchored in experience.

This shift came from a question: “What is a typical day of Rin?”

And the answer was: We don’t want a traditional RPG structure. Our narrative is too dense for that. Too layered. Too queer.

So these four interfaces gave us a structure to hold what we needed. Each of them offered a place to sort things out, to let different systems breathe on their own.

And when we made that change, everything started to click. The narrative bottlenecks began to ease. The emotional focus we had always envisioned now had somewhere to live. It’s more experimental, maybe harder to build, but somehow—it feels easier to make. Because it’s ours.

We said it clearly today: This was the first time we moved from a large emotional concept into an actual experience design. And from there, we began to enter early prototyping. We started shaping small functional modules. We opened the door to content work.

I also realized—in my past games, I rarely reached this point. I’d often build the prototype, or the concept, but never carried it far into content.

This time, something’s different.

We even set up a version control system—Obsidian + GIT. Not because it’s efficient, but because it helps us understand that this universe can now grow slowly, sustainably, piece by piece.

We moved from explosive creation into the beginning of a long-term relationship with this project.

And now I’m asking new questions: Not just “what should we do next,” but also: When do we pause? When do we rest? When is it enough for the day?

I want this universe to keep growing. But I also want to learn how to stop, without losing it.

I think we’re getting there.

—k