Originally I was going to write 28 #RitualoftheMoonReflections but the last one, Pre-Release Feelings: Emptiness, felt pretty final to me - although, I'm told, kind of eended them on a bad note. (If you don't like bad-note endings, maybe Ritual of the Moon is not for you!). I did that ritual on release day I wrote about and burned some things I wanted to let go of. Felt nice but didn't really work as much as it usually does. The major thing I wanted to let go of was all the things that could have been. 

It's hard not to see flaws in your own work, what could be better or improved upon. There's one major thing I wish I did differently, but it's something I chose early in the process and didn't realize it was not a good choice until a few months ago. For that I am like, welp, live and learn. (I'm not going to say because I don't want you to realize what it is!!!) 
 
Something I wouldn't change at all is the visuals. I think they're so beautiful. There's nothing that looks like it. But doing these #RitualoftheMoonReflections made me realize how beautiful so much of our process was. Making art is always full of possibilities and constraints. I usually plan and then impulsively pick something more than I like to iterate or edit, whereas artists Julia Gingrich and Rekha Ramachandran do a lot of iterations to refine and experiment. That plus the 5 years it took since I first started planning it means there are many different things that could have been. Some are so beautiful I'm sad they're not in the final game. But Ritual of the Moon is one game with one look. It could never be the way it is without the ways it's not. It couldn't be any other way because this is the way it became. 

Now that you all have a taste of what Ritual of the Moon looks like, I thought I'd share this video of our design process, and some stills from different prototypes. 

4 days after release.