I’m SUPER excited to announce that Bohemian Symphony is now available on the Google Play store!! Thanks to the donations here on itch, I was able to pay the developer fee and publish the game with no issues!

CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT!

It’s the start of a new chapter in my game dev ventures; we might be able to reach even more people now! Depending on how this process goes, I’d also like to put other games on the store. For now, BS is only a test drive to see how it’s received.

Some changes had to be made to the game, not for Google, but for me. I’ve been meaning to talk about this subject for a while now.

• First of all, the Extras were removed. This is not only because of the lack of the chess minigame in the mobile version, but because the reward you get for beating that minigame has a highly personal aspect. As much as I’ve improved the past year regarding my fear of being judged, I don’t feel comfortable having a potentially large audience get access to that content.

It’s meant to be a challenge to get there. Perhaps one day I’ll restore that feature for Google Play, but for now, it has been removed.

Extras are still available on the .apk here in this page and on the computer versions.

• Second, I had to shrink the audio files so that the filesize wouldn’t be so huge. Nobody wants an app that takes up +600mb of space on their phone, but a ~400mb one might be feasible.

The difference is not very noticeable, thankfully.

• And finally, but most importantly…. AI mode was removed.

This is an issue that has been bothering me for some time now. Back when Bohemian Symphony’s original script was written, AI was this silly thing that made big promises but offered less than stellar results. It was fun to mess around with, laugh a little, and move on.

But it’s different now. AI is taking over on social media and art sites, using real artist’s artwork in an unethical manner to generate art. I hate it, and I hate how even art applications are playing along with this.

What I’d hate even more, however, is the possibility of Bohemian Symphony becoming an example of ‘look, AI isn’t that bad!’, be it for people not understanding that AI mode is a pile of steaming garbage or that Human Mode was LARGELY rewritten and expanded by me, a human being.

That’s why the Google Play version of the game goes straight to Human Mode, and I didn’t mention AI in its page. I don’t want to attract that audience. It was fun while it lasted, but I will not work with AI writing in the future.

As I said in a previous devlog of mine:

The AI does not know how to write a story. I think that’s the main takeaway from reading the original script; from the feedback I’ve received, the scenes that touched people the most and were the most memorable were the ones that were written completely by me, or had to be rewritten substentially for it to be enjoyable.

The AI can do comedy, yes, but not on purpose. It can’t follow character arcs, can’t connect mysteries and red herrings together, can’t tell characters apart.

I understand this decision could be controversial. AI Mode is a fun extra that pokes fun at the absurd decisions that the machine made, but honestly? I only know of one person who actually bothered to play that mode; everyone else goes straight to Human Mode.

Again, AI Mode is still available here on itch. It’s just the Google Play version that’s different, for my own mental health’s sake.

As for other updates.

I hate how the Book 1 portraits look. If I could, I’d redraw all of them right now. But that’s a LOT of work, from lining to coloring to shading to creating expressions to manually shrinking the filesize while keeping transparency intact.

I don’t want to fall into old habits. Constantly remaking aspects I don’t like is just not feasible, and not fun….especially for free and for a game that not many people care about. It’s just not worth putting all that effort into something that maybe a dozen people will notice.

That’s why I’ve made myself a compromise. I will only allow myself to to fully remake Book 1’s portraits if:

• The game reaches at least 2k downloads on itch + Google Play.
• Or, the game raises at least $50 in purchases/donations, be on itch or my ko-fi.

This is less of a goal and more of a limit for myself. And even then, only $50 is an extreme lowballing considering the amount of work that goes into these…

Thanks for reading.

• Meiri