**Hey actually Google Play is keeping over $20 from me and refuses to help me sort it out, so I took down my games from there. **

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. 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.

I don’t want to attract that audience. I will not work with AI writing.

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.

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