Godhorn Tech:Volume3 Afterword

Afterword

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This is Godhorn Tech’s 3rd volume. I am truly grateful you stuck with Miyabi and gang’s story to the end.

This all began with emptiness.

The Japanese game app was canceled. The advance check of my scenario and the main character graphics had already been completed and delivered, yet they were still having trouble settling on a final game system. They had promised to have it ready to go by the next meeting, but at the next meeting a month later, they decided to cancel it. When that happened, I think I had nothing but emptiness in my heart.

Enjoyment is great. Even anger can be converted into a creative drive.

But nothingness is a problem.

I think it was less than an hour after it all ended that something new started up in my heart.

I decided I would do whatever it took to complete Godhorn Tech and release it to the world in some form or another. And to do that, I had to forcibly get my empty heart moving. If I let time pass with the emptiness still there, I knew my heart would only shrivel and harden.

I started working that very day.

First, I took everything I had used to create the scenario and reformatted it into something that would work as just text. Specifically, I took the dialogue-only text data and added narration so a reader could follow the story and tell who was doing what when and where.

Of course, simply adding enough narration to follow the story does not make it a novel. That does not create a finished product where the author has used a variety of tricks to arrange it so it entertains the reader and inspires different emotions in them. The logic behind the enjoyment of a novel you read is entirely different to that of a game you play. As the argumentative meetings with my editors continued, it gradually approached completion as an entertainment product, so the creative process here was a lot different than normal for me. I converted the destruction into creation, which fits right along Godhorn Tech’s theme.

It was by no means easy, but while I was working at it, I realized I actually enjoyed it.

Really, I think the first driving force that rose from the nothingness was anger. Before, I said it took less than an hour, but to be honest, from the very moment they announced the cancelation in that meeting, I was weighing the scales between writing a novel about Miyabi’s party or writing a hostile non-fiction account of what had happened.

But once I started creating a novel out of the story, I found I couldn’t stop.

Writing out Miyabi’s party’s adventures in novel form was so much fun.

My options were destruction or creation and I very nearly ended up giving into my anger and writing something hurtful. I’m glad I shifted gears to creation instead and chose the path that would bring people enjoyment.

I thought about what Miyabi and the others would have done if the game had been completed, about what I would have wanted to see in the dungeons, and how I could emphasize the gimmicks in the boss battles. I thought about how Miyabi would react when eating the specialties in each new town and how Alicia and Celina would find it amusing but exasperating. I would completely lose track of time while thinking about it all and typing up the text. In all seriousness, I stared at the screen for 15 hours some days. I was so engrossed in writing up the expressions and gestures not found in the dialogue that I would only notice how much time had passed after the fact. And even when I was exhausted, it was a pleasant feeling.

This is the novel version. Simply adding narration to the existing text in order to explain the characters’ actions would not qualify as real entertainment, so I added whatever was needed to help the story flow smoothly. And while I did so, I found I was happy to meet Miyabi and the others again. I truly enjoyed moving their hands, giving them words, and pitting their emotions against each other. And I realized something while looking back at the many game documents for reference. Even if the project ended up failing, the game producers had put together a business model, thought up a setting, and otherwise created the groundwork that could not have existed with just a desire to make something. After all the work they had put into it, it would be wrong to view them as the enemy. I realized it must have pained them as much as me when they looked me in the face and canceled it.

I want to release Godhorn Tech in some form so they can enjoy it as well.

After starting the project in that mindset, I also managed to reconfirm how I feel about Miyabi and the others. I want nothing more than for their adventures to have excited at least one person out there and for them to live on in your heart.

I have nothing but thanks for everyone who was involved in or has picked up and read this selfish project of mine.

I love everything about Godhorn Tech.

I give my thanks to Haimura-san and Tabata-san for their character designs and to KeG-san for designing each character’s alternate outfits. We also asked Tabata-san to do the novel’s illustrations. I also give my thanks to Square Enix and everyone else involved in the game’s production as well as my editors Miki-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. I can never thank you enough for allowing me to create such a colorful world. Thank you so much for listening to my ridiculous demands to the very end.

I also give my thanks to the readers. I’ve expressed my thanks all throughout the afterword, but I want to say it again: thank you so much. I hope you found a character or something else in this you adore. And I hope their world will live on forevermore in your heart.

I will end this here.

I think including Philia Shout in their party shows that anything goes in that world.

-Kamachi Kazuma

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