State of Decay Special (September 4th 2025): Toparo Project first anniversary!

Well, well, well… It’s finally that time of the year, not only is this the first SoDS (State of Decay Special) but it’s also (by dumb technicality) the Toparo Project’s first anniversary! Time to bust out the champagne and- well, I don’t like alcohol so no… nor do I *have* any champagne to bust out… I’ll just have to drink water and pretend then, won’t I?

Regardless of pointless distractions - One year old huh? If Toparo were a disgusting infant child it’d be fairly annoying right now, constant blabbering and a trip hazard that has the gall to cry when it trips *someone else* over. Thankfully it is not a stupid baby, and it is quite content to sit on my computer and just take up vast amounts of hard drive space. In the past year I’d say I’ve made a decent bit of progress, far less than what should have been made, but still, little and often will get it over the finish line *eventually,* although I really want to speed things up in the coming year; honest likelihood being that I’ll continue at the same glacial pace unfortunately… I need to force stricter habits onto myself I suppose (^^;

Anyway I can’t spend this whole blog post talking to myself can I? Well, actually, I can and will, because nobody is reading this as of posting lol - Shoutouts to my three Bluesky followers and my seven YouTube subscribers haha. But what I meant by that paragraph opening is that I should stop stalling and get to the announcements: Two of them to be precise~

Announcement #1 - New Story: Mysterious Items and Shaky Conclusions (Chapter 1)

Yes, that part of the website I seemingly abandoned hasn’t been abandoned at all! I *was* going to post this sometime during the middle of the year just after I initially wrote it, but I decided to hold off and save it for today on the off chance I had nothing else to show for (sneaky, I know, but smart). It’s only the first chapter for now, but said first chapter has a decent bit of heft to it - Might take you longer than five minutes to read! (Maybe…)

It’s my first multi-chapter work, so it’s a bit intimidating to post even though I’m very, very happy with how the first chapter turned out! I hope I’ll be able to make a vaguely interesting story (especially since the game isn't out yet, so it has to stand entirely on its own two feet for now). Although, calling it a ‘story’ is a bit of a stretch, it’s kind of slice of life-y, so each chapter stands mostly on its own, oh well… No idea how long it’ll be by the way~

Also, from reading it, it should be pretty obvious, but this is sort of my own take on ZUN’s “Curiosities of Lotus Asia.” Yeah, it’s pretty shameless (each chapter is even around the length as one part of CoLA), but it’s a really cool idea, ok? I was inspired to make my own version, which now that I think of it kind of describes Toparo itself to a quite literal T… So I suppose more of the same shouldn’t be surprising lol…

It should be on the website right now, so go give it a look once you’ve read all this! I’d love to hear what anyone thinks about it, even if you think it sucks! - Look, I’m desperate over here (^^;

Um, speaking of totally not copying ZUN’s homework~

Announcement #2 - New Album: Toparo ~ Memories of Wistful Spire

Yeah, an album? It shocked me too and I’m the person who’s making it! Now, it’s not done yet, but the first track is - Don’t believe me? Take a listen:

“01 - Underground Tour (MoWS)

This is a preview of a silly little album I’ve been making for the past month or so; the opening track, to be specific. I’ve been working on this album alongside the game as it’d be nice to actually release something of substance, and since even the first demo for tFRT is still a while off, I thought I’d make something quick and fun in the meantime - Also helps that it’ll force just a bit more musical improvement before the demo comes around (which I clearly need haha).

About the track itself… It’s a slight arrangement of the menu music from said game, I’ve improved it here and there and added some new bits too. I was always going to pick one track that would end up in the first demo to arrange here, it was between this and the B route opening, but as much as I’m more proud of that one, it’s a touch short and I wanted something that would make for a strong(?) first track, so Underground Tour won out in the end.

In terms of the album itself… it should come out sometime this year, it’s quite a small project and as long as I get off my ass, it should be done soonish~ It’ll be six tracks long by the way, not very long, but not embarrassingly short - A nice middleground for the first meaningful release. Also, the cover is pretty strange isn’t it? I spent quite a while trying for a style I like, and I’m pretty happy with how it came out, might touch it up a bit later though.”

That copy paste of the description described most of it… Here’s the cover without YouTube compressing the Hell out of it:

I wonder who that is on the cover? Actually, I don’t, I already know, obviously :P

So yeah, in terms of stuff the description doesn’t touch on: There’ll be a booklet with a story (because of course it has a story) and comments for each of the tracks, kind of like what’ll be in the music room of games and the like~ Also, it’ll have two bonus tracks that aren’t counted as part of the six main ones, they’re old and suck significantly more than my usual output, but I’ve never released clean versions of them (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).

I initially planned for this thing to get released *today,* but the almost three weeks(!) of extra heatwaves prevented that, although I have taken the delay to make it a bit bigger and nicer; so it was probably overall a good thing. Anyway, it’s very much made as an anniversary piece, as even though no one other than me cares yet, I think anything's first anniversary should be considered even just a little important…

Also, it’ll be free, obviously - I’ll put it on YouTube as well as Itch (which is where the booklet and such will be found). I hope it *does* come out before the end of the year, that’d be nice (^^;

That’s that I suppose~ Thanks to all the people who’ve ever even just acknowledged Toparo’s existence! I know nobody *actually* cares about it yet, but every little thing still helps my drive to keep going and make my own creation for the world to enjoy! When I said in the first SoD that I’d ideally be working on Toparo til’ I drop dead, I meant it!

I hope you have a nice day, and I hope that your own endeavours are doing great, see you again some day!