Monthly Update - November 2019 (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

This has been a super busy month for us! Most of it has been devoted to the Kickstarter, of course. That just concluded yesterday, and we managed to raise a whopping 32k! Considering we were worried about even hitting our base goal when we launched, raising almost double our target amount has been pretty crazy. Every time we'd pass a new thousand dollar threshold there'd be a little moment of celebration and shock in our dev chat. While we did fall a bit short of the physical Switch stretch goal, we're going to be looking into other options to make that happen, including possibly partnering with a third party. Right now it's all just ideas, and nothing concrete, but we'll keep you posted on that stuff, of course. If you missed out on the Kickstarter but want to grab some of the merch from it, there'll be a second round of availability for all of the items on Backerkit in a couple weeks. Anyone can join the Backerkit, even if you weren't part of the campaign. If you've got any questions about the Kickstarter, Backerkit, or anything else, do feel free to hit us up. 

Currently, voice acting for the game is maybe 40% completed, and we'll be finishing up the rest of it over this month and the next. Porting of the game to Switch should be starting this week actually. So far, so good on that front.

Also, as you've probably already read, we totally reorganized our Patreon tiers on here! We've moved all of our rewards down to the $5 tier, but we'll be putting out fewer posts that aren't directly related to the games we're working on. This is for our own peace of mind as well as for our schedules. You might have seen on our newly rewritten Patreon page, but we're working on four different projects right now. They're each going at different speeds, but we've got a lot in the pipeline right now. In fact, very very soon we'll be making a post here on Patreon that gives a liiiiittle glimpse at each of the four, so please look forward to that.

Finally, we announced the Highway Blossoms: Next Exit DLC! This is the first new HB content that we've written since the game's original release. This DLC isn't really a sequel, but more of a side story that's set not long after the main game. It helps flesh out the characters a lot, but takes place over the course of just a couple days. We'll be working with two new artists for the CG's for this DLC: moekki and kamifish, whom you might know from Katawa Shoujo as Shizune and Rin's primary artists, respectively. The original voice cast will be returning, and we'll also be getting a new track each from Jake Abernathie, Smoke Thief, and Able Kirby, the three main composers. Sarah Mancuso, our resident composer, will also be contributing a track, although she didn't work on the original game. The story revolves around Amber and Marina attending an alien-themed convention in Las Vegas, and some of the unspoken tensions in their relationship… It also features the return of my favorite character from Highway Blossoms: Cassi, the candy shop girl. That's the most exciting part of the DLC for me.

Speaking of, I'm going to wrap this up here and get back to writing for the HB DLC right now. It's a good way to distract myself from the disappointment of failing to get tickets to the My Chemical Romance reunion show 😔 Syon and I are trying to get a rough draft of the script done from start to finish in November, in a modified NaNoWriMo challenge for ourselves. The deadline for my stuff is extra tight because I'm going out of the country on the 19th, so I'm aiming to be done with my half by then. It's been a bit of a challenge to get back into the mindset of writing Amber and Marina, since it's been almost 4 years since the last time I wrote them. In the years since then I've changed a lot, and I understand the characters differently than I did before. So it's different, but it's fun. Still, wish me luck with maintaining the NaNo pace.

Like I said, that future projects post should be going up in just a little bit, so I look forward to hearing your thoughts on those. Pls come tell us how excited you are in Discord.  We hope you have a great November!

Best,

Josh