November Monthly Update (Patreon)

Greetings and salutations,

Spooky season is behind us and things are starting to get cold, at least here in the northern hemisphere. It was around this time 4 years ago that work started in earnest on Heart of the Woods, and it was definitely inspired by the changing seasons and snowfall in the part of the country where I live. This time around, Please Be Happy is of course my main focus, and we often refer to that as our "autumn" game aesthetically. Heart of the Woods is our wintry one of course, and Highway Blossoms is more of a springtime game. You'll never guess which of our upcoming titles feels the most summery.

Just because Halloween is over doesn't mean that the celebration has to stop. That's why we're excited to say that the-spinoff-formerly-known-as-Taranormal has been reuploaded to itch.io under its new name (and the canonical name of Tara's new show), I Told You So! ITYS is totally free, and includes a few "dubiously canon" stories written by Rachel and with art by minute. It also has new graphics from adi and some 8-bit remixes of a couple tracks by Sarah. In other words, it's pretty cute. This new version includes the old "Trick or Truth" episode from the original 2018 release (which is fully voiced!) as well as a couple new stories.

We haven't talked about this publicly before, but the reason we took the game down several months ago was to avoid a trademark conflict over the name "Taranormal" itself. We pretty quickly decided it wasn't worth getting into a lengthy legal battle, so we just ended up taking down the game and shirt. While discussing what to do, we decided that it would make sense to just rebrand entirely, since with Maddie's departure and Morgan's joining, it's not really the same show anymore.

Along with the reupload, we also just released a bunch of new merch designs by milkgrrl! We have a variety of new Heart of the Woods shirts, as well as tote bags for both HotW and Highway Blossoms! We've also reuploaded MGCoco's iconic official ITYS shirt design, now featuring the new name. Check out our webstore to see all the new designs!

Lastly, in case you missed it, we've had a new addition to the Lock and Key party. Ludo, aka Theesnakebitch, will be providing some terrifying monster designs for our upcoming magical girl game. We posted their first sketches for the game on Twitter a few days ago, check 'em out here (but CW for body horror).

That's everything new that we have to recap today. We're gonna be taking the upcoming week off, aside from a few scheduled PR posts, but we'll be starting off the week after that with the first chapter of Stella's new light novel that she's been writing, and we also have a look at the LAK logo design by adi coming up.

We wish you all a happy November, and we'll talk to you again soon!

PS: Check out these adorable chibis of the PBH girls that adi got commissioned, drawn by niccopon! They're just for fun, not for use in the game itself, but they're too cute not to share.