March 2021 Update (Patreon)

Hey y'all,

February was certainly an up and down month for us. Despite the hard parts, we've made some pretty good progress.

A lot of that has been Samayuuni progress. We've been working on it a little bit as a change of pace from focusing so heavily on Please Be Happy, like the full-body art shown in last month's post. I also mentioned that we'd be doing an internal test soon using those, and I'm pleased to say that came out well.

There's a quick preview above. The GUI is a placeholder right now, and the text hasn't been edited, since it was just for testing purposes. While the character art used is complete and final, it wasn't originally intended to be used in-game. However, since the actual sprites haven't been drawn yet, we went ahead and used the full-bodies for now. The directing was done by Helia, who's going to be joining us as an additional programmer for the game. Helia did most of the directing for First Snow, so you might already be familiar with her work there. As always, it's so nice to see our characters on-screen and in-engine for the first time ;-;

Bonus Curio screenshot

Right now, I'm taking some time to write the common route for Summer, before getting back to PBH stuff. If all goes well, we'd like to release a demo later this year! That remains to be seen, though. Unsurprisingly, Samayuuni won't be coming out in 2021 like we'd initially hoped (and said in the game title reveal orz) but we're shooting for summer of next year instead.

Also, if you missed it, make sure you check out the Izzy illustration that adi and minute did for aro week! Izzy will be our first canon aromantic character, meaning that her route in Samayuuni doesn't have an ending where she and Summer end up in a relationship. We know this might be disappointing to some, but we realized while outlining that this was what made the most sense for her character, and wanted to stay true to that.

After I finish the Summer common route, I'll be switching back to working on PBH. adi's been working hard on that as always, pumping out a crazy number of backgrounds and CG's for the game. Every time I work on the game, I wish I could visit Wellington for real. Hopefully someday…! Miho's been one of the more difficult protagonists for me to write, mostly because she's something of a blank slate at the start. Even though she's been alive for quite a long time, she doesn't have much worldly experience or knowledge of society, so she views the world differently than most people do. It makes for some pretty fun situations, but I also worry about some of the humor becoming a little too one-note. Still, it's been a nice challenge to undergo! I'll be very curious to see what you think of the writing once it's out.

Quick preview of Aspen's first CG: https://youtu.be/v5pNXVTAa8k

Last but not least, the Heart of the Woods port is finally progressing well! The game is playable on console from start to finish at this point, and we're just working on polishing and a couple bugs. At this point, we're hoping for a late April release, with keys going out to Kickstarter backers a few weeks earlier. We'll keep you posted.

With that, I think I've covered all the major happenings from the last month. See you again in a couple weeks!