March 2021 Mid-Month Update (Patreon)

Hello!

I'm a day late on this post so I can't make any "ides of March" jokes. That's probably for the best.

March has been a busy and productive month for us! And it's only halfway over.

For the past few weeks, I've been working on the Samayuuni common route. It turned out to be about 10 scenes long, and I'm pretty happy with it so far! There's just one or two more scenes left to go on it. We brought on a new editor to help us with Summer, specifically in regards to story development and worldbuilding. That person is Ari North, who's the creator of the webcomic "Almost Human." She's already given us some great feedback, and I know the game will be a lot stronger for her contributions!

(WIP of high school age cast by minute)

Meanwhile, work on Please Be Happy is still going strong, too! Theo's made a lot of progress on the programming this month, both for Chapter 1 and for the game in general. We're trying to be extra tidy with organization and with the code this time around, to save ourselves a lot of headache in the future when doing ports and updates. It's definitely… a lesson that we learned the hard way from Heart of the Woods.

We've started posting Screenshot Saturdays on Twitter, mostly featuring PBH. Although there's still a lot of game left to be written and art to be drawn, the overall presentation for the game is pretty much done. Our games have been becoming progressively more beautiful thanks to adi.

Finally, the last few scenes for the Lock and Key script are in-progress! Rachel's been keeping up a good pace, and the whole thing should be ready for editing in the next few months. We haven't started working on the game itself yet, although a few things like the interface and main character sprites are already complete! The soundtrack will once again be by Sarah Mancuso, who has done fantastic music on all of our games so far.

This month has been full of updates for our Patreon-exclusive stories, too. Chapter 5 of "Honorine's Run" is now available to read, and it's the best chapter yet. Plus, there's a new chapter of Cherry's Story to read!

The last two dates of the original Celeste Academy series are now up to read, too. The first one features a stroll around town with Fauna, and the second date is all about Agatha and her rocketry club. Since the last poll ended in a tie, we decided to write out both dates! There's one final poll coming up, in which you'll vote for who Carida's true love is! Lexa, Lulina, Fauna, and Agatha are all lovely ladies, and I'm very eager to see who it ends up being.

Celeste Academy was our very first Patreon-only story, and one of our very first Patreon posts in general. Although it had a bit of a rocky start, it's grown up into something near and dear to our hearts. As the end of a story or project you've been working on draws near, there's always a bittersweet feeling. This won't be the end of Celeste Academy, though - we have a few cool plans for what we want to do after it's over. We also started our "Celestaria Records" universe last year, for other stories set in the same world as Celeste Academy, like Cherry's Story. I'm pretty confident in saying you'll see more of Carida in the future, just maybe not as a protagonist.

To wrap things up, Kealey's birthday was last week, so I'd like to share the illustration that adi drew for her.

Very soon, she'll be releasing an artbook version featuring all of the Élan character birthday art that she's done! It'll include a couple very nice bonuses, too. We're only printing a few dozen copies, which means that it'll be super limited edition. If you're interested in reserving a copy, send us a message here on Patreon~ They'll be $7 plus shipping each.

That's all for now. Thanks for your support!