December 2021 Monthly Update (Patreon)

Hi all, and welcome to December.

It's been unusually dry here in Colorado, so I'm crossing my fingers for some snow soon. I don't ski or snowboard, but the aesthetic is nice at least. The snowy mountains and forests that I grew up around were a big influence on Heart of the Woods, and even Highway Blossoms at times. On the plus side, it's nice to go outside without it being below freezing. I'm sure the HotW characters could relate there, too.

Speaking of Heart of the Woods, we're hoping that we'll be able to release the Playstation and Xbox versions of the game this month. They were submitted to QA for approval and checks several weeks ago, so at this point we're just waiting for them to give the go-ahead. If it doesn't happen this month, then it should be next month at the latest (knock on wood).

In the meantime, we've continued to work on Please Be Happy and Lock & Key. Over the past few days, I've written more words for the PBH script than I've ever written in a similar timeframe. Hopefully this will be the last or second-to-last update where I'm still working on that. Adi finished up the rest of the character sprites recently - the main three characters were designed and illustrated by Kobuta, whereas adi did the sprites and designs for the side characters, with Theo assisting on a couple of the designs.

Content-wise, the Lock & Key demo is pretty much complete, but everything still needs to be programmed and implemented in-engine. Real-life circumstances for some people have necessitated delaying that from our previous estimates, but we'll be starting on it as soon as possible. I probably won't mention it again until we have something new to report.

We had some more merchandise launch recently, this time with one of my favorite artists in the world: Clivenzu. There's a new keychain and t-shirt designed by her featuring Melanie, as well as a limited reprint of adi's Ridere. artbook. At the time of writing this, there are only 11 copies left, so don't miss out if you're interested in picking up a copy! While we may do another reprint in the future, it won't be for a while, if ever. We'll start sending out some orders next week, although we still need to get the non-bundle Melanie keychains printed, so if you ordered one of those, it'll be a few weeks before we can mail them out.

There are also still copies of the Highway Blossoms "Dusk" vinyl record release available, which you can grab from our partners at Very OK Vinyl. Unlike the artbook, there aren't any plans to reprint these, so once they're gone, they're gone.

If all goes according to plan, we'll have one more new merch launch this year. We know we've been putting out a ton of items this year, so we really appreciate everyone who's been buying stuff and supporting us. Next year, we're probably going to look into retiring some of our older designs in order to clean up the shop a little bit, but we might bring them back in the future for special occasions. We're also looking into doing a second run of some of our seasonal items from 2019/2020, so stay tuned for that 👀

Not to tease too much, because I know we say this frequently, but there's still a lot of really cool, currently unannounced stuff in the works too. If all goes well, we should be announcing at least one of those things later this month. All I'm saying is that 2022 is shaping up to be our biggest year yet, in a lot of ways.

That's it for this update, though. I'm trying to finish another scene or two tonight, so that I can binge the next few days on Final Fantasy XIV guilt-free. If anyone's on the Crystal DC, then maybe I'll see you around Eorzea! Good luck, fellow Warriors of Light, and thank you to everyone for your continued support. We wish you all a safe and happy holiday season!