December 2022 Monthly Update + Upcoming Patreon Changes (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

2022 is almost at an end, and like lots of other people, I'm a little stunned by how fast this year has gone by. This has easily been our busiest year to date, and 2023 doesn't look like it's gonna be any slower. It's been about a week and a half since we released Please Be Happy, but we're already looking ahead to the future.

Obviously, releasing PBH is the biggest news we've had in a while. It's our first full game since Heart of the Woods came out in early 2019, so approaching four years. It's been a long, long development cycle, and now that it's over, it's taking some getting used to NOT working on Please Be Happy. That doesn't mean we're totally done with it, though. There'll be a proper post-mortem for the game in the coming weeks, and we intend to keep doing short stories and illustrations for PBH on here too. Thanks to everyone who's purchased and supported the game so far. We've loved reading everyone's reactions to the game and are so glad that you all seem to love Miho and the rest as much as we do. We truly appreciate the Steam reviews and everything too - we rely a lot on word of mouth, so sharing the game really does help us a lot.

Our next big project is going to be the solarpunk game Summer at the Edge of the Universe. We're planning to do a proper reintroduction to that game sometime towards the middle of next year. It's changed a little bit in between when we announced it back in 2020 and when we're finally going to be properly starting on it now, but not by much. When we first revealed it, we had been planning to work on it alongside PBH. However, that ended up being impossible to balance, so we ended up just putting it on pause until PBH was done. Now, we're really stoked to be getting back to it. Among other things, Samayuuni has my favorite OST of any game of ours. Here's one of my favorite songs from it so far: Orbital Resonance.

Like usual, we plan to do an end of the year wrap-up towards the end of December, where we'll be talking a bit more about our future plans. Although Samayuuni won't be coming out until 2024 at the earliest, if all goes well, we'll still have at least one or two other releases happening in 2023.

Heading into next year, we're also going to be making some changes to our Patreon. For one thing, we're going to be converting our Patreon page from an 18+ page to an all-ages page. This means taking down any NSFW posts we have in our archive. As you've probably seen, it's been a long, long time since we've posted any NSFW content on here anyway. Publishing deals with console platform holders as well as some of the requirements from a few of the voice actors we work with have led to us moving away from that content. It's why Denpasoft is the main place to get our 18+ patches now too.

If you'd like to save a copy of that content, please do so in the next couple weeks, as we'll be making the swap at the start of next year. We've also uploaded an archive of our 18+ Patreon content to our itch.io. This link (update: link has been removed) will allow you to download a free copy of the archive. Please don't share it with non-patrons. It'll also be deactivated at the start of next year, so don't wait too long to use it if you plan to. As part of our merger with Studio Coattails, they'll be shutting down their Patreon at the end of the year. They'll also be posting an archive of some of their Patreon material that will be available to their Patrons, so keep an eye out if you pledge to them too. We'll be periodically reposting some of the material from their Patreon on ours over time.

Additionally, we're thinking of adding back in some higher tiers on Patreon, such as one for a monthly merch club or a limited tier to decide the topic for a monthly illustration, stuff like that. We rely a lot on the support we receive here, and are definitely open to any ideas or requests for what kind of monthly rewards you might like to see. Our current tiers, AKA the $2 and $5 tiers, will still receive all the same content you already do, with one exception: we're going to be removing the "name in credits" reward from all tiers. Unfortunately, from a design and accounting perspective, it's just something we've decided is better to remove. All active patrons at the time of PBH's release are in the credits for that game, so this change will only apply to our future releases. Any new tiers that we do add will include new perks, rather than shifting any rewards from the existing tiers. We've renovated our Patreon a couple times before, so we appreciate your sticking with us through another one.

With that, I think we've covered everything. Please look forward to our end of the year post and upcoming games. Stay safe, stay warm, and have a happy holiday season~