Hi everyone!!

Gosh, these devlogs always creep up on me. When they come up, I always feel like I haven’t done much, but then when I go back to see what the last update is, I’m like omg that seems like so long ago. Time is weird, haha

Progress on the demo has been a bit slower (I feel like I always say that though lmao), mainly because I’ve had to travel for conferences and submissions and things recently. But we are wrapping up development!! I feel like there’s not much left, in all honesty, which is a bit crazy, so let’s see where the demo is at! 

Supporter Shout-Outs

1. We reached 700 followers on Twitter, ah D: I still remember when I was at like 80 followers, so idk it’s always strange for me to look back and reflect on these things when we hit milestones. Thank you, always for anyone who follows progress and enjoys the game <3

2. We got a couple of fun Tumblr asks recently about the LIs singing voices and love languages! Feel free to check them out here, and our ask box is always open to anyone who wants to leave a message for us or the LIs :)

Announcements

We’ve officially revealed our entire voice cast for Alaris on Twitter! If you’d like to hear all of them, feel free to head on over. We’ve also been uploading them to Tumblr for those who don’t have Twitter with a bit more detail behind each VA and why we chose them, so it’s a bit more personal :’)

It’s also #mermay so I drew up Etza as a mermaid randomly HAHA. I’ve always loved #mermay and recently, I’ve been trying Procreate out since I usually use Paint Tool Sai. I was pretty happy with how it came out, though I’m still getting used to the brushes and tools. Here they are if you happened to miss it on Twitter:

Totes Studio P also gifted us a chibi art in honor of a recent giveaway they did! We let them choose an LI to draw a chibi of, and they ended up choosing Fenir. This is how it turned out, and we are so happy with how adorable he is :’) Please also consider checking out the studio - they have an amazing VN in the works called Her Choice and it’s beautiful! 

Demo Updates

So I’ve still been working on coding the game, but rather than coding the script, I’ve been focused on coding the game features I’ve wanted to implement into the game. I coded some animation overlays that will hopefully be cool to see for dragon energy and stuff, and I started coding up “Character Profiles.”

Basically, for these Character Profiles, players will get to replay certain dates with the LIs that you’ve unlocked, listen to some of the voiced lines we have, and look at CGs for the LIs. Hopefully, this helps in terms of maybe playing specific dates without having to go through all these different save files and reloading and stuff, so people can play the good parts without too much extra work! You’ll also get to hear the voiced samples for the characters as provided by our talented VAs :’)

Current state of the Character Profile pages, which will be accessible through the main menu! Ignore Fenir in the Kayn page as that’s just a placeholder and #nospoilers lol

So you can see that 1-8 is where you can listen to the different lines, on the right is the CGs to look at, and the four dates are listed in the bottom half. Also, I guess sneak peek at the free time dates that will be available hehe~

So... since we are wrapping up development, I have a question for you all and the people who actually read these devlogs. Is there anyone who would be interested in playtesting? Usually, I do this myself, but because this demo is so much bigger than previous versions of the game, I don’t know if I’ll be able to catch everything realistically. 

I want to keep the amount of playtesters small, so I’m not trying to promote this too hard, but if you would be interested in early access to the game, helping me out, please consider it! It would be very simple - just making sure routes and choices work and there’s no bugs. You don’t have to vigorously go through to catch typos and grammar mistakes (though if you do, that would be appreciated). It won’t be paid, so this would be out of the kindness of you heart, but if you are available to playtest the game near the end of this month... think about it :’) 

I’ll most likely pick my playtesters in two weeks to give them enough time to go through the game before release, so apply as soon as you are able to if you’re interested! Application form here. 

Sneak peek:

Up next is coding game features, which I think I actually am going to wrap up by next devlog and going through the script for final revisions! I’m a bit intimidated since the script is like 70k words lmao, but it’s gotta get done >:( I’m hoping to revisit chapters 1 and 2 to revamp some of the writing a good bit! 

I’d say game development is maybe at like 80%-85%? We have some exciting things in development, so I’m hoping this next month or so will really rev up in terms of marketing and concrete updates/ previews of the game! 

Developer Ramblings

This is random, but I recently stumbled upon an IndieOtome subreddit (I think that’s what it’s called), and it was SO VALIDATING to go through. A bunch of indie amare game developers spoke in it and talked about imposter syndrome and just general struggles with being an indie developer, especially a solo one. Basically all of it was stuff I related to, and while it’s kinda small and tangential, it made me really glad that it wasn’t just me who experienced these kinds of struggles and thoughts.

Anyways, that’s all for this update! Look forward to the next one :’) I think the next one will be quite exciting hehe <3