yes! The latest update went to patrons last Friday and should be up on this page in a month or so. We’ll announce the specific date in a couple of weeks!
Yes we are okay and alive! Thank you for thinking of us. 💕
We’ve spent the last several years caught in a vortex of client work on other indie games to stay afloat and build our game development experience and relationships— coming up on this holiday season we’ve had an early break on QA work, which is financially somewhat concerning… but has left an open space to devote time and energy to finally putting out Elsie’s chapter 2 content, then to spend NaNoWriMo on Nikolai, then Vivietta and Deka.
I’m hoping someday we can make enough from our original work to be able to devote time more regularly with more stability, but in the meantime at least one update is coming publicly at the end of November, and others will see progress! We’ll aim to make devlogs more frequently again in the future so you can hear more of what is happening with it.
Thank you for letting us know about this! Your investigation did properly identify the source of the problem: Because Deka doesn’t speak verbally, no character was defined ‘d’ for just ‘deka’, and instead there are two; ‘dw’ for ‘deka writing’ and ‘dt’ for ‘deka typewriter’. So, when we went to track the character in the romance/friend list, it was too easy to pick the wrong one.
Thanks to your comment, the issue is fixed internally as of today! It didn’t make it into the most recent Patreon build (from last Friday, 10/27), but will be in the public release of Elsie’s chapter 2 content- which should be coming out around the end of November.
It will! Elsie’s second date was released on Patreon last Friday, so should be publicly available around the end of November. There isn’t much new in it for Cailean- but Tremaine has a full sprite with expressions, which makes a big difference to the experience of every scene he’s in. Feel threatened by an overprotective elder brother figure… now in HD color ✨
I’m also excited to hear it’s made such an impact for you! If you’re ever looking for more content/info or feel like you’d like to chat with other people who are thinking about it A Lot, Discord is our most active community— and I know there’s at least one 24/7 Cailean Treasurer there who might enjoy some additional camaraderie against the red-feathered flock. 🐦
It takes a while but we try to eventually respond at least once to each of the comments here! Reading such immense love and support for the game (and so many interesting and thoughtful reactions!) is what really inspires us to keep going and working to figure out how to rearrange our lives to make space for this large project.
Even if we release updates regularly it might take at least until I’m old and grey….! But, it will be worth it to get to share how the story unfolds— with everyone who has waited, and everyone who has yet to play. 🙂
After Elsie, Nikolai comes next! His chapter 2 content is already partially written, so we should be able to put some previews of it on Patreon soon.
When it comes out I hope you will be able to rest easily, knowing for certain that any and all of his continued toxicity is acknowledged and intentional 😌✨
Yes, the game is still being made and everyone is doing okay c: Still juggling it between contract work and life obligations, but we’ve made significant progress over the last two or three months.
Thank you so much for vouching for us! I know it’s disappointing for everyone that things have been silent for so long. I promise, it won’t be forever!
Oh dear- I saw that the merch link had broken when we updated the website, but I had no idea the discord link was also having issues. When I click it it takes me to the server, and it seems to be listed as an active invite. What do you see? The discord server is still active and the location we check most frequently.
I’m really glad you consider our work to be a great project, and although there has been a long break we plan to soon have more content for you to play on your new laptop. 🙂
Haha—I can relate some, sometimes it really is just nice to find a story where the writers actually know the relationships they’re writing aren’t healthy.
There are a few in-world options to explain this. Although a stereotype isn't true generally, there can still be individuals who fit it the same way someone of another group could, who are then held up to justify the perception. Systemic oppression can also drive some to the stereotypical actions, raising a statistic. Someone could also lean into the perception if it bonds them with others or seems beneficial in another way; or, regular internalized prejudice. Or any combination of these.
Yes, this is how it is meant to be interpreted! Some players don't read it this way, and for the people who are unfamiliar with how those perceptions spread, they may have to figure it out over a longer period of time—that’s ok too. For the people who are anxious from having been burned by poor handling of the subject, I hope that we can provide information to reduce that feeling, and get more of an idea of what would assuage their doubts in-narrative.
I hope my comment above can make this feel a little better— but, if you're ever looking for more detailed content warnings or have questions about what sorts of things you would run into in a given route, we're always available to answer, especially on Discord. 💕
I’m really glad you enjoyed at least the beginning, and also that you like the characters and dynamics!
A good portion of the story is fairly heavy, especially Vivietta's content. To do justice to such serious subjects some level of despair is probably inevitable, but the goal is to balance it with moments of levity—I really prefer dark subjects and dark fantasy, but I also don't like feeling too drained in the long term. In a lot of places I'm happy with that balance, but a lot of the writing is also quite old and hasn't been reviewed recently to avoid delaying new content any further—Ren improves all the time, so we could get in a long loop of fixing everything repeatedly. 😅
I can tell you liked a lot of aspects of it, so if it does seem like the kind of story you're interested in, I would be very interested to hear if there were particular segments that felt too down for too long—but if it doesn't and the setting is too generally depressing, I'd also be interested in thoughts on what would have conveyed that to you in the content warnings.
about the edit: It makes sense to draw this connection, because in present-day America that is how we primarily associate these stereotypes and issues. However, this is actually not the intent. Kelpies are creatures from Celtic mythology, and Cailean and Tremaine are both names of Celtic origin- Sawyer mentions Cailean’s name while commenting on Tremaine’s, trying to place them (and not getting there). In older times and especially in England, these violent stereotypes were also applied to Irish immigrants, who faced some similar issues. Eating people specifically is associated with both kelpies and negative perceptions of the Irish during famine. These were all partial inspirations, although it isn't a strict parallel and is altered for the rest of the setting.
The story doesn’t and won’t prominently feature prejudice against black or black-coded people, as an intentional decision based on the fact that there is too much of that in the real world. Part of Sawyer’s dilemma is the choice between a world that judges them unfairly, and stepping into a new world free of that— that isn’t at all free of many other things.
I’ve always had some admiration for those who show up to a midsummer convention in a full fursuit. It’s bad enough in normal cosplay, I can’t imagine how bad it is inside all that fur and foam! There’s a foot of snow outside and yet I’m sweating just thinking about it. XD
I’m so glad that this game has been able to supply you with some happy gay noises ❤ I know the feeling c:
Honestly, you’re right. That would be so cool! I have some concepts for what a neutral route looks like while staying in the monster world, but we haven’t been able to add them yet to prevent the project from getting larger than it already is. Maybe someday…!
The fifth character is actually a little hard to find- you have to follow Elsie instead of Cailean, and then turn her down or you won’t get the Vivietta intro events. We still need to review that so it will probably change to become easier, but for now that will find her.
It might sound kind of stupid, but honestly I am too. We’ve never been incredible at keeping track of time, but the last few years have escaped very quickly and for the most part without us resolving the issues that were getting in the way of releasing the next update… which was fully written very soon after the last release, almost exactly three years ago.
However, our development and QA contracting business that has been taking most of our attention for that time is a little more stable now, and we’re finally getting some time back to address the blockers- so, more than a promise of progress, we actually have some progress to post about. :)
The completed game on itch will be free c: (which is why it takes us so long to make, it doesn't generate much money)
but we work with a lot of console games for our "day job, pays-the-bills" work, so after the game is complete we might consider re-releasing on console, and that version would cost money. That's very far in the future though, and I don't have a figure for it.
Thank you so much, we really appreciate it!! Elsie will be the next character to receive a content update, we just haven't had time/bandwidth to make it happen. (It exists, it's written, it's just not in the game yet)
Thank you so much for saying so!! Sometimes I look at the designs and stress over, "but are they monstrous enough?" and then the other dev has to set me back on track and tell me to stop worrying over stuff like that haha! Thank you so much for enjoying our work! Nikolai really is eye-catching; I also love looking at him, haha!
That's true! It's something we have considered, but unfortunately we don't have 3D models of our characters, which means somebody would first have to create the models.
I'm glad you liked it so much! We'd really like to come back and expand on this and make it non-linear when we have the time to devote to it, so I hope you'll check back again in the future. ❤
Thank you!! I hope you will enjoy the future content!!
I think I need a little more context on what you mean by 3D printing stuff from the game, but I'd love to hear what you're thinking! Can you tell me more? *:･ﾟ✧
Aww, thank you so much!! With only two of us, it's hard for us to keep working on it outside our regular jobs (which are also in making videogames haha) and I'm really happy and grateful that you still enjoy the old content enough that it doesn't disappoint! I hope we can make a lot of great progress in 2021. ❤
I'm so sorry we didn't notice this comment for 2 years! 😱 Thanks for playing the demo so many times, and for the compliments to the backgrounds! and Nikolai ❤
