Howdy Fiendish Friends,

First off, apologies for this general post being attached to The Space Between Stars -- this is largely unrelated to TSBS, but itch has a bad habit of hiding logs that aren't attached to a singular project. We picked TSBS as it's our most recent game... and if you haven't played it yet, you should! Anyway, on to the devlog:

We've been pretty quiet the past few weeks, so wanted to provide y'all with an update addressing the ongoing development of a few of our games, along with our plans as we progress into the new year. Yes, 2025 is sneaking up much quicker than we anticipated!

To kick things off, you may have noticed that we have not released The Witch of the Wake (TWotW); a medium-length horror visual novel which we intended to develop for the 2024 Spooktober VN Jam. The past month-and-a-half has been extremely taxing, with issues such as professional and creative burnout, mental health blocks, workplace training, and physical illness. One of our developers even ended up housing a family that lost their home in one of the California fires, making progress on TWotW all the more taxing.

We are continuing development on TWotW, with a release anticipated before the end of the year... hopefully sooner. Most of the visual assets are already completed so we are not planning to abandon it by any means, and you can expect it to be our next release before we progress with our other projects. In the meantime we encourage you to take a first look at the itch page (password: wakewitch), and wishlist the game on Steam.

And speaking of other projects... we know a lot of you are excitedly waiting for word on Occult Mingle! This project was originally supposed to be completed mid-2024, but as with TWotW, progress has been delayed for a multitude of reasons. We're now pushing development into early 2025, when we hope to finally release a demo and run a Kickstarter to fund full voice acting. Please follow the Kickstarter pre-launch page if you haven't already... we need to generate enough hype to make sure our plans succeed, and we can't do that without your help!

Our final announcement as we move into the end of the year, is our hopeful plan to host a short VN scriptwriting contest in December. The contest will include a small cash prize, with the winning entry being developed into a small-scale visual novel, likely for the Winter VN Jam. We don't have too many details to share about this just yet, but keep your eyes open for further word!

Remnants of Dawn has also been postponed (obviously), until the above has all been completed. Being a larger-scale game with a price tag attached, we are still trying to generate players, fans, and followers through appropriate marketing and donationware. It's been... tough. Until our studio starts generating enough income to be self-sustaining (which we are still hopeful for!), production will continue to be slow all around. We're deeply sorry, and can assure you we are doing our very best to make our dreams --and games -- come true!

Thank you for sticking with us through all of this. Right now, the best ways to support us are by subscribing to our Patreon, donating on our game pages (such as our most recent game The Space Between Stars -- which comes with a fun donation perk), and purchasing the Queer Halloween Stories Bundle which contains three of our games. Please also continue to rate and comment on our games, and spread the word and the love to folks you think would enjoy our media.

Until next time... Stay Fiendish!