Greetings, fellow romance lovers! ❤️ | Devlog #2
Devlogs scare me.
No, seriously, they terrify me. I'm normally an anxious, self-conscious mess so I overthink every single word I put out for you to see and it took me almost 4 hours to write this. Ridiculous, isn't it? That is why you get so little information on what we're doing. But I will try to do better, so please be patient with me.
For those of you interested just in a summary:
Release date has been set to 29. October 2026.
One reason is so we can apply to 2 different autumn Steam festivals plus October's Steam Next Fest.
The other is that romance scenes ended up longer than expected due to branching so the word count went up to 150k total.
As a bonus, Katarina finally gets the time to add the sprites for the Main Character she always wanted.
There will be a feminine and a masculine sprite for the MC, but they won't be further customizable as we want to add the MC in CGs with the romances. The game will now contain more romance scenes + more CGs in general. Final number still pending.
In September, we'll do a release of the Extended Demo, which will double the amount of words in the demo, add the MCs, update the CGs and, hopefully, make you even more excited for the release.
On social media, we'll be posting little snippets about the character's backgrounds, so if you're interested you can follow us on Instagram, Bluesky or Tumblr.
For those of you sticking utill the end, read on.
First off, let me address one of the burning questions you may have: what's up with the release date being set for 29. October? Haven't you said the game is going to be out in Q4 2026?
Well, yes, I did, I admit it. To properly explain, I'll go a little further back, if you don't mind.
When we first made the Itch.io page we originally announced the release for Q3 2026. But when we tried making the Steamworks account & Steam page to start applying for Steam festivals, we got tied up in a bureaucratic mess that took 2 months to unravel and exhausted all our energy. Because this included me personally running around to talk to people and hours spent on calls that went nowhere, I fell behind on writing and programming.
So when we finally managed to publish the Steam page, we moved the release date to Q4 2026. Internally, we set the 27th August as a release date. At that point, due to the delay, we've missed all the deadlines for applying for relevant Steam festivals for the spring / summer as well as June's Steam Next Fest. This hit us hard, but delaying the game just for October's Steam Next Fest didn't seem fair so we left it as it is.
Fast forward to beginning of June.
First, we learn there are two festivals in the autumn which we can apply to before October's Steam Next Fest and second, I figure out the dedicated romance scenes are going to be way longer than planned. We're unwilling to compromise on the content and number of romances scenes so we figure out the release is going to have to be at least delayed to ~25. September. That is only a month before the Next Fest, so after a lot of debate, discussions and going back and forth, we decide to push the release to 29. October.
On the bright side, this means we have some extra development time!
As mentioned, Katarina has wanted to add sprites for the MC since the very beginning, but since we were going for a shorter development time, there wasn't really time to add them properly. She had so many ideas for CGs that she had to disregard as they required a MC in the picture, at least in part. Now she can make as many of them as she wants until October.
Since we're mostly adding a MC for the CGs, they won't unfortunately be customizable beyond choosing a masculine or feminine sprite. Sorry.
From my side, that extra month means I'll be able to add some things I've cut before from the outline and I'm really excited about it.
To show off everything new, there will be an Extended Demo release is September, which will include more words, CGs and MC sprites, plus more content with Terry, so you can get to know them a little bit better, too. ;)
Writing in general is progressing well and both Katsumi's and Ace's first proper romance scenes are done, even if they've ended up longer than planned. Ace's scene includes you feeding them sweet, sweet mortal blood (what's the point of a vampire if some blood play isn't involved, am I right?) and some intimate time after, though how far you go is left entirely up to your choice. In Katsumi's scene, there is magic, confiding tragic backstories in one another and a tentative trust forming between the two of you.
Finally, I apologize for not updating the current demo with the grammar fixes you've pointed out. I was waiting to finish adding in the full controller support and some accessibility fixes. Expect the fixed demo out in a week or so, when I finish coding in the other features.
We fixed a grammar oversight in the trailer - I'm choosing to believe no one pointed it out because no one noticed it either.
Thank you for your patience and understanding,
Aleksandra & Katarina!
You're a witch who has just been evicted. Your only option for tonight? A haunted house full of fellow supernaturals.
