Update 06/01/21 - Life Situations, Moving, and New Art Progress Soon

Hi, everyone!

We’re still plugging away at AVID.  Currently, Kimilyn has completed the line art of Sven’s nude and is currently working on his clothes. We’re without a colorist as we haven’t heard from Parallelpie since December. The plan right now is for Justin and me to flat color the sprites until we find a colorist, which might not happen until all sprites are done so we don’t go through similar issues again.

For the past few months, Justin and I have been working on renovating his dad’s house. The house hasn’t been updated since the ’70s, so there’s a lot that needs to be done. Not only are we painting, but we’re also replacing flooring, walls, doors, baseboards, and windows, fixing plumbing and electrical, remodeling bathrooms and the kitchen, and more.  We’re trying to get a lot of it done before we move back into the house this summer so the house is safe for our two kittens. We’re working on AVID during our breaks of working on the house.

I’m still adjusting to my new body and some issues have arisen.  To avoid getting into too many details, I’ll say that crucial medication for me keeps getting recalled, leaving me incredibly lethargic all of the time and puts me in an almost constant state of brain fog.  This makes it difficult to work on AVID and the house for long stretches because I need frequent naps and can’t think straight.  It’s actually taken me about two weeks to type this post because of that last point.  Second, I’m also having some of the same intestinal problems that led me to get checked out in Cleveland in the first place, which is worrying because of the cancer chances that could come with that.  So sometime in the near future, I’ll have to go back to Cleveland to get looked into again, and I’m sort of dreading the possibility.

I do plan to make another post for Backers with art progress images in 2 weeks, but because of the issues above, that could end up being delayed.

Our composer will be working on a new song soon, which will be one with a more serious tone.

Our Dev Discord Server is open.  You can join it by clicking here.

I know this post has been mostly about our life situation, but I wanted to make sure everyone knows the current issues we’re facing and know that we’re still working on the project.

Update 10/19/20 - Health, Family, Life Update; Artists Found and Somnium Eleven

Hi, everyone!  I did not realize how long ago we made our May 15th post.  Life has truly been insane these last few months.

Paid Job Opening!  Looking for Sprite/CG Artists

We are looking for sprite/CG artists that are willing to do our Kickstarter rewards, too.

Our otome/visual novel project is very, very loosely based off of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland book series. This project is actually split up into two visual novels, the main one is setup as an episodic release and the spin-off is a much smaller common route visual novel. Both games are commercial otome/visual novels.

Our main otome follows our female lead, Alison Sunderland, into a new world as she tries to find her way back home. The game will have nine suitors, one of them being female.

Our spin-off visual novel’s male MC is Demetrius Babbage, which will have two male suitors, male-to-female transgender suitor, and our female suitor, Alison Sunderland.

If you would like to know more about our games, you can read up on them on our Kickstarter.

First I should warn that we had an artist with us before, so most of the main cast have been designed. The other concern is because the other artist was willing to do various things with the sprites, that they may seem a little complex.

For example, our character Gwyn’s sprite had six outfits, but his main outfit was setup in the PSD file where his duster/jacket, necklace, and hat could be toggled on and off. Other characters had similar setups where items could be taken off on certain outfits. Also some had an additional hairstyle or two for their sprites.

In total we have roughly 35 characters, but only 20 of them will have multiple poses, outfits, and hairstyles.

The main game is estimated to have 72 CGs, but as it is being released episodically, these could be worked on while the game is slowly being released. We also have it setup in our GUI where readers can toggle MC’s eyes on and off, which the previous artist extended the MC’s bangs over her eyes for eyes off. This was done for both the CGs and her sprite by just adding an extra layer for the hair.

The common route visual novel is still being worked on, so we’re not sure how many CGs it’ll need, but it’ll be a lot less than the main one.

Another concern we have is that we already did a Kickstarter with the previous artist, who did not complete the rewards she was going to design. We were hoping that our next artist would be willing to complete these rewards for us: 5 Wallpapers, 7 body pillowcase designs (front and back), 6 couple 6x9 inch prints (Our MC with a suitor per illustration), and 9 Kickstarter Exclusive CGs.

I understand this is a lot to expect from someone, so we are willing to hire line artists and colorists to ease the load. If you are interested, please email me at [email protected] or respond to our social media posts with some estimation on pricing for the sprites, CGs, and Kickstarter Rewards and a link to your portfolio.

If you have any questions and/or concerns, please let me know. I would be more than happy to answer and talk them over.

5/15/20 - Health and Family Update; Looking for Artist

Hello everyone,

It seems every time I want to make an update post, something comes up that I need to see play out first.

So far Justin, his dad, and I are safe from the virus.  We’re doing everything we can to protect ourselves.  Masks, hand sanitizer, frequent hand washing, quarantining in the house since before the call to do so, the whole nine yards.

A lot has happened in a relatively short period of time.  Originally my surgery was going to be on April 8th, but at the beginning of that week our dog started to develop a few problems that needed to be investigated that instant.  After getting him to the vet, we learned that he suddenly has developed diabetes.  His diet has been fine his whole life and apparently this is just some sort of freak happenstance.  However, this sudden onset of diabetes pretty much caused him to go blind from cataracts practically overnight.  So a lot of our days are spent helping him get adjusted to his blindness.  We’re hoping to get his levels in range soon so he can have eye surgery to fix the cataracts, but we’re still unsure when/if that will be possible.

After another appointment shift, my surgery is on May 27th, so Justin and I have been cleaning and preparing the house so I can have an easier time getting around while healing.

For roughly six years, Justin’s brother, Willy, has been dealing with stage 4 cancer and the last few months have been exceptionally difficult.  Within less than a month’s time he had to go to the hospital for severe dehydration, which led to pancreatitis, which led to bacterial pneumonia.  Just three days ago, he dealt with the dehydration again along with a 102 degree fever.  This was during their hospice intake appointment and pretty much made their choice to go into hospice for them.  They’ve looked into clinical trials for practically his entire cancer battle, but because of COVID those trails have been closed.  One of the trials they had been waiting for, reopened its application services but looked over Willy’s file and said he would not survive the trial in the first place.  This has been incredibly hard on everyone.  With the two person limit per day at the hospice, everyone is forced to visit at such a slow pace that everyone might not get to see him before the end.  Justin managed to see him yesterday and I’m hoping to visit from the window (bypassing the two person rule) sometime this weekend between other people’s visits.

In between cleaning, family stuff, and my own health, Justin and I have been looking for new artist(s) for sprites, CG, and Kickstarter rewards.  A few of my friends have started to look for people that might be interested in working with us.  With everything that’s going on it’s making it really hard for us to search as much as we’d like to, but we are still searching.

If anyone knows of an artist that might be interested in working with us, please let them know to reach out to us either through Twitter, Facebook, or Kickstarter.  It would help us out greatly and we’d really appreciate it.

Update 1/13/20 - More Health and Game Update

I was hoping to update everyone sooner, but with the holidays and medical stuff, it delayed the update.

Things have been pretty busy with my medical stuff. We saw my one doctor on Nov 29th and talked over my options.  With my age and that I’m mostly healthy, we’re leaning towards a J-Pouch instead of a colostomy bag for the rest of my life.  I have two problems that could cause the J-Pouch not to work.  The original plan was to remove both the colon and rectum (more on this later).  Being able to keep the rectum would be ideal because it gives me an extra foot in length for my new system.  This leads into the next problem, my weight.  I’ve been struggling with my weight since my thyroid was removed.  It’s recommended that I lose at least 25 pounds before the surgery to have a better success rate with the pouch.  If I can’t lose enough weight, they’ll try a newer technique where two surgeons work on me at the same time, one from the front and one from the back, to try to increase the chance of the pouch working for me. Because of this, I’ve started to go to the gym pretty much every day and cut my calories down to 1,500-1,600.  Since the appointment in November I’ve lost 8.2 pounds.  I was hoping for more, but I think it’s still a good start.

I recently had a CT scan on my abdomen at Cleveland Clinic which came back fine.  I had an EGD done as well and found 100’s of polyps in my stomach.  When I heard that I got a little scared, but apparently they aren’t alarming and they’re relatively small polyps.  However, that doctor wants me to get this done every year to keep them in check. For those that have known me for a long time know of my struggles of finding a good Endocrinologist for the past 7 years.  I finally found an Endocrinologist that listens to me.  She’s done a lot of the tests that I wanted to have done.  She’s sending me to a neurologist to check on my muscle weakness and also sending me to get tested for sleep apnea, which I doubt I have, but might as well get it checked out.  She also gave me Metformin to help with my weight loss and I think it’s working really well. On Dec 19th, my doctor informed me of new medical plans he has for me.  On Feb 6th, they want to do a procedure where they take my largest polyp out of my rectum and test it for cancer again.  This is to try to save most of my rectum in my actual surgery to give me more length and control with my system.  The problem will be that my post-op appointments on Feb 5th are so early that Justin and I will need to leave on the 4th and stay two nights in a hotel up there. Because of hotel stays, gas, healthier foods, new clothes, and such relating to my medical issues, most of the gofundme money is gone.  Again, I would like to ask people to share my gofundme. I would like to thank everyone that has already shared it and for those that have donated, too.  Thank you so much!  I appreciate all of the help and understanding you all have given us during this difficult time. Oh!  I would like to ask for some music recommendations for working out to.  I use Spotify on my phone to listen to music while using the treadmill and I’m starting to get tired of the same music over and over. Okay that’s it for the health stuff.  Now onto the game development update. There hasn’t been much working going on since the last update.  My new medications had been causing issues and getting used to my new lifestyle has caused me to not be able to look at AVID for awhile.  I’m hoping this week to work on some things before school starts up on the 27th. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially with the news I’m about to give.  Due to her own health and personal family issues, Darkenmarr has parted ways with the project.  We enjoyed working with her and hate to see her go, but we understand that she needs to do what is best for her.  I hope that we see more of her work in the future because her work is so wonderful, more people should see it.

What does this mean for the development of AVID?  We already discussed that the game will be delayed because of health reasons, but now it might be delayed a little more because of potentially having to redo the sprites all over again with a new artist.   The other issue is that we spent a lot of Kickstarter money on paying Darkenmarr and promoting with her art.  Like we stated before, Justin and I don’t have an income to help us with these expenses.  Justin has talked about taking half of his inheritance from his mom to pay for a new artist.  I don’t really like this idea because AVID has always been my baby and Justin just kinda got dragged along at first, so I’m leaning towards doing Indiegogo or another Kickstarter down the road.  We’ll have to see when the time comes. At this moment, Justin and I think it would be best for us to focus on writing and working with our current team members before getting another Sprite and CG artist.  We have to make sure this new artist is okay with completing the remaining Kickstarter rewards, too. For the body pillowcases, we were never able to get them printed because of all of the doctor appointments and medical tests.  Oddly, this might be a good thing because this could allow the backers that got those rewards to get the ones from our eventual, new character artist.

Sadly, our couple print add-ons were not completed before Darkenmarr left.  There were plans to have Sven’s and Rory’s completed by Ohayocon, but because of Darkenmarr’s thumb, she wasn’t able to work on them. If anyone waiting on a physical reward still has questions or concerns, please contact me through Kickstarter’s message system.

At the moment, that is all for the update.  We’ll keep everyone posted on new developments as they come.  Once again, thank you all for being understanding through all of this.

Update 11/24/2019 - Major Health Concerns

Hey all, we’ve got some icky news.

On November 18th I had my second colonoscopy. It turned out they only took one large polyp (that seemed sorta dangerous) because they felt it was pointless to remove the 100's of smaller ones. They said they wouldn't be able to keep up with the growth of them and they can only keep me under for so long.

Due to all of this, I’ll have to have ALL of my colon removed VERY soon. My doctor sent a referral to the Cleveland Clinic for a surgeon as they do a LOT of colon removal surgeries and our area doesn't really have anyone my two doctors would suggest to go to. The other problem we run into is that I'll have to be in the hospital for 2-4 days and will have 2-3 surgeries over the course of a couple months, so I'm not sure how much work I'll be able to get done on the game during those time periods. My first appointment will be on November 29th and I’m assuming we’ll be figuring out what type of surgery and when I’ll be having it.

Truthfully, I don't know what my quality of life will be like afterwards, especially when you pair it with the aftermath I deal with from the thyroid cancer. I do not plan to let this affect things too much, but it probably will at the beginning of treatments and getting used to my new life.

On top of the colon situation, my current thyroid medication isn’t working as well as it used to since the manufacturer has changed suppliers. This is the second time this has happened with my medication. My primary care doctor recommends me going to a Functional doctor as she thinks I need to get a compound thyroid medication specially made for what my body needs and also to finally have a doctor that will look into all of the health issues I have. Problem is that my Medicaid won’t cover Functional doctors and the first appointment would be $936 (and unsure how much subsequent visits will be) which doesn’t cover lab work.

As I’m unable to work and Justin can’t because of his own medical issues along with acting as my caretaker 24/7, we have no income. A low rough estimate comes to $4,000 for the trips up to Cleveland, hotel stays, and doctor appointments between both the colon issues and the Functional doctor. The goal is to diagnose what’s causing the muscle weakness, muscle and bone pain, memory issues, worsening depression, anxiety, and fatigue along with many of the other problems that I’ve been dealing with for seven years. During this time I’ll also be applying for disability, getting treatment, and hoping that I can eventually work again at a real paying job.

I’ve been so proud of all of us for working through whatever has been put in front of us, but lack of funds are truly a roadblock in this situation. I am beyond upset that I need to setup a gofundme for this, but there’s really nothing else I can do. I do not expect any of our fans to donate, but I would very much appreciate it if people could share my gofundme link. I feel like the faster I can get all of this over with, the faster I can put all my focus back on game dev work.

Along with my own personal health issues, Darkenmarr is out of commission for a while. In September her right thumb swelled up out of nowhere. For awhile she was able to still work on Alison’s sprite, but it’s gotten to the point she can’t hold anything in her drawing hand. She had gone to urgent care for help and they claimed it was arthritis, but after talking it over with her, Justin, Darkenmarr, and myself disagree with the diagnosis (we believe it to be fractured somewhere). She’s trying to get the VA to approve her doctors to look at her thumb and it has been taking awhile to get a chance to even talk to people at the VA. There’s also some very personal family stuff going on at the same time that understandably needs more of her attention.

The plan is to contact her on December 12th to see what’s going on and the plan of action at that time. In the meantime, I think Justin and I will focus on helping the other team members with their work and dealing with our health issues while we wait for Darkenmarr’s return.

Since I last posted, though, we did manage to get a couple of backgrounds done and Justin’s been finishing up the look of some of the GUI elements. So some progress has been made at least. Hopefully, we’ll have more to update on in the next post.

Update 10/9/2019

We are happy to announce that we’ve completed Harlan’s and Sven’s new sprites’ 1st pose.  Below shows a comparison of @darkenmarr‘s first attempts and the finalized sprites.

Update 9/25/2019

We are happy to announce that we’ve completed Rory’s new sprite’s 1st pose.  Below shows a comparison of @darkenmarr‘s first attempt and the finalized sprite.

Update 9/14/2019 - Emil’s New Sprite

We are happy to announce that we’ve completed Emil’s new sprite’s 1st pose.  Below shows a comparison of @darkenmarr‘s first attempt and the finalized sprite.

Update 9/6/2019 - Gwyn’s New Sprite

We are happy to announce that we’ve completed Gwyn’s new sprite’s 1st pose.  Below shows a comparison of @darkenmarr‘s first attempt and the finalized sprite.

Health Update, Between the Lines, and Sifting Thyme

Hi, everyone!

Since we’ve started developing A Very Important Date, health problems have been an ongoing issue for a lot of different members of the team including myself.  These problems have been anywhere from temporary illnesses or surgery recovery to real terminal/lifelong problems.  But we’re all still plugging away at the game, working super hard to bring it to all of you.  

Last month, due to a series of problems I had been having, I had to have a colonoscopy.  After the procedure, I was told that I had polyps that were precancerous, later finding out that every single polyp I had removed (which was a lot) was precancerous for colon cancer.  That’s good in a way, since they were found early so they haven’t moved above the precancer stage yet.  Because of my history of thyroid cancer, my digestive specialist sent me to a genetic counselor, where I had a blood test to determine the possible genetic cause of the issues I was having.  The blood results came in a few days ago, revealing that I have a specific genetic mutation that makes the colon cancer blocking gene not exist at all, one of the symptoms of a condition called familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP).  Depending on the type of FAP I have, since they were not sure if I have classic FAP or AFAP, my chance of getting full blown colon cancer at any point in my lifetime is between 70% to 100%. Along with heightening my risk for colon cancer, this also boosts the chances of me getting a number of other cancers, mostly based in the digestive systems, but also even brain cancer.  Because of these results, I will be dealing with colonoscopies and other cancer screening procedures that are connected to FAP every few months for the rest of my life. Over the course of the next few months, I will be a little busier than normal as I try to figure out what new doctors I need and the scheduling of these new screenings.  Because of this, my side of things might slow down a little bit, but I’m going to try hard to not let it affect my work. Onto other much happier news!

The dating game Between the Lines is on Kickstarter right now!  I tried out the demo the other day and I have to say it was an interesting playthrough.  The game is LGBT+, even having a choice for the main character to be non-binary.

There are some mechanics teased in the Kickstarter page that I look forward to in the finalized game, like the phone and calendar.  For the phone, I’m hoping I can call people at any time within the gameplay sort of like you can in Mystic Messenger (though that game plays in real time, so I assume this will work differently).  The calendar will be great for someone like me, too, because I have trouble remembering who will be where on what days or important meeting times. There were a few points in the demo where I couldn’t stop laughing, especially when the fourth wall was broken.  From my playthrough this occurred with the character John, where at times his sprite would revert to a sketched version and the choices for talking to him would reference the fact this was all a game.  I don’t expect this in the finalized game, of course, but I thought it was a nice touch for a demo.  If it were kept in the finalized game, however, I could see it lead to a broken ending, à la Doki Doki Literature Club, only funnier.  If you play the demo, I also encourage you to visit the zoo, because there’s a giraffe. Please check out this game and back it if you can!  If you can’t spreading the word about them will help, too! Along with Between the Lines, another developer that we’ve talked about before, Nochi Games, has just released their demo of Sifting Thyme on Google Play! Check it out here.  

Starting this week we will be slowly posting our finalized sprites on our various social media so everyone can start seeing the new versions.  Once they are all released for everyone’s view, we will update our banners and promo materials with them accordingly.  It’s a day we’ve been waiting for for a long time.  See you all soon!

7/10/2019

Hello all!  This was supposed to be posted on Monday, but Justin and I had to take our dog to the vet for ear and skin issues along with other doctor’s appointments.

It’s Lowell’s turn today!  Here’s the flat-colored variants of his main pose, with his different outfits and emotions.

Stay tune for more updates in the future! 

Update 6/3/2019

Hello all!

It’s Julianna’s turn today!  Here’s the flat-colored variants of her main pose, with her different outfits and emotions.

We’ll post another character on Monday, so be on the lookout!

Update 6/29/2019

Hello all!

It’s Connor’s turn today!  Here’s the flat-colored variants of his main pose, with his different outfits and emotions.

 We’ll post another character on Wednesday, so be on the lookout!

Update 6/27/2019

Hello all!

It’s Sven’s turn today!  Here’s the flat-colored variants of his main pose, with his different outfits and emotions.

We’ll post another character this weekend, so be on the lookout!

Update 6/23/2019

Hi, everyone! Today we’re going to show off the flat-colored variants of Harlan’s main pose, with his different outfits and emotions.

Check back on Wednesday when we post another character!

Update 6/19/19

Hi, everyone! It’s been a while since an update, but we’ve made a lot of progress on A Very Important Date!  

Things have settled down some in our personal lives and been working really hard on the game and Kickstarter rewards.  @darkenmarr​ has finished designing our body pillowcases and we’re about to start ordering them for our backers.  We will order these in one week, so any fans that want one can preorder a pillow from our Storenvy site so they can be among our first batch of orders.

Darkenmarr has been working on completing the shadows and highlights of our main sprites.  We’ve already shown our flat colored versions and a few completed versions to our Kickstarter backers.  Now we’ll start introducing our flat colored ones on our various social media.

On the coding and GUI side, we only have a few more menus to finish up before that part of the game is completed. We believe we have a total of ten backgrounds remaining.  Once those are done, Justin and I can focus more on the writing of the routes, instead of dividing our attention.

That’s what we’re showing off today, but we have a lot more to show you.  Stay tuned this weekend for more!