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

Six days after our last post Justin’s brother, Willy, lost his life to cancer.  Thankfully his wife and Justin’s dad were there with him as he passed.  Justin and I got there shortly after and a while later Justin’s oldest brother came to the hospice to see him one last time.

On May 27th, my surgery was a success.  I don’t have a pouch or a bag, my small intestine now connects with my rectum.  I’m still dealing with some post-surgical stuff and was told it could take up to six months from surgery for my body to adjust to the new system.  It’s been a pretty bumpy ride and I can’t wait for it to be over.  Justin’s dad ended up having to livestream Willy’s funeral for Justin and me as we were still in Cleveland at the time.

Then on July 3rd, my brother, an apartment manager, was ordered by his boss to head to the complex to tell 70 people to vacate the pool, because they were only allowed to have 10 people in the pool at a time due to COVID.  Everyone, but 20 people left the pool.  The mob attacked my brother and yelled how they were going to kill him.  The Dallas PD is doing nothing about it and his company fired him and refused to give police evidence of the attack.  There’s more, but I’m not going into details here about it.

And the most recent event was on August 23rd.  My parents were walking across the street at a crosswalk.  My dad was pushing my mom in her wheelchair when a F150 truck made a left-hand turn into them.  My mom’s body is all bruised while my dad got road rash on his knee, elbow, and chin.  He also has a broken rib and he’s been suffering from headaches since the accident, which he’s not one that really gets headaches.  They’re still learning more and more of the damage they received from the situation.

Oh!  Justin and I moved into an apartment to be closer to my main college campus as most of my classes from now on will be at that location.  We’re still organizing the apartment and getting what we need for it, so it’s slowing down some of our progress on the game.  Justin also has a full-time job at Amazon now in hopes to handle our expenses including the game dev expenses.

We also would like to announce we do have a line artist and colorist for the sprites, CGs, and Kickstarter rewards.  Currently they are working on the sprites and CGs that we need for the next demo.  After that the plan is to work on and finish the Kickstarter rewards.

I would like to introduce our two new artists: Kimilyn, our line artist, and Parallelpie, our colorist. Kimilyn is about to start Rory’s linework and Parallelpie is currently working on Emil’s coloring.

Justin and I are still working on Rory’s main story, but once that’s completed, Justin will work on some GUI elements that we need to send over to the programmers.

That’s all the new news for the moment.  We hope to be back with an update soon!

@nochistudios​ is currently doing a Kickstarter campaign for their next visual novel game, Somnium Eleven.  They have a demo of one of the mini-games on their itch.io, which seems interesting as you can interact with the suitors within the maze.  I’m especially interested in the social media/networking aspect of the game which makes interactions with NPCs important to the gameplay.  I feel that’ll add a lot of depth to the game.

Nochi did a livestream the other night on their Youtube where they explain more about the game mechanics, characters, and even some of the market research that they did to be where they are today with their games. 

I highly recommend playing Sifting Thyme and reading more about Somnium Eleven on their Kickstarter campaign.  Check ‘em out!