Almost five years have passed since Himeka sought friendship and romance at Solana Academy. She and her friends have grown now, and have to face their adult responsibilities.
As a direct sequel to Blooming Nightshade, Flowering Nightshade continues the lighthearted romance story that began there. The player may choose to resume one of the six romantic storylines from Blooming Nightshade or begin a story featuring a new character.
Features
6 returning love interests, with stories focusing on the transition to adulthood and maintaining long-term relationships
A new character and storyline
Each story is longer and more focused than the story routes seen in Blooming Nightshade
I hope people enjoy this continuation of the story of Himeka and her friends in Akiramine!
Flowering Nightshade Store Page
The store page for Flowering Nightshade is now visible! Go here to learn more about the game as it is prepared to launch on Steam:
Due to recent updates to the Ren'Py engine and some code that needs to be updated to properly track Steam Achievements, the game will probably be made available on Steam with the v7 update. The current plan is to have the update ready sometime this summer.
I hope everyone looks forward to seeing the game come to Steam!
Poll: Flowering Nightshade on Steam
Now that all of the main routes for Flowering Nightshade are implemented in the public version of the game, I've decided to see how interested people are in having the game come to Steam. The game is currently free/donationware on itch.io, so I don't want to rush into a decision to launch on Steam (with its waiting periods and up-front fee). However, I didn't want to shut down the possibility entirely, so I've put together a basic poll for players of Blooming Nightshade to submit their opinions on a Steam release.
Flowering Nightshade on itch.io:
https://jackkel-dragon.itch.io/flowering-nightshade
I'll keep an eye on the responses, and we'll see where things go from there. Thank you for your time and interest!
Life as Designed Announcement
I've mentioned it a few times elsewhere, but today is the opening of the store page for Life as Designed!
Life as Designed is a romance story with coming-of-age elements that focuses on Cho Fukuda, who first appeared in Eldritch Academy. There are three main storylines planned for the game, each of which follows from the paired endings in Eldritch Academy. (It's not required to play that game to understand this one, but some character traits are assumed to be familiar to the player.)
Life as Designed takes place about ten years after Eldritch Academy. Cho now lives in the city of Yamashiya with her girlfriend, who both reside at a share house. All four main characters from Eldritch Academy have jobs in this city, but Cho's freelance work ends up sapping her motivation after a string of projects that feel unfulfilling or end in failure. Each story shows a different path Cho's life could take, depending on who she was closest to before the story began.
In addition, near the end of each storyline Cho has to make a choice of which career path to follow. Neither of these endings are the "correct" or "wrong" choice, simply different ways Cho's life could go as she moves forward.
The game script is projected to be about the same total length as Eldritch University, with the possibility of one or more bonus scenarios depending on how development goes. The game will have custom BGM, with a few tracks returning from the Eldritch Academy v3 update. However, the game is not currently projected to have event illustrations. The final price is not yet decided, but will likely be in the same range as Eldritch University.
If you have any questions about the game or its development, let me know! I hope people look forward to Life as Designed!
Eldritch Academy Update News
A major update is in the works for Eldritch Academy! This version of the game will have redrawn art based on the style used for Eldritch University, custom music, and other tweaks to the presentation of the game. The highlights:
Redrawn character and CG art for a widescreen aspect ratio, in the style of Eldritch University.
All royalty-free music replaced with custom tracks.
Date events removed and replaced with new and extended scenes in Acts 1 and 2. (Route determination altered to fit the new scenes.)
Other tweaks and fixes tied to the above changes.
There isn't a set release window for the update yet, but a demo of the prelude will hopefully be made available soon. Promotional and Achievement art has also been updated to prepare for the update.
When the update releases, playing the older versions can be accomplished by opting into the "v1" or "v2" beta branches. Note that while ending completion should carry over between versions, saves are otherwise not likely to be compatible due to the changes in the structure of the game.
There will be another announcement when the update is closer to completion. Until then, I hope people look forward to it!
Eldritch University is Now Available!
Eldritch University, a horror/romance visual novel, is now available for purchase!
The nightmare is not over.
Kasumi Kawamura just wants to get through university while rekindling her relationship with her girlfriend. But not long after she arrives at school, a strange epidemic starts to infect the city, causing the afflicted to have terrible nightmares and lose the motivation to live their lives. Coinciding with the appearance of this “Nightmare Syndrome”, an old wound that Kasumi thought healed starts to burn and cause frightening visions to those around her. Caught in the center of this situation, Kasumi and her friends try desperately to find a solution. Yet all the while, Kasumi wonders if she might be to blame…
This game is a sequel to Eldritch Academy. It is recommended, but not required, to play that game first.
Eldritch University Demo Updated and Tentative Release Window
Now that the development for the game seems to be winding down toward a final build, I decided to put together an update for the demo of Eldritch University. It covers pretty much the same content as before, but now includes the BGM tracks and all of the script tweaks from the most recent build.
There is also a potential release window, now that I'm closer to a final build. With the primary focus of the remaining development being the final revision pass on Acts 2 and 3 and finishing the bonus stories, I'd like to aim for a summer release. My current plan is to try a June 2020 release window, but I'm not going to commit to a set date quite yet.
At any rate, I hope people enjoy the revised demo and look forward to the full release!
Beta of Update v2
Since I was already in revision mode from working on the v10 update for Blooming Nightshade, I ended up coming back to Eldritch Academy and taking a look at it. While I would need a significant amount of time and money to address some of the criticisms I've noticed for the game, one thing in particular stood out as something that I could fix without too much trouble: redundant and unnecessary scenes slowing down the pacing of the early game, especially on repeat playthroughs. So over the past few days, I took a look at a number of things in the game and tried to find a way to fix the problems I saw.
The result of the changes I made have reached a point where I may almost have a v2 release ready for the game. However, I've not have time to fully proofread or test this build, so for now I've only put the build on a Beta branch listed as "v2_beta", which should become available soon. (For those who would like to retain the release version of the game, there is a new "Beta" for the game labelled "v1_release". Switching to this build will retain the original version of the game.)
Here's a rundown of what has changed in the current build for v2:
Several scenes removed from Act 1 and Act 2. Remaining scenes have been modified to reflect the absence of these scenes.
"Partner Choices" removed. All partner choice events have been integrated fully into the common route events.
"Date Choices" overhauled. Dates in Act 1 and Act 2 work the same as in v1. However, the ending scene of Act 2 now locks in the route, similar to the special route version of the event. In paired routes, Act 3 date events are automatic and are with the character whose route is locked in.
Due to the shuffling of events, the date/weekday box has been removed.
Breakup endings have been removed and affection points reworked. In the new system, making too many wrong choices in Act 4 will lead to the Nightmare Ending. (Special route is not affected.)
CG Gallery and Scene Replay have been tweaked to be easier to use.
To reflect the removal of certain scenes, the requirements for the achievement to see all endings have been modified. It now checks for all six endings, all twenty-four date events, and seeing the CG in the Aftermath stories. (The achievement still only checks on starting up the program for now.)
Numerous tweaks to the internal code of certain features.
Old save files probably won't work with this build, but the persistent data file should. (It can have a complicated relationship with the way certain scenes changed for "read text" purposes, but the ending flags are the same.)
At any rate, be sure to tell me what you think of the update if you get a chance to try it out. I'd like to find and remove any bugs that may be in the code before I put the build on the main branch of the game, and it would be interesting to hear if the story edits helped with the slow pacing of the early game. I'll eventually get around to testing it myself, but it will be easier to catch issues if someone that doesn't know the code so well takes a look.
At any rate, I hope people continue to enjoy the game. For now, I should return to working on the Blooming Nightshade revisions and working on Eldritch University...
Changes to Achievements
Due to some currently behind-the-scenes work, both Blooming Nightshade and Eldritch Academy are getting some changes to their achievement lists. Details are below.
Blooming Nightshade
Thanks to the process leading to v10, a number of the achievements in the Steam release no longer made sense with the planned revisions. While v9 will be available as a "beta" branch for those who want to play it after v10 comes out, I felt the achievements should probably reflect the main version of the game.
Because of this, some achievements were removed (the cheating achievement) or renamed (romance achievements). In addition, a number of achievements related to playing the friendship route of each character have been added. These new achievements cannot be acquired just yet, but hopefully v10 comes soon enough that people can get started on those in the near future.
Eldritch Academy
For reasons I'm not ready to share, the breakup achievements have been removed from the game. In exchange, most of the placeholder art for achievements has been replaced with CG art from the game. It doesn't mean much until the game is allowed to be featured on profiles, but I hope people like the updated achievement art regardless.
Eldritch University Store Page
The store page for Eldritch University is up! Be sure to check it out and take a look at the demo!
