Highway Blossoms
Announcing HB: Dusty Trails, Physical Copies, and more!
The specific details can be found here on our announcement post. That page has all of our HB news. At the top is a link to the full post, which includes some info on our next game HRP, too. The full post is NSFW, the one I linked isn't. Click at your own risk; we're not responsible for upsetting any prudish mothers or grandmas. Also, Steam might advise you not to open the link. I promise it's safe, unless you have an allergy to badly formatted blog posts.
Here's a tl;dr of the HB news, though:
-We're releasing an HB light novel called "Dusty Trails" which focuses on Joseph, Tess and Mariah. A light novel is a book that's supposed to be kind of easy to pick up and read. It doesn't have tons of pictures and music like a visual novel. We might do physical copies of the light novel in the future.
-Physical copies of Highway Blossoms will be available on the Sekai Project webstore soon. It comes with the game in a DVD case, and includes the soundtrack as well.
-Some cute art for the holidays
Closer to summer, we'll have some news on a few other things that we hope to do with the game. Please look forward to it.
Once again, happy holidays!
Discord & Russian Translation + Important Fix for Mac Sierra Users
Yeah, me either.
Thanks to the efforts of the translation team Mehlate, a free Russian language option has been added for Highway Blossoms. To use it, please activate the beta branch of the game by navigating to Highway Blossoms in your Steam library, right-clicking the title, clicking "Properties" and choose the "betabuild" option from the Beta tab. Then, load the game and go into "Preferences" and choose "Russian" as your language. This translation was created by Mehlate and we're very grateful for their efforts. However, please be aware that neither Alienworks nor Sekai Project can guarantee its quality or accuracy.
For users with the Mac Sierra OS, it's important to activate the beta branch. Sierra brought with it a change that makes all games created on Ren'Py unplayable without a particular change. Please download the new build from the beta branch to fix that. Because it requires fundamentally altering the game engine, we can't promise save integrity. Hey, at least this time it won't be on us.
Last but not least is something that I've forgotten to bring up for the past several updates: Alienworks has a public Discord server that everyone is welcome to join if you wanna chat with us, or other fans, or just lurk.
As always, thanks for your support, and we hope you continue to enjoy Highway Blossoms.
Info On Our Next Game
Long time no talk. First off, I just wanted to say thanks again to everyone who has played HB. We're super stoked that most people seem to like it. Coming across people who have changed their profile pics on Steam and social media to use HB characters is seriously heartwarming. And we read every single review that's left for the game, so thanks to those who have left 'em.
Anyway, we just pushed what's probably going to be the last update to HB for a while, setting the changes from the 1.32 beta to live. If you opted into the beta previously, you shouldn't notice anything different.
If you enjoyed Highway Blossoms enough to want to follow the rest of what we're working on, then I've got good news: Just today, we posted a new trailer from our upcoming, 6 route visual novel "The Human Reignition Project." It's a BxG, romance/thriller game, due out sometime next year. The new trailer also premieres our brand new opening theme, REIGNITE, with vocals by Sasaki Sayaka (Girls Und Panzer, Nichijou, Planetarian) and composed by ARTE REFACT (Love Live, Idolm@ster, and more). You can check that out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD4GtZLkUcQ
We held a Kickstarter campaign for HRP last year which is what enabled us to put so much into the game. However, we wanted to give our newer fans a chance to grab some of the stuff we offered during that. So, we've opened pre-orders on a few select items like body pillows and physical copies of the game. You can pick those up at https://the-human-reignition-project-an-english-visual-nov.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
For the most concise description of HRP and to see where the money's going, please check out the Kickstarter page. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sekaiproject/the-human-reignition-project-an-english-visual-nov/description You'll see, however, that we've upgraded the sprites from what's shown on there - the versions in the trailer are the most recent ones.
As always, thanks for checking our stuff out. If you want more frequent, smaller updates (as well as the occasional extra bit of HB and HRP art) be sure to follow us on Twitter @AlienworksDev
Optional Update - Version 1.32
Here's what it does:
• Implemented small and medium sized screen device UI. Doesn’t affect Steam users except for some extreme cases where the OS might expose itself as a tablet or phone interface. If you're playing on a calculator, this is the update for you.
• Fixed some sprite positioning errors caused by the previous patch’s ghosting fixes. It's a trickle-down bugfix process.
• Fixed a ton of spelling and continuity errors thanks to the efforts of the Steam community. Marina no longer randomly gains and loses a sibling.
• Added small notification in main menu to let you know if the adult content has been installed properly. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
•Implemented a slower but more robust saving system and a slightly reduced rollback limit to hopefully help with the constant save breaking.
•Can now hide the Gallery navigation menu with the H key. Fitting button, right?
•EZ Mode only plays "The Bear Prayer" in a single channel, rather than twice at once. We have been informed that that that's not how stereo audio works.
•In Skip mode, switching between "Read" and "All" is now a toggle. Trying to word that sentence was roughly as confusing as explaining how it worked before.
As stated, right now this is available as a beta update, which means that you have to opt-in to download it. To do that, find Highway Blossoms in your Steam library, right-click (or equivalent) on the title, and go to "Properties." Then, under the "betas" tab, choose "betafixes" from the drop-down menu at the top. You should immediately begin to download the patch. There is no password required.
Like always, thank you very much for playing Highway Blossoms! ^.^
Version Update - 1.24
In addition to a super minor Tess positioning error, the main thing this update does is disable F.Skip, a function that allows you to skip to the next choice in a VN.
This is a very useful feature for VN's that aren't Highway Blossoms, as apparently it causes crashes in games without choices. Our bad.
Thanks to user bjiadokc who pointed out the issue.
Pay your respects to F.Skip in the comments if you like.
Version Update - 1.22
We have a smallish patch that fixes a few things; see below for the full list. Unfortunately, this one will definitely corrupt save files, as we changed the save directory, so you’ll need to restart the game. However, you can quickly get back to where you were by opening the in-game menu, changing the “Skip text” option to “Skip All Messages” (not just “read messages,” as the patch will reset what it thinks you’ve read before), and holding control. You can also press tab to toggle skip mode on/off. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Highway Blossoms: The Definitive Version Until We Realize Something Else is Wrong
-Corrects multiple typos and grammatical errors. We r good @ writng
-Fixed an issue with some of the journal entries not triggering correctly. Amber is no longer clairvoyant and doesn’t randomly know where to go next.
-Adjusts visual direction and smooths out sprite animation. Our programmer says we enabled subpixel, whatever that means ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-Opening credits adjusted for consistency, and to actually properly credit everyone (Sorry Rosu!)
-Adds CG gallery accessible from extras menu. Yes, it includes all installed CG’s ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
-Fixes issue of ghost sprites when skipping text. This is not a horror game.
-Ambient sounds now cut out when they should. Leaving the engine running all through the Grand Canyon is bad for the environment.
-Repaired Amber’s hand in one of the driving CG’s. She’s now shadier.
-Broke your saves again