- fixed some spelling and grammar errors
- fixed Niesha achievement bug
Thank you to everyone who's taking the time to report these bugs! It's a big help and we promised to fix them as fast as we can :)
Witchy Life Story
Quick Patch!
Thank you to everyone who's taking the time to report these bugs! It's a big help and we promised to fix them as fast as we can :)
Witchy Life Story is OUT NOW!!!!
Live your best troublesome witch life in Witchy Life Story, out now on Steam!
We're celebrating our release with a 10% launch discount!
https://youtu.be/mzYD-ZuFp4U
We just want to say another big THANK YOU to everyone who's followed us during development and playing our demo. Every like, comment and share meant the world to us over these past two years. For those of you who played the demo early on we've got some updates for you:
- a new granny square outfit
- she/he and "no pronoun" options
- lips and lip colors
- holding down "x" will rapidly go through the dialog in the game.* Very useful if you want to get through the demo content again quickly!
- general bug and spelling fixes
- the altar now saves its state!
- Known bug: sometimes causes the music to not load in, but it's not permanent and will load just fine the next time you go through a music transition.
If you enjoy Witchy Life Story, please leave a Steam review and send us your witch on social media! We hope you enjoy our game :)
One Week till Witchy Life Story Launches on Steam!
Greetings, Witches!
We hope you're as excited as we are for the launch of Witchy Life story next week. We can't wait for you all to finally play the full game! Make sure you're following us on all our socials, where we'll counting down till next Friday. If you or anyone else you know enjoys...
🌻 Cozy (and chaotic) stories!
🧙‍♀️Desiging your own witch
đź”®Gathering plants and crafting spells
💚Bewitching friendships… and more!
Then make sure to check out and share our demo in the meantime!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1427340/Witchy_Life_Story/
Witchy Life Story is coming to Steam Sept. 30th!
We're super excited to announce Witchy Life Story is coming to Steam on September 30th! As part of Gayming Live 2022 and to celebrate our announcement, we've got a fancy new developer stream for you to enjoy! We've also updated our demo with some new character creator options like lip color, a no pronoun option, and a new outfit (plus a few bug fixes lol)! Enjoy our new trailer too!
Can't wait to share Witchy Life Story with all of you!
Allie
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1427340/Witchy_Life_Story/
TikTok: @sundewstudios
Instagram: @sundewstudios
Twitter: @sundewstudios
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dlX3Qv
LudoNarraCon Dev Stream!
Come join Allie, Sundew's founder and creative director, as she plays through the Witchy Life Story demo available now during LudoNarraCon! You'll see updated content, and get a behind the scenes look at WLS's dev process!
Make sure to check out the rest of LudoNarraCon for other amazing narrative games!
Best,
Sundew Studios
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1427340/Witchy_Life_Story/
Come Play our Demo during LudoNarraCon!
We've got some super exciting news. Starting RIGHT NOW you can play the demo for Witchy Life Story during LudoNarraCon!!! LudoNarraCon is a festival for narrative games presented by Fellow Traveller. There are tons of other fantastic narrative games to try out, as well as a big sale, and panels!
Our demo walks you through your first 3 days in Flora. You'll get to design your own witch, garden, craft spells, and meet all the villagers (and maybe flirt a little with them too). We would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see the witches you create with our character creator. Make sure to share them with us on social media by either tagging us @SundewStudios on either Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok! Also, if you have any favorite moments in WLS, we love to see those too! :)
Also, for even more updates, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
Thank you to all of you who have followed us throughout our development. We're super excited for you to play Witchy Life Story finally! I hope you enjoy it :)
Best,
Allie, creative director
Quick Notes:
- After you make your character, the main part of the game takes a little bit to load, especially on slower computers. We're hoping to work on this for the final release, though if your game does proper freeze, please let us know!
- If you click the Sundew logo button in the bottom right corner, you can leave us feedback, sign up for our newsletter, and wishlist the game!
TikTok: @sundewstudios
Instagram: @sundewstudios
Twitter: @sundewstudios
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dlX3Qv
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1427340/Witchy_Life_Story/
First 20 Minutes (or so) of Gameplay!
Happy Women's Day 2022! We're thrilled to be part of Wings Fund's Steam Women's Day Steam event! To celebrate, come watch me play through the first 20 minutes of Witchy Life Story. You'll get an in-depth look at our character creator, spell crafting, and more! I'll also talk about the process of making the game.
If you haven't already, make sure to check out all the other awesome games featured in the Women's Day Steam event!
See you there!
Allie, founder & creative director
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Winter 2022 Dev Update!
I've got a pretty fun update for you this month! Other than a ton of progress being made on Witchy Life Story, we're going to be part of an exciting event this week.
I've been heads-down this winter writing and polishing the game. It's probably 90% written at this point, but it still needs to be edited and all that stuff. I've also been busy with tasks like making buttons pop. and making sure everything is working the way it's supposed to be working. Basically tying up a bunch of loose ends that makes everything look nice (or nicer, since I'm not quite done yet...).
On the art side of things, Sara, WLS's character and background artist, added two more outfits to our character creator. They created a Kiki's Delivery Service-inspired dress, and a flashy shirt and pants set! Lianne, WLS's objects/flower and UI artist, redid the incense and charm spell art for the game to make them more florally. She also completed the enchantment art too... But I'm not going to spoil that here!
Now for the fun part...
We're going to show you the first 20 minutes of Witchy Life Story next week here on Steam!!!
Witchy Life Story is going to be part of Wings Fund's Women's Day Steam event along with 200+ other fantastic games! To celebrate, I'm pre-recording a stream of the first 20 mins of Witchy Life Story, which we'll be showing sometime this week. In the stream, I'll give an in-depth view of a character creator, spell-crafting, and more! I'll also talk a bit about the process of making the game, and what else you have to look for too. Make sure to keep your eyes out on our social media accounts and here on Steam for more details!
Hope to see you there!
Allie, Founder & Creative Director
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Let's make some witches!
If you’ve been watching our TikToks and Instagram feed, you’ve probably seen our character creator previews this month. So I thought it’d be fun to give you all a first look at our character creator in-game for our October newsletter! We’ve been working on this feature for a year now, and it feels great to show it off finally. I knew from the start that I wanted Witchy Life Story to have a character creator, so planning started early in the development process. Every member of our four-person team contributed to this feature, just to give an idea of just how much work and love went into it. So keep reading for a behind-the-scenes look into the creation of our character creator and how it all looks in-game!
Yes, before we get into it, I realize the “Moles” checkbox is not aligned with the rest of the checkboxes. I said we’re still working on it, right??
Anyways! As I mentioned above, we’ve been working on the character creator for about a year now. We started with figuring out the key customization options we wanted to support. We decided on different body types and skin colors relatively quickly. The other big one was making sure all hats worked with every hairstyle, which meant we’d need a system where certain hairstyles would need “alts” that would turn on if the player selected a hat.
After that, Aubrey, our programmer, got to work on all the tech behind the character creator. I worked with Sara to start figuring out how many options per customizable option we should have… We very quickly realized just how much art we were going to need to make this thing work. We wanted 18 skin tones and nine outfits for each of the five body types, which meant Sara would have to draw all these options. Fortunately, we figured out how to tint skin tones in Unity (and then used this tech for all the hair, eyebrows, and lips, too), which significantly cut down the workload. However, even though different colors got taken care of, for the most part, there was still a ton of assets to draw.
Inclusivity was super important to us, so even though it meant there was a lot to draw, we would go ahead with it. Sara spent about seven months working on the assets for the character creator. They worked on other parts of the games (all our beautiful backgrounds and villagers!) during this time too, but the character creator was the bulk of the work. It’s hard to show off just how many options we’ve put into this feature because there are just so many! But I think that’s a good problem to have.
But if you want a rundown of all the customizable features…
- 5 body types + 18 skin tones
- 30 hairstyles + 27 colors
- 11 eyebrows + 27 colors
- 13 eyes + 7 colors
- 9 noses
- 10 mouths + lip option in 8 colors
- 16 hats and hair accessories
- 9 outfits
- Plus things like blush, freckles, moles, body hair, etc.
We’ve implemented most of the options into the game, but we’re still working on lips... Lips are oddly a unique feature and need some special programming magic to work…! We’re also planning to add hat colors and a few more outfits. And of course, there’s still some ironing out to do to make sure everything looks and works the way it’s supposed to.
So what’s left?
Other than odds and ends, honestly probably the most exciting part of the character creator. Right now, Aubrey is working on getting the character expressions up and running. This means the witch you create will be a full-fledged character with a range of emotions. We’re also trying to figure out a way for you to change your appearance (and names and pronouns) mid-game if you feel like switching things up a bit.
That’s all we have for now! But since it’s Halloween, here’s a little nightmare fuel for you. This is a screenshot from the character creator prototype while we figured out how to tint colors in unity. I think Lianne’s UI looks much better!!!
August 2021 Witchy Life Story Updates!
Witchy Life Updates
Happy August, Everyone!
Is it already August?! It’s been a pretty busy summer over at Sundew Studios. I think I can say people received Witchy Life Story pretty well during Wholesome Direct back in June. So many people tweeted about the game and wishlisted it on Steam. I was kind of in a state of shock that whole week! Then in July, some content creators over on TikTok made videos of our game! I’m so glad people are enjoying Witchy Life Story. Honestly, the response has been a little overwhelming! And I feel like we’ve barely shown off any of the game… There’s still one romance option to introduce (along with several other villagers), plus our pretty extensive character creator… Seriously. That thing is a beast. More details are below, but I’m so impressed with how far it’s come. Anyways, thank you so much for all your support. I genuinely appreciate every tweet, TikTok, wishlist, like, follow, and newsletter sign-up. Now to just finish the game!
Cheers,
Allie, Founder & Creative Director
Writing
Other than Wholesome Direct, I’ve been pretty radio silent on all the things we’ve been working on for the past two months. That’s mainly because I spent that time getting a ton of writing done. Every villager has five main requests, and the first three are kind of the “core” ones that establish who the villager is and what problems they’re having. Also, during those requests, the player chooses how to shape their witch’s rotten personality. Finally, after several rewrites, and in some cases, massive overhauls, they’re done! By “done,” I mean they still need some editing and probably more rewriting, but they’re in a good solid draft state. Now all that’s left is writing the remaining requests, romance and friend events, and the ending… NBD.
Character Creator
Other than writing, Aubrey’s been hard at work getting the character creator up and running. There’s a preview of the character creator in the trailer, and it’s so close to being done. We’re wrapping up some UI stuff and pronoun implementation right now. After that, we’ll finally get to add in all of Sara’s super cute witchy features for your witches! After seeing all of Aubrey and Sara’s work, this character creator could honestly be its own game. Below you can see a sample of some of the choices you’ll have in terms of skin colors, body types, hats, and hairstyles. We’ve tried to give you as many choices as our small team can! Hopefully, we’ll get to show the finished character creator soon!
Crafting
I’m also in the process of updating Witchy Life Story’s crafting system. Before, the player would receive a letter from a villager and guess what spell to craft from that letter. It felt kind of unintuitive and also didn’t incorporate much in terms of plant lore. So now, when you receive a letter, you go through a simple interactive moment where you uncover the spell type, the color of the second ingredient, and the planetary alignment of the third ingredient. I also worked this ability to discover spell ingredients into your witch’s backstory, so hopefully, the new system feels more tied to the game world.
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