Weekly devlog 13

Hello everyone! Welcome to a new devlog!

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone who has commented, voted, and liked my posts on itch.io and Patreon talking about my idea of replacing the game’s visual art made by me in VRoid with anime art commissioned from an artist. It’s a change I was worried about trying because many people have been telling me they are used to the original style of the game and didn’t seem interested in changing it. But personally, it doesn’t convince me. I’m grateful to VRoid Studio because it gave me anime-style graphics that weren’t low quality when I had no other solution. But years have passed and now I have more resources and support, so it’s time to make the game more professional. It’s a free game that won’t be on Steam, yes. But thanks to the financial support I receive by selling Early Access on itch.io and donations on my Patreon, I can earn a little money to hire my artist little by little. She already did Kokoro’s redesign and everyone who reacted to it on my Patreon loved it, so I decided to move forward. Now I have commissioned the designs of Fuyu, Yuri, Katsune, and Nana, so soon we’ll have those four characters redesigned. The artist has already finished Fuyu and I have to say she looks amazing, I never would have imagined she would be so beautiful.

I’ll show you an image of her here and you can see more in the post I’ll publish on my Patreon. If you’re interested, I’ll leave the link at the end of the post:

Clarification: the blush you see is an accessory that I can add or remove, it’s not going to be in all her facial expressions. And that image is missing the glasses, another accessory. I also have a version of her with her hair down and with three versions: uniform, pajamas, and nude.

Now, regarding the devlog. As I told you, chapter 5 is so long that I decided to publish updates day by day. Chapter 5 lasts one week of game time, so each game day will be a new update. Thus, this new paid update will include day 2 of chapter 5. And the new free update will be day 1 of chapter 5. Along with bug fixes and other things I’ve added during this time, of course. And I’m unsure whether to start replacing the art of the characters I already have or to publish a special version where those new characters are included, and leave a normal version without the new changes applied to the characters. I’ll see about that.

As for how much I have left to finish this new update, well, I finally finished programming the activities the player does during the day. It took me longer than expected because I decided to include minigames that I had to program with the help of ChatGPT, but I don’t think they turned out bad. The only thing left is the nighttime gameplay, meaning when it’s night and Haruna can talk to all the members of her group. There are many characters, so many conversations and stories that have to progress, so I need some time to organize my ideas and see how to do it. Could I bring the new update tomorrow? If divine inspiration came and I worked many hours straight like crazy, yes, but I don’t see it possible. What I might be able to do is bring the new update next week.

However, I’m afraid I have to tell you something else. As you already know, itch.io has unjustly had my account in quarantine for four months now and, for some reason, it won’t lift it. If I publish a new update or edit the page of any of my games, that game goes into quarantine and it hurts it a lot. So, I can’t update the game on itch.io, the most I can do is announce in a post that the new update is available on my Patreon. The bad thing about this is that, even if you bought the Early Access version on itch.io, you won’t be able to download it unless you are also a $5 member of my Patreon. Since I don’t want people to feel forced to pay again, if you bought the game on itch.io you can send me a private message on my Discord, on my Patreon, or to my Gmail: capkygames@gmail.com showing a screenshot that proves you bought my game once. However, surely some people will prefer to simply not play the new version to avoid complications. I really feel sorry about that.

I’m thinking about creating another itch.io account called Love’s Heart and publishing the new updates there, but there would be the same problem that players who already bought it on one account wouldn’t have it on the other, plus I would lose all the downloads and views I have, followers, ratings… it would be terrible. At least the game would have visibility again, but I don’t know if it’s the best solution. I have to think about it.

That’s all I wanted to tell you. If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to write to me.

Have a great day!

My devlog on Patreon with more images of Fuyu: https://www.patreon.com/posts/loves-heart-130367318?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&ut...

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/CapkyGames

Discord: https://discord.gg/rnBMqZbCdQ