That’s right! The KS is over! I really wasn’t expecting this, I thought we’d struggle to make the base amount and instead we’re at 260%! So what now for WoR? Well, our goal right now is to get all the sponsorship concept art done in August (if possible) while I’m writing design documents.
I’m overhauling how the class system and event system are going to work based on player feedback from the prototype. I think you’re going to like it a lot. I may share some of these design ideas later in the process, but for now, hooray!
Tales of Strings: Crush Depth
The next Tales of Strings story is out! You can find it on Itch.io. If you just want to see cool shark art, check out Judith’s post on it. This one has undersea action, shark transformation, and a bit of romance.
As usual, if you’re a patreon/subscribestar supporter for 5$ total over the months of June and July, shoot me a DM and I’ll hook you up with a free copy. We also accept poetry or photos of nearby animals!
Development Update!
I have implemented both versions of the raptor TF and all the complexities within, so now I just need to finish the final implementation of the quest and then start filling it out. It’s actually a pretty involved quest and I think it’s fun, you’ll enjoy it. Once that’s done, it’ll be moving onto the Raccoon Quest (which is considerably shorter, it’s not even a real quest!) and then maybe the kitsune stuff. I want to get all three TFs in for this release if possible.
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
Witches of Ravenbrook Kickstarter Meets 8th Funding Goal! 45 Hours to Go!
That’s right, we passed our 8th Stretch Goal! (Inky will make an updated graphic later today, this post will be updated with that :3)
There are two days left, so if you want to get your name in the credits or just show support, now’s the time! I’m still just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of support here, and there’s so much work to do.
Okay About That AMA
We had an AMA last week. At almost that exact time, Reddit had some kind of major site outage. People could create new posts but couldn’t post replies, basically hamstringing the whole thing. It was extremely sad/funny that the first time we use Reddit for anything major it melts down. Hah!
We have instead created a channel on the discord to allow people to ask questions. Also if you ask them over on the BSky I will get them to Inky to answer, and I will pick a few out to post on the blog along with the Whisp.sh questions.
We may or may not do another AMA at some point, because who knows if Reddit is going to explode next time in some creative way! So for now it’ll be the usual methods.
Note: I forgot to ask permission to show people’s names and whatnot so I’ll be removing those in these images. Whoops!
There’s actually a ton of questions. I have asked the reddit moderator to also send any questions we get there along so we can get them taken care of. I didn’t post every single question here so if you’re curious hit up the discord!
Development Update (Is now in third place?)
So Koops should now be back to work after all those international shenanigans are sorted out. I have reworked the raptor quest a bunch because you can start it from multiple areas and there’s a lot of dialogue. I am now currently working through all the humorous commentary, you can ask all the NPCs in the chapter who have topics about it and most of them (except Zeke!) have something dumb to say.
We’ve also got landscapes and sprites underway, and DurrDiss delivered new music. Oh and Dias finished the raptor TF comic and Mario finished the editing on it, so now I can implement it at last! Been a lot of work this week.
The Second Knights of Justice Story (will be released next week hopefully!)
Yeah I know you’re all HOTLY ANTICIPATING it but the last art piece is still underway. Look forward to it! It’s a really good story! I’m taking a bath on this one in more ways than one!
By https://vgen.co/2D2_Art I had to make this one a gallery because oh my god look at it. It’s insane. If there’s a lifetime achievement award give it to 2D2Art here.
I kind of want to feature the anchor image as the post’s ref image but also I kind of don’t?
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
I finished the subtexturing update and fixed several WHI bugs, but one of the testers is having a problem with a black screen appearing when trying to save the game. As soon as I figure out the problem a new WHI release will be put out, upgrading the engine to v4.0. This will also apply to the next RoP update and WoR when it comes out.
Other than that, I’m now back to work on the chapter 2 update. I made a dent on the raptor quest and am writing out scripts! Scripts!
June and July have been wild months but I’m hoping to really knuckle down and get these quests done so Chapter 2’s update comes out smoothly.
Witches of Ravenbrook Plans
With the reaching of the second extra-stretch goal, we have the budget to add some more monsters, more TFs, and other cool things. Inky and I had a meeting and we decided on what we’re adding. We also ended up moving some things around as the new Circus area shifts priorities around a bit. We also decided on the bonus boss but obviously I’m not spoiling that yet!
I’ll just tease you with a few of the new TFs: Circus animals, Alraunes, and Nagas! The alraunes are an idea I have for an area-specific persistent status, not an Influence TF, and depending on playtesting this all might change a lot. There’s also about two dozen new enemies who will inflict QuickTFs or status effects on you, and we added new areas like the Bunny Casino in the Greed area and a special domain in the Lust area that I won’t spoil yet.
Who are those silhouettes up there? Oh you’ll find out, believe me.
Ask Witches Anything (AWA)
We will also be hosting an AMA towards the end of the Kickstarter’s time on our reddit. The time will be Wednesday the 16th of July, 2025, after 6pm EST. Inky will be on hand to field questions, and technical stuff will be answered later by me (Salty!). You can also ask Lily questions and we will convey them to him :3
The AMA will be hosted on our Reddit. I will post a reminder post on Wednesday as well.
Stories are Underwater!
The joke is that the next story takes place underwater (and has shark girls). Yeah sure. Anyway, the next story in the Tales of Strings series, Crush Depth, has completed editing and just needs a few more illustrations to be ready! I hope to publish it before the month is done.
In addition, Petting the Werekitty will be getting illustrations. We’re looking for potential illustrators for the other RoP stories before we republish them on Itch.io. Look forward to more about that soon!
More Conventional Modes of Answering Questions
Fan Art MELTDOWN. NUCLEAR RADIATION. YOU WILL DIE DUE TO THIS FAN ART.
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
Recently there have been some problems where people were getting out-of-memory crashes. Well, not recently, it’s been going on for a while but it has gotten more pronounced lately, possibly due to a windows update. Whatever the reason, people with tons of RAM still are unable to allocate large blocks of memory.
I did some research and wrote up some new code to block memory on large texture out, so hopefully this will fix things! It may cause a slight increase in loading times, at least until I figure things out. There will be a WHI update, likely this week, once we’ve had a chance to test things a bit more.
Witches of Ravenbrook Stretch Goals!
Oh dear, this means we need to put in some more enemy variants and transformations! In our original draft we had ideas for each realm, and then cut it down to 2 per realm. In the gardens, that meant we had Doll/Vinethrall. Now we’ll have to put in some of those ideas, that means you get more cool enemies and transformations to enjoy!
Other Development Stuff
I’m going to be working on optimizing and testing the subtexture improvements for a little while before I get back to work on chapter 2. The engine improvements will come to RoP during its next update, and also be added to WoR since it’s the same engine (hooray).
Unfortunately Urimas got injured so we’re going to be a bit behind on sprites (again) but he’s good at making up for lost time. We also have some (mostly) complete talk sprites so that will be on this week’s bonus stuff, courtesy of Koops!
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
The support was kind of overwhelming and blew right past our first set of stretch goals, so now we’re on to the second set!
It was quite stunning to see this much support! I can’t wait to start making this game so you can all play it!
If you missed out or just want to read what’s on the KS page, it’s right here.
Witch Hunter Izana v1.26 Released
A fairly minor patch that fixes some problems with the options menu and mistranslated text. Also adds functionality for resetting display names during costume setting, which allows mods to change the display names of characters.
Play with new glass-transformations made by db_Palette (I love you) (Mega.nz / Mediafire) or change the ghost transformation into the maid ghosts from RoP by Xandra! (I also love you) (Mega.nz / Mediafire) These will be uploaded to Steam shortly as well!
Bonus image:
The Development (of Runes of Pandemonium)
At long last I have completed the interiors, barring the two interiors I don’t have tiles for (Urimas is making them as I type this). That means the map work for the next update is done, so I’ve decided my goal is to get the raptor TF and quest all sorted out next. I should also have (most of) the resources needed for the Kitsune quest, though a few talk sprites are missing. Hopefully those will get ready soon.
Stinkehund has been working on some backgrounds for the peaks of Trafal, where if you head to the top of Mt. Itoi you’ll be able to see much of Trannadar as well as the Deadlands area near Trafal. Meanwhile, if you’re on the Dragonspine Bridge you’ll be able to see most of the Old Capitol Grounds. Breathtaking!
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
We’re doing pre-production work right now, getting the game’s story locked up, figuring out our asset requirements, and possibly soon, me making the proper 3D editor. Some major characters will be getting the more-proper 3D treatment too, because you all knew you wanted low-poly retro Fluffs in your game.
Meanwhile, BlueLily has been getting some things ready. Behold, the chess pieces! This is the Bishop for the Black team.
And here we have the extremely dangerous Queen for the White Team. Don’t underestimate her because she’s cute and a little rubbery, she’s basically a boss and can whallop your team. And if that happens…
Alia has been turned into a Knight piece! This is actually one of the sponsored transformation sets, it has its own encounter area and boss battles. I trust I won’t need to teach you all how to play Chess here, you can just use firewave and icebolt to take these guys down.
Ah, but who is Alia?
Want to read up on the game’s cast? All the profiles are on the Kickstarter page, go check it out!
I also feel compelled to correct some misconceptions about Chris’ favourite animals. The plushie TF for them will be this adorable patchwork duck :3
Okay, one last little treat before I go back to the normal update. While wandering around in the dungeon, you might get calls on the walkie talkie from Sable (bottom right), Alia’s band manager and fortunate survivor, giving you tips and also keeping you up to date with what’s going on back at the hub. You might also get them from Fluffs, but she’s probably just advertising sales like she doesn’t know what spam is. Or maybe she invented spam calls in ancient Mesopotamia.
These little conversations may occur randomly and can add a lot to the characterization, and will change depending on the order you play the game in – or if you join a witch. Fluffs still likes the colour of your money, after all.
We now return to your regularly scheduled development update.
Coding and Stuff for Runes of Pandemonium
I am like 2-3 maps away from finishing the maps needed for the next update. I was having trouble with some of the areas of the Dormine Aqueduct but I got a burst of inspiration so I think the final set of maps there will be really cool. Then I just need to make the spa area, which I have decided is going to feature a goddamn MINIGAME. What is wrong with me? I don’t know!
The raptor TF is also written and I have contracted Dias to get the TF comic under production. Hopefully both the new TFs will have their comics ready before launch.
I’m going to try to knock out the maps ASAP, might not work on the minigame immediately. You’ll earn a Skill Catalyst if you get a good enough score and I want a stupid bonus image where Sanya high-fives Raelynn (for making her a ton of money).
I also really want to get started on the 3D editor for WoR but, alas, my obligations are to get the next RoP update out ASAP SO PEOPLE LEAVE ME ALONE.
Also there’s gonna be new hunting mechanics in the Old Capitol Grounds :3
Wherein I Answer Questions
“Hey Salty what’s with the ‘Reveal’ button there?” It apparently lets you see traces of who sent something anonymously, a feature I honestly don’t want because you should be able to ask questions anonymously! Get rid of that!
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
I keep forgetting to post the June Budget Report, so now I have posted the June Budget Report. You can now not look at it.
Coding and Whatnot
Two more estates to go! Mapping for the next update is coming along well despite all the things that keep getting in my way. The WoR Kickstarter will be launching next week as well so get excited!
The Jenveld and Dormine estates need to be finished, as well as a few minor interiors, and then the maps are complete. I expect to start commissioning the TF comics this week, and maybe I’ll get the Raptor quest done soon.
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
Yep, the next Tales of Strings story is out. This is the first in a series I’m writing about a sentai team, the Knights of Justice and their struggles against the villainous True Path that loves brainwashing people into animal-human hybrids! Yeah, every entry includes TF, what kind of writer do you think I am? Big thanks to BlueLily who was basically the inspiration behind the whole series, I can’t stop writing about these heroic five.
You can check it out on Itch.io, or if you’re a patron and over the past 3 months have contributed over 10$, send me a DM on patreon and I’ll line up a copy. We also accept cat photos and poetry if money is tight, I just want more people to read my stories damn it. Please keep in mind Lily gets half of all the revenue so if you like his art you’re supporting it!
Ravenbrook!
Things have calmed down on the other fronts so, if everything goes well, the Witches of Ravenbrook Kickstarter will be launching in two weeks. I wanted one week but apparently it takes time to verify bank information, who knew. More on that when it launches obviously.
Game Development, Madness
In addition to getting all the KS stuff ready, I have resumed map work and completed some of the interiors. I am currently working on the Grand Imperial Hotel, which is both an important place where NPCs hang out and also a dungeon where you fight Orc Footballers. Less dangerous and more rowdy than their WHI counterparts, Miss Kigslap is at her wits end with these rough and tumble boyz.
I also completed Mt. Itoi in northeast Trafal, which means the only remaining maps are the hotel dungeon, the Dormine Estate, and the Jenveld Estate.
I also have Mario writing up the two TF sequences that are definitely going to be in the next release, Raccoon and Raptor. I really want to squeeze Kitsune in but there are some challenges on that one, it’s a very long quest chain that will take you all across the Old Capitol Grounds. Hopefully the TF comic pages will be ready by release.
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
I have completed the NPCs and examinables for areas that are not Poterup village, and am now working on Poterup. There are a LOT of NPCs and subplots and topics and stuff in Poterup so this will take a while. Remember when it took me like a week to make the shopping part in Regulus and it was so worth it? Now that but it has foxes.
Once that’s done, it’s time to start on the big raptor quest and maybe some of the other area quests. I really want to get the kitsune TF and questline into the next update because I know people want that one a lot but there’s so much to do in the Old Capitol Grounds!
WHI Passes 1500 Sales, Bitbucket is Now Public
Yep. In fact the original “Public Assets” goal was 5000 sales but people keep asking me for image refs and stuff so here it is. There is still a bunch of new stuff coming to WHI. A new pack-in mod with a new playable character, some new areas added in a free DLC, male main character options, and voice acting update so you can hear Izana howl like a wolf.
Now yes I recognize that at this point you could technically compile all the assets for the game and use a compiled copy of the also-public Starlight Engine to get the game entirely for free. Please don’t do that, this game does help pay my rent. Also I’m sure there are pirates out there who have done the hard work for you anyway.
Link to the bitbucket. You can use the assets here for promotion or even borrow them for your own projects, so long as you link back to Bottled Starlight and don’t attempt to take credit for making them. Have fun!
by https://www.instagram.com/stamlex/ (Note: Izuna would never become corrupted she’s too much of a goody two shoes. Best I can do is she writes a gossip article)
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
And there’s always Our Discord. You can shout at Salty *in person*.
You can ask us anonymous question on Whisp.sh. If you’ve ever wanted to get smarmy answers to questions, or just know more lore, that’s the place!
We also have a Wiki! We’d appreciate it greatly if people keep it maintained for us. :3
Bottled Starlight Games:
Runes of Pandemonium, the big adventure TF RPG, always free on Steam and Itch.io.
Witch Hunter Izana, a battle-TF RPG. Available on Steam or Itch.io.
Witches of Ravenbrook, a battle-TF dungeon-crawler. The prototype is out now and free on Itch.io.
String Tyrant, a survival horror game, is on Steam and Itch.io.
Other Bottled Starlight Stuff
Salty writes a book series, with audiobooks and illustrations, called Tales of Strings. Instruments is out now on Itch.io. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io! Spiderweb Theory is now on Itch.io! Urban Explorers is now on Itch.io!
Mario is currently working on bringing the Pandemonium story series to Itch.
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
Map glue work is complete, which means I am now going through all the maps and adding NPCs and examinables. In fact, I wrote a bit more about this further down the post! It’s not exciting but it’s fun!
There’s a lot, lot, LOT of NPCs in the Old Capitol Grounds are, it’s very inhabited and has a lot to see and do. It might take me a big chunk of June just to get all of this work done. I haven’t even started on the interiors yet!
Urimas is working on some NPCs as well as some sprites for an experiment I’d like to do at some point. I’ll show those off when they are done.
On Maps and NPCs
So here we have a section of the Old Capitol Grounds, this is what a map starts to look like as NPCs and examinables are populated. The red boxes are things you can examine, the blue boxes are path nodes, and the NPCs are the NPCs.
NPCs have a sprite sheet that is sized differently from the tile sheet, it’s 16×32 instead of 16×16, and they are placed on the object layer. NPCs also have to have special properties set.
Most of the properties are fairly self-explanatory. The Dialogue property is the file that gets called when you talk to an NPC. The type is “Position”, the engine uses this to figure out where an NPC is going to be spawned in the map’s constructor and all the other properties are optional.
I’ve found a system that mostly works for me, there is always a tradeoff between simplicity of the code and flexibility to make more advanced scenes and NPCs. The sheep and chicken NPCs are spawned and set to wander around, no biggie there. The farmer NPCs are spawned, but also create a parallel script. Whenever you walk across a trigger or examine something, a script is called, but this script stops gameplay. Parallel scripts run but don’t stop gameplay, allowing NPCs to walk around as though they are controlled by a cutscene. These constructors just specify which farmer uses which script.
I try to automate these things as much as possible. The script specifies which NPC, a walk speed, and then the nodes the NPC uses. For convenience I name the nodes A0, A1, A2 etc. so that FarmerA uses the A nodes, I do this for enemies as well. The rest is automated by a function, so when you see these in game, the farmers will be walking at random between the nodes. Done!
The key here is making things as easy as possible since I’m going to have to do this a lot. A *lot*, as mentioned above, there’s a lot of NPCs in this area. Having NPCs pathing around really makes even a mundane area come alive and be interesting to explore.
Writing examinables is very easy, just get really stupid with it.
That’s all for now! Maybe in a month I’ll be working on enemies (or maybe not) and I’ll do another one.
It’s Time For ANSWERS
(Edit from Marionette: Don’t take this as gospel just yet. Salty and I will be having discussions on this travesty of “mermaids get legs.”)
by https://bsky.app/profile/kirilewd.bsky.social. There’s a NSFW version of this but Dot isn’t wearing a bikini in that one and let me tell you that pup is CAKED so I can’t show it here.
Oh my god this post is more art than post please send help.
The Links No Please No
Where to find us:
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
And there’s always Our Discord. You can shout at Salty *in person*.
You can ask us anonymous question on Whisp.sh. If you’ve ever wanted to get smarmy answers to questions, or just know more lore, that’s the place!
We also have a Wiki! We’d appreciate it greatly if people keep it maintained for us. :3
Bottled Starlight Games:
Runes of Pandemonium, the big adventure TF RPG, always free on Steam and Itch.io.
Witch Hunter Izana, a battle-TF RPG. Available on Steam or Itch.io.
Witches of Ravenbrook, a battle-TF dungeon-crawler. The prototype is out now and free on Itch.io.
String Tyrant, a survival horror game, is on Steam and Itch.io.
Other Bottled Starlight Stuff
Salty writes a book series, with audiobooks and illustrations, called Tales of Strings. Instruments is out now on Itch.io. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io! Spiderweb Theory is now on Itch.io! Urban Explorers is now on Itch.io!
Mario is currently working on bringing the Pandemonium story series to Itch.
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
Pandemonium Development 