Inky is adding a few more “angry” poses since Fluffs does have more to her character than bemusement and speaking in infuriating riddles.
And as a bit of a preview: One of the enemy types, the fairies, doesn’t do conventional TFs. They put the party into a deep sleep. Combined with sleepwear to make sure you don’t wake up, and maybe a sleepwalking party member will become an enemy? Who knows!
In other development news, I’ve finished adding in the various new sprites, portraits, characters and the like for the chapter 1/2/5 update. I’m currently working on the re-balance of chapter 2 items. You’ll now be upgrading items with Miso instead of crafting them wholesale, so look for that in the next update.
Fan Art
By Light! If you need a savior, look no further than your nearest kitsune!
By ButterflyLatte! I like to think the cute moment in an h-game affect people just as much as the sexy moments. Maybe I’m right.
Whispers
The Links
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
Version 1.25 of WHI is out, featuring a bunch of bugfixes including some all-important crash fixes. There’s still a bunch of small things to go for the JP translation but we’re on it.
I’m also now working on the Chapter 1 Goodies Update! It will feature a new “bad end”, some new sprites and a new NPC, and some multi-colored slime costumes! I am essentially clearing up my backlog of stuff and will post that as an update. After that, it will be the Chapter 5 Goodies Update which is mostly Urimas’ idle animations.
Budget Report
I make these budget reports periodically so you know where the money is going. Nobody reads them but if you did, you’d know it goes mostly to the artists. To draw. Art.
WHI Future Reveal?
Yep. Don’t know if this will be out this year, but it’s on my to-do list. There are two more free updates planned for WHI, and this is one of them.
When they will happen depends on how my schedule looks. If the next chapter 2 update comes out in like November I might spend the remaining time on making a WHI update before I have to move over to working on Witches of Ravenbrook. If it comes out in like June then I’d prefer to try to get two updates out in 2025 for RoP.
Fan Art!
By DinoRaye! I want a vacation, let me go to the beach please.
The Link Pile
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
Witch Hunter Izana v1.22 is up, with a cool new loading screen by Urimas, some bugfixes, and you can finally get the Hard Mode achievement for beating the game! Xandra has also been added to the credits and Reavered gets a mention for the JP translation.
I will be updating the Paletteforms and Randomizer mod soon, likely tomorrow. Paletteforms is getting a new form and some minor fixes, Randomizer got some bugfixes.
After THAT, at LONG LAST, I will be doing the next RoP patch. This will actually be me adding in the big pile of stuff the artists have finished. New costumes! Sanya talk sprites! TF sequence comics!
There will be a WHI announcement NEXT WEEK but not this week. Also budget report NEXT WEEK. Things are getting exciting!
Fan Art
I can’t stop it they just keep appearing in my inbox. (By K)
We didn’t have any werecat emojis on the discord server so now we do! Thanks, Toffee.
Whispering
The Links
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
I know how much you people love my coding updates. I’m working on the next WHI patch, cleaning up a few of the bugs still left from last patch. We will also be getting a loading screen (at last), another form added to the PaletteForms mod, a Randomizer mod update, a bunch of translation improvements, and next week… A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT it’s very secret you’ll have to wait.
Urimas is still working on this one, looks pretty sharp.
Once all these WHI patches are finished, it’s back to work on RoP. It took a month! There was a lot to do!
Fan Art
FUCK YEAH by Aza. Journalism can save the day and if that doesn’t work beat the shit out of it.
DOOMED ROMANCE by Flower :3 I swear the Mary fan art makes me feel terrible, the story really doesn’t work out for her. I can’t bring myself to end it tragically! Aieee!
Whispering
The Link Pile
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
This week we got a WHI patch, poll results, fan art, and more!
Witch Hunter Izana v1.21
A bunch of bugfixes for things reported this week, such as skills not appearing or having the wrong descriptions. I’ve also finished the backend GUI overhaul, so now I can add cool new features. Note: This will be up in a few hours I have to make a build for it :3 Compiling and releasing across three operating systems and two storefronts takes time!
For example, the crafting menu now shows materials right next to the item, and there is a toggle-able absolute/relative stats display on the right side. It also now shows the gem slots in the newly created item.
I want to rework the gemcutter UI but I didn’t have the time for it this week. There may still be some bugs in the UI, and this week I’ll be cleaning those up and working on memory optimizations for the game.
Naturally, when I do the RoP update these will also be applied. I intend on overhauling chapter 2’s crafting system based on feedback from WHI so look forward to that next month.
WoR / Gender / TGTF Poll
We got 143 replies
This is the bedrock of most of our games here at Bottled Starlight. It’s also most of what underlays the TF community, so no big surprise there’s a lot of MtF support. What is surprising is that 44% would play the game if there wasn’t MtF.
The distribution is different for FtM. First and most obvious the number of people who wouldn’t play the game at all is far lower, and the dislike margin is bigger. If the game was exclusively FtM we’d lose 20% of the audience, whereas it was under 1% for the MtF crowd.
A much, much higher percentage than expected are okay with both and want options. This is very interesting, very very interesting.
This one had an “other” option so I have summarized the results on the bottom. Don’t you love how google forms just always does a pie chart? And how it runs off the edges so you have to edit it when it takes up like 1/3rd of the screen? There’s probably some undocumented keypress somewhere to fix it too, the fuckers.
Anyway, there are two takeaways here: First, a lot of people like it when the entire body changes and not just clothes and whatnot, and the second is that a sizeable number like both. Not all of the “other” picks were “both” but I would estimate it’s about equal to the red block (Boys in dresses).
All of this taken together is a lot of food for thought amongst the artists. Will we provide gender swap options for everyone, even though that increases the art load? Will butler dolls be a thing? Are you going to get handsome incubi? Maybe! We’ll discuss it for WoR and you’ll find out when we do the Kickstarter launch. For RoP we’re already doing some more masculine stuff in chapter 2 so we don’t need a big change of direction there.
Fan Art
This is my favourite piece of Mary fan art. Only two pieces ever asked what comes after the game’s ending! By Nic.
Seems someone fell in love with Cassandra. By Arisu. I tried to talk her out of it because Cassandra has sort of a doomed story about her and that just made it worse.
Lore ascended by Coco. Lore has taken over as the Witch Queen and enslaved the others to do her bidding. Hey at least she’ll turn you into something cute when she takes over.
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
That’s right, after months of work and balancing and a lot of crying, Hard Mode is now on 1.20 of Witch Hunter Izana. Available on your nearest Steam and Itch.io updates, as well as being on the secret patron page if you still use that.
In addition, there are now some new mods. PaletteForms is updated with a new transformation, AltDragons lets you use some different dragon portraits by Xandra, and an anonymous user made a Randomizer mod that scrambles which enemies you fight and messes with your charms.
The Steam workshop works as a central repository, but I have made the mods usable by Itch/Direct players through the public folders (Mediafire / Mega.nz).
There’s going to be bugfix patches applied to everything above over the coming days, of course.
What does Hard Mode have? All of the charms now give special abilities when equipped, you have three charm slots, and all the enemies are now tougher and have more abilities that can screw with you. You’ll need to use your wits to get a leg up on the monsters and bosses, and really show you’ve mastered the game’s combat system.
So What Now?
I’m going to spend the next week or so fixing up the WHI release and finishing the GUI overhaul. I’ve been doing a lot of work on the backend which will eventually result in reducing the amount of memory everything uses, but it hasn’t paid off yet as I’m more focused on just getting this stuff out. The Steam stuff hasn’t been helping since it’s a nonstop headache.
After that it’s time for chapter 2. Koops is making Sanya’s next form designs and Chic is helping out with some of the talk sprites. Hooray!
Whispers
Fan Art
An imagination of what 55 was like as a human, by Coco!
YOU PEOPLE ARE MAKING ME FEEL BAD THAT STRING TYRANT WAS A HORROR GAME. By Dani. (This might also be my favourite MaryxJessie thing ever???)
Ongoing Poll!
The TFTG poll from last week is still going! If you haven’t voted yet, you don’t have to. Do what you want.
Results next week!
The Link Pile
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
WHI Hard Mode is complete and in testing. I am also currently working on finishing the backend UI update I mentioned last year, should be finished this week. If nothing bad happens, the WHI Hard Mode update will launch next Monday!
Everyone here at the studio is back to work and gearing up for the next chapter 2 update. A new TF comic is on the way, more sprites are coming, and WHI will be getting a mod update too.
Witches of Ravenbrook: The Moon Maidens
Behold, the Moon Maidens. Followers of the Witch of Sloth, they guard the night and can put their enemies to sleep, or inflict waking dreams on you.
However, the Witch of Sloth… can’t be found. The Moon Coven is a group of Moon Maidens you will be able to find in the hub, and they need your help. They know there is a Witch of Sloth, but they don’t know who she is, or where. Of course, the Moon Coven have their own goals, believing their favoured witch should be the dominant one and not the Witch Queen. Your goals of defeating the Witch Queen happen to line up with theirs, for now, but can you trust them?
Of course, you’ll also be able to face them in battle. And you know what that means…
Moon Maidens are similar to Kitsunes except they are a Chinese take on the similar mythical creature. Personally I love the hell out of the designs and color choices, and can’t wait to put them in the game. Plus, now you know how we’re going about making the NPC groups. It won’t just be rescued students, there are other witch covens out there with their own goals who will give you tasks. Some of them (all of them) don’t like each other. Maybe you can join them?
Credit for the covens idea goes to InkyFluffs who talked me out of a series of much worse ideas :3
TG TF Polling!
Witches of Ravenbrook has added a lot of new followers and fans, so we’re interested in where the audience stands on the TG aspect of the TF. While I really like MtF myself, I recognize that not everyone shares my particular tastes.
As an example, here’s Chris after the transformation in the restaurant. I asked Inky to make a version for both, for demonstration purposes. The game does have a finite budget, and adding more costumes does take artist time and coding time (plus the possibility of bugs) so it’s not trivial to do this. However, if the audience feels really strongly about it, we may change course. Our current plan was to do a sometimes-TG, where masculine characters (not just Chris, there are still the sponsored characters, and some NPCs!) are TG’d depending on the form. In the dolls case (and the moon maidens) it was always feminizing but for the restaurant, a masculine variant is conceivable.
As such I’m going to run a poll. Let us know what you think! I’ll report the results in a few weeks depending on when people stop answering it.
Sponsor Stuff is Still Ongoing!
In case you missed it, the sponsorships for the game are still ongoing. We have some really cool entries on there, and also have a lottery that you can enter if you’re strapped for cash! The lottery is free to enter.
We’ll be picking the sponsors probably sometime in March (maybe April depending on how the chapter 2 stuff shakes out) so get those ideas in.
Questions, Answers, WHISPERS
Fan Art!
By Xandra. How do you even explain this one? A ghost maid from another world dressing up for a holiday that doesn’t exist on her planet, but she’s mixing together the reindeer part and the christmas tree part and the ugly sweater part?
The Link Pile
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
I was away for the last while but I still got some work done. WHI’s hard mode is implemented and proofread, major design by Ack. I’ve done the backend updates and worked out some of the kinks, now it just needs to be tested extensively. This means Hard Mode might launch within a week or two!
There’s also some mod updates and stuff coming, but Hard Mode is my current focus. If everything goes well all three of the WHI updates will launch at the exact same time!
Next week I’ll be showing off some more Ravenbrook stuff. For now, there was an avalanche of fan art because someone got “Mary Christmas” into their head and never looked back. They didn’t even apologize for it.
I can’t pick just one as my favourite argh this is what I get for taking time off. Well no more!
QUESTIONS? Answers.
It got cut off but the last one says “There’s no monstergirl to monstergirl TF”
The Link Pile
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
That’s right, it’s out! You can get it on Itch.io! Thanks to everyone for making it possible, I’ve got more stories in the tank too.
As before, if you’re a patron over 15$ over the course of October to December, you can get a free copy. I can send itch.io keys, please contact me via the patreon message thing or Discord if that’ll take too long. The holidays are coming up so sorry if I’m slow.
Other Development
I am working on Hard Mode, and I have done the mod update stuff (currently in testing). You will be getting an updated mod from db_palette, including a new monster form. I want to bundle this in with the Hard Mode update if I can so I hope I won’t keep you waiting too long. The first release will be a public beta, because Hard Mode is going to require a lot of testing to get it tuned right.
Once that’s done, the JP translation should hopefully be completed soon. It might also get bundled in with the next WHI release. I’m also going to be doing some (boring) backend work to reduce the game’s memory and hard drive footprints by unloading data not used in WHI (the game is technically a mod of RoP so there’s some junk that gets loaded but never used). I also have to finish the UI overhaul. Fun stuff ahead.
Whispers…
Fan Art
Great Kumquat is going to start a skitterer band. By Toffee.
They don’t know what the holiday is! It doesn’t even snow on the moon! You’re insane, Xandra! Insane!
The Link Pile
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. You can get the audiobook on Amazon as well. Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
You can get the Pandemonium novel series by Bottled Starlight writer MarioneTTe on Amazon. Coming (at some point) to Itch.io once the exclusivity deals expire -_-
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
Pandemonium Development 
