Development Update: August 28th, 2023

Very brief update post this week. I’m back from vacation so obviously I didn’t do a whole lot and am getting caught up on the bugs I need to fix for WHI. The Steam Demo was approved and I set it for release but it does not appear to be on the search bar yet (how annoying) but otherwise things are going smoothly.

Urimas has to polish off the last few sprite sheets but he has sworn that he’ll get it done. Koops and Chicken are off on their own vacation so it’s mostly Giga and Wispy doing the art.

I also didn’t have time to do any curious cat stuff so that will all be done next week.

Parsley the maid doll, aka best girl, by HadezMuze!

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update: August 21st, 2023

I’m out of town this week, so a very brief text-only update. Sorry, no curiouscat or anything, that will resume next week.

WHI’s demo is now out, you can find it on the Itch.io page or the TFGS page. The Steam version hasn’t been approved yet, sorry.

I need a few more sprite sheets and the game is ready for release. A few more bugs have been found for me to fix when I get home.

Get hyped for WHI’s full release in September!

Development Update: August 14th, 2023

The game’s demo will become public on August 20th. That’s this week! Woah! It contains slightly less story than the prototype (the demo ends when you enter the crypt, not when you beat Clementine) but considerably more TFs and bad ends due to the optional bits and enemies you can encounter early (and get totally outclassed by).

The game will also have a Soundtrack available for purchase on Steam, for 5 bucks. You can get high-quality versions of the game’s songs, and the proceeds go to DurrDiss and the studio so we can make more games.

I’ve been polishing up WHI for release. New icons, new victory lines, tons of bug fixes, maybe a new secret or two put into the maps, and of course typos and other little fixes. Urimas is going to get me all the remaining sprites VERY SOON OR I’LL KILL HIM, meanwhile our artists are still making more stuff for RoP. Patrons get to see more as bonus stuff!

One thing I want to do, if we have the art budget for it, is to include a TF sequence of someone else in chapter 1. Some random guy is going to get turned into a monstergirl while Mei watches! But what will he turn into? I’ll make a poll for it next week and 5$ patrons can vote on it.

This both serves to give the game more TGTF appeal (TG is implied in a lot of it but we don’t usually depict it because it’s past-tense, with one very notable exception) and possibly tease you for future monster types since the chapter 3 monsters may well be on the poll. I bet mermaids are going to sweep.

I am in love with the design. This is a modified Secrebot, now a maid robot, and formerly an unfortunate human named Night. This piece was made by our new artist Giga and commissioned by JustinKombat. Give Giga money, his art is good!

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!
Witch Hunter Izana’s forum page will launch alongside the demo.

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Witch Hunter Izana’s Steam Page! Go wishlist it! (Itch.io page comes later)

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update: August 7th, 2023

In case you missed it, some people were having trouble getting their Patreon payments to go through, falsely being flagged as fraud. Patreon’s official guidance on the matter is to “keep trying”. If that’s you and you keep getting declined, please remember that you can “Follow” to keep getting updates. You can even follow this very blog!

That’s right, the game is now done. It wasn’t done before? Nope, because while I had completed all the mandatory content, I often have to cut things before the game goes out. Not this time, WHI has everything in it. Some things got reworked based on tester feedback so you can still ask me about what stuff didn’t make it into the final game when it comes out, but I am happy to say everything I wanted made it in.

It’s now bug fixes and polish work. Just yesterday the testers caught a bug that deletes your achievements, so trust me. This part is important.

Remember Peak Freaks? The hopping puzzle game I made with Chic? Yeah it’s out. It’s also free. You can go get it on Itch.io.

My attention is on WHI right now, but it should be noted that our artists are still working on the Chapter 1 update. Chicken is working on Cavecrawler Sanya and Koops is getting Izuna a finalized battle portrait which is very cool. Giga also delivered a new Mannequin Mei piece based on feedback and patrons get to see it this week!

Hey remember how we have a new artist? He’s on the commission info page. That includes some of his portfolio!

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!
Witch Hunter Izana’s forums is “Coming Soon”.

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Witch Hunter Izana’s Steam Page! Go wishlist it! (Itch.io page comes later)

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update: July 31st, 2023

All that remains for WHI is to get the achievements, quality-of-life, and a bit of postgame stuff in it, plus the developer’s island (aka the interactive credits) and the game is ready to ship. I’m killing myself to get it done in time so if you see a trail of blood in the hallway, there’s no aliens or whatever, that’s just me.

Patrons will be doing a vote this week to determine the art direction of an upcoming piece for chapter 1. Don’t miss it!

I may have gotten roped into doing a cross promotion with another game developer. This is what, the third time? We got some cute girl images in their game, so they get a blurb on the blog. That’s fair, right?

Fresh Start is a life sim game focused on the voluntary feminization of the player. It features many options giving agency to the player, with choices that truly matter and extensive customization options ranging from clothes, to hair, and body shape.

  • Customize your character: Choose from 234 unique clothing items and wearable toys.
  • Extensive makeup system: 39 makeup items to doll up!
  • Explore the three districts, with over 25 locations to choose from?
  • Browse the web: 6 websites for you to use. (Do this a lot, trust me)
  • Be a gas station clerk, a cam model, an actor, or any of the 10 jobs available.
  • Male by day, sissy by night: You aren’t railroaded into full-time feminization.

So what are you waiting for? Start a new life!

Silly bonus Pic:

You see why I had to do the cross promotion.

Courtest of JustinKombat, created by Takazumishan, Izana gets turned into a statue by a demon! I really can’t get enough of that petrified pose, something about it is so potent.

Psst there’s a bonus pic too.

And then we have two Parsleys by HadezMuze. Yes I know she’s a character in a chapter that hasn’t even been released yet but it’s canon damn you. She’s in the game!

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!
Witch Hunter Izana’s forums is “Coming Soon”.

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Witch Hunter Izana’s Steam Page! Go wishlist it! (Itch.io page comes later)

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update: July 24th, 2023

Development Stuff

I’m packing up the WHI release to send to Steam for approval, and fixing various bugs as they come up. Urimas is spriting, and Koops got us a lovely cat and Hund is working on a big environmental piece.

This cat appears on the achievements screen for WHI meaning that all the Bottled Starlight team members get to appear in the credits because they all technically did something!

Only a few things left to go before the game is totally done and polished, but there’s always more polish that can be added.

Fan Art

Parsley, a canon character from chapter 4, rendered by Hadezmuze.

And Lotta getting a headpat from Parsley, without killing her! Truly cats are unknowable.

Curious Unknowable

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!
Witch Hunter Izana’s forums is “Coming Soon”.

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Witch Hunter Izana’s Steam Page! Go wishlist it! (Itch.io page comes later)

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update: July 17th, 2023

The WHI Trailer

Note: You probably need to go to Youtube to see this as they marked it as Adult Only, which it isn’t? Thanks, Youtube.

You can also see it on the Steam store page. Go wishlist the game!

Budget Report

It’s July so I’ve posted a studio budget report. Why didn’t I post this earlier in the month? I forgot.

I’ve spent about 3000 dollars of MY MONEY on this game (Studio members other than myself get paid their usual wages instead of it being out of the game’s profit) so it’s going to be good, I guarantee it.

Fan Art!

HadezMuze drawing a Jeanne DnD NPC caricature! I wonder who his favourite character is? Maybe it’s Sanya. Or Zeke.

And we also have a bee transformation by Luuco! I love the bee designs a lot and can’t wait to see more of them when it’s time for chapter 3.

Other Development Stuff

I now have most of the sprites and tiles I need for the WHI finale and have put them in. Probably another two days of spriting and a bit of music from DrDiss, and the game is done. I’m currently going back through the game (again) and adding secrets and new areas that will smooth the difficulty curve out, and features the bug testers asked for (such as the ability to break down Adamantite. Which can easily be ported over to RoP!).

Patrons get to see a new piece by Giga this week, which will be in the chapter 1 update. Get psyched!

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!
Witch Hunter Izana’s forums is “Coming Soon”.

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Witch Hunter Izana’s Steam Page! Go wishlist it! (Itch.io page comes later)

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update: July 10th, 2023

Meet Giga, our New Artist

Bursting out of the gate with this excellent Kitsune Sanya piece, we finally found a new artist to work on the game! He’s already made a few more pieces but I’ll keep those Patron-only for a little while. He’ll be both making character art and talk sprites, helping to pick up the various slacks we have going around.

Other Development Stuff

I’m still killing myself trying to make WHI as good a game as possible. Urimas hurt his arm so I have to pull in some help to get the sprites done, all the voice acting is in, I’m fixing bugs and editing balance all over the place. It’s a mess.

Koops is working on some achievement stuff, Wispy is updating the talk sprites for some of the chapter 2 characters, and Hund is making a nice finale image for WHI.

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!
Witch Hunter Izana’s forums is “Coming Soon”.

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update: July 3rd, 2023

Coding and Stuff

I’m presently going through the voice acting (yes, there is voice acting in Witch Hunter Izana) and getting all the clips cut up and ready. Otherwise I’m cleaning up the remaining bugs and getting ready for the last round of content additions. Hund is making an ending image, Chicken got sick (again) and Urimas made a fish. Glub blub.

We hired a new artist but his first piece isn’t quiiite ready so you’ll have to wait until next week!

Witch Hunter Izana Steam Page!

It’s under review. Should be done soon, I’ll post a link next week so you can wishlist the game. It was probably dumb to send it for review on the 4th of July weekend right? Oh well.

Patreon Rebranding!

I rebranded the patreon to Bottled Starlight since it’s mostly a one-cat show (that cat is Niko) but we like to pretend we’re a team working together.

You can find the new patreon here.

Curious Cat

The Niko Links

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!
Witch Hunter Izana’s forums is “Coming Soon”.

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update: June 26th, 2023

Patreon Site Update

Patreon is updating a bunch of sizing stuff so now is as good a time as any to rebrand it to Bottled Starlight. You can take a look at the new images courtesy of Stinkehund. It’s a WIP and Patreon doesn’t really do the preview thing so whatever, deal with it!

The patreon will also be changing URLs from Saltyjustice to BottledStarlight at the start of July. Update those links *long sigh noise*.

Development Stuff

Remember Urimas? He’s making sprites. Hund is making a finale background for WHI, and I sent off a test build on Saturday. I’ve already fixed dozens of bugs and made tons of small balance changes, so that’s going pretty well. The testers think the game is “fun” and “good”.

Expect a trailer by the end of the month, followed by the launch of the Steam and Itch.io pages so you can wishlist the game.

After that it’s back to the Chapter 1 Update.

Niko

Honestly I could just end the post here. Who’s going to keep reading after this masterpiece?

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!
Witch Hunter Izana’s forums is “Coming Soon”.

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!