Tag: gaming

Witch Hunter Izana v1.20: Hard Mode! And Mod Update!

SaltyJustice

Updated WHI is now on Itch.io and Steam!

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!

Okay Skitterers are scary again. By Meatworld.

Daaaaamn nice Mary design by Aki.

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!

If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.

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).

Harpy New Year

SaltyJustice

Development

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.

A werecat by Coco!

Did you think I was kidding?

I wasn’t (by Dazzlekeith)

This one is the cutest.

It keeps happening. I told you.

Don’t have a party without me!

I started with zero witty quips for all these wonderful Mary pieces and I ran out long ago.

You thought it would ever stop and you were wrong.

And I saved the best for last.

By Dias.

AND A LATE ENTRY.

By db_Palette!

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!

If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.

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).

Development Update: December 16th, 2024

SaltyJustice

Tales of Strings: Passed Hand

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!

If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.

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).

Development Update: December 9th, 2024

SaltyJustice

Coding and Stuff

Argh

I have been working my butt off trying to get workshop support ready. The long and short of it is that it keeps crashing due to Steam related interface stuff, the other parts are ready to go. I think I’m going to have to ask the Valve devs for help on this one because it’s driving me nuts.

I will post a Witches of Ravenbrook update later today, just some leftover bugfixes. In addition, BadIron posted a guide to getting the game to run on Android using an emulator.

You can read it here. If you’re using a tablet this might help! I will add this to the Itch.io page during the update as well.

In addition, the AltDragons mod is done and ready for WHI, and hopefully I get the workshop going again so I can update the PaletteForms mod and you can all enjoy it on Steam. Seriously this API stuff is driving me up the wall.

Next week I will be looking into getting Hard Mode ready for release, any additional touches needed for the JP translation, and I’m working on a release optimizer so WHI and WoR will have smaller memory footprints. So much to do.

Tales of Strings 2?

It’s not quite ready yet but will almost certainly be done next week. The audiobook is completed, all images are done, it just needs to be formatted for ADX.

ToS 3 and 4 are also in the “get an artist to do their thing” stage.

Christmas Comes Early

Fan Art

Mary by BeffKawa! At this point I think people are wanting a String Tyrant sequel.

No seriously. Mary by LightKlok.

Some Darkmatter Fanart by PlainJane!

We have a skitterer problem but this could also count as skeleton fanart? By Coco.

These bits of 90’s anime art of the WoR protagonists done by Coco!

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!

If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.

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.

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).

Witches of Ravenbrook Sponsorship Lottery, Dev Update, Fan Art, Mangostraveganza!

SaltyJustice2 Comments

Sometimes there’s a lot of stuff going on in one week what can I say.

Witches of Ravenbrook Sponsorship Lottery

A very anonymous, very generous sponsor has decreed that there shall be a sponsorship lottery for the game! That’s right, you can make a lottery entry and maybe you’ll be the lucky one with a playable character or transformation!

It’s free to enter so why not roll the dice? You can find more information on the lottery here. You can find the sponsorship document here.

Other Ravenbrook News

We’re currently making lots of cool concepts for upcoming enemies, areas, and forms. I’ve been working on a new patch, there’s a couple bugfixes I want to do. However my main focus this week will be developing ways to reduce the game’s memory footprint by finding redundant bitmaps and removing them from the load chain. When that is ready I will release the next patch and incorporate that into WHI as well.

We’ll be posting concept art for WoR every month or so. Later this month maybe I’ll post some moon maidens!

Development News

I have been killing myself making the JP translation. The good news is that it’s almost ready and highly adaptable, and could even be ported to other games as the basic system is flexible and could be made by fans. I will be making the JP patch available and then update the mod code later this month depending on Holidays.

Internationally renowned artist TheChicMonster happens to really like money so she took up the job of helping out with talk sprites. Here we have Werebat Sanya. Hopefully this will, at long last, solve the talk sprite artist conundrum which has plagued RoP’s development and I can make this filthy, filthy game.

You should go watch the latest Cute Game Club because Chic forced me to play Webfishing with her for like 4 hours.

Fan Art!

Fan art of the restaurant waitress from WoR, and Christine and Sophie as wind-up toys both by Coco!

What if Sophie was a slime, by Hyena Princess. This is a bit too marketable, people are going to want Sophie Beanbag chairs. You ruined me!

This is apparently based on a Skylines thing? By May. Look I don’t play the game but I love the idea of making teeny tiny little pixel characters okay.

Finally some classic beauty! Serenity by PlainJane.

:3 By Sam

You know Pygmalie has killed fewer kids than Ms. Frizzle right? She killed Arnold, he’s dead. By Goopy.

Izuna by Alice! I hate Twitter so here’s a linktree!

Lore is developing quite a following, people like bad girls. Joke’s on you she’s a good guy who fights evil! Suckers!

Whispers

MANGO MANGO MANGO MANGO

Mango is world-famous, she has been called the “cat of all time”.

Born athlete right there.

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!

If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.

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.

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).

Witches of Ravenbrook: Sponsorships, Plans, and More!

SaltyJustice

Quick Development Update

I’ve already issued Patch v1.01, which you can read the patchnotes of on this devlog. I will likely put together another small patch as there are a few more bugs and changes left to handle. I’m also taking note of all the feature requests and suggestions, though the prototype is a prototype so I’m not going to be adding too much more to it. They will definitely make it into the final game, though.

Project Sponsorship and Our Fundraising Plans

Our plan is to run a Kickstarter for Witches of Ravenbrook in 2025, likely in April or May depending on how long it takes to get some things ironed out. In addition, we have some sponsorship slots available, where people can get their characters in the game!

If you want to read more, or apply for such a sponsorship, just check out this document. There are links to all the forms you can fill out.

We will make our decisions on characters, tfs, monsters etc and contact sponsors in March or thereabouts. If you have any questions, ask them in the Itch.io page comment section and I will update the document. You can also ask via our Whispa.sh page if you love character limits.

Don’t worry, I have some additional artists to bring in if the project hits certain funding goals. InkyFluffs will be joined by BlueLily (Bluesky / Furaffinity), who has already started with concept work for the next areas. I have two additional artists available for contract work if needed, plus all the Bottled Starlight team’s support.

Production will likely begin sometime in 2026, I would like to get some major updates to RoP chapter 2 done first. I don’t think I’ll be able to totally complete the chapter but I would like to have lots done so the Starlight artists can catch up while we make WoR.

But you’re not here for that, you’re here for concepts and sneak peeks. Keep in mind that these are concepts are may change before the final release.

Concept for the pixie enemies, they put your party to sleep.

Concept for a plushie TF. This might be a one-off TF or it might be a full 3-stage Influence TF.

The waitresses for Honeybunns’ restaurant have gone through a few iterations. Don’t… drink the milkshake.

That’s all for now. Back to work on the game!

Fan Art!

Mary and Jessie by ButterflyLatte! This might be the cutest depiction of this budding relationship yet. Shame they’re in basically a horror movie.

Lydie by Nic! You know, there is no way Chicken knew how popular these characters were going to be when he designed them. At this point she’s going to get a spin off that becomes more popular than the main game isn’t she.

Mary Joestar by Xandra. Araki, hire me, I’ll write the most insane shit you’ve ever seen. Pygmalie’s stand can turn you into a doll but Mary’s can throw cards it’ll be incredible.

Curious Whispers

Bonus Mango Monday ft. Whiskey.

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!

If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.

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.

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).

Witches of Ravenbrook Prototype Released!

SaltyJustice

Go get it, the prototype is free to play.

I’ll have a more comprehensive post later, right now just play it and I’ll work on a patch to fix the problems that have come up.

If you are a new follower due to WoR and are wondering what is going on: We do a post here every Monday keeping you up to date on what our studio is doing. Next week I will outline our plans for WoR, WHI, RoP and maybe even ToS going forward. Wow we have a lot of games and stuff!

Whispering

Fan Art

Polaris by Glacecup! She’s very popular, it’s because she’s wise and also owns her own house.

PUMPKIN

You people deserve a better class of cat and Pumpkin is here to deliver.

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!

If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.

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.

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).

Development Update: October 7th, 2024

SaltyJustice

Happy Edgar Allen Poe Dead Day!

Chicken’s second (maybe third) favourite author died 175 years ago today. What a handsome fella. Reads about his life oh dear. Oh my. Oh dear. Tuberculosis? Oh my.

We doing Whispa now I guess

Curiouscat is dead so now it’s time to move on. We will now accept anonymous questions from Whispa, a site that seems to have been built for a different purpose but whatever. The other ones I tried didn’t even work half the time for non-obvious reasons.

You can ask us questions right now!

Updates on Ravenbrook

I’ve been killing myself on this thing! The UI is improved and updated, including me forgetting that the vendor UI hadn’t been updated for the new mouse format. Well now it is!

Fluffs has a bunch of silly quotes and will mock you if you can’t afford something. With that, I believe everything except the title screen is done. Title might not get a big improvement until after the prototype.

I’ve also been cleaning up how the game handles events, tagging, loot, and all that stuff.

Inky, meanwhile, is finishing up the remaining player-as-enemy images. I believe there are 5 to go and the title screen, and the art is all ready.

I am thinking an early November release makes the most sense, depending heavily on how well playtesting goes. I think the backend is way more solid than it was for WHI or RoP due to my many investments in code improvements recently, so let’s hope that all goes smoothly.

Anonymous Whispers

If you think for one second I’m not going to post cat pictures in here just because it’s not curiouscat anymore you have never been more wrong and are about to find this out. I assume you read each sentence individually and do not see images before completing each one.

SURPRISE

What The Hell Happened Here

The lasagna, hu hu hu, the lasagna was eaten by a ghost!

For some reason Kumquat did this “MaryThink” icon fan art for String Tyrant.

BigSaltDeluxe drew this accurate representation of Dmitri.

The burger has a GHOST IN IT

Dragor 42 drew a skitterer head! You know, your favourite chapter 1 enemy!

BigSaltDeluxe also drew one!

Anonymous Izuna sketch, made by NOBODY

And lastly, Scarecrow Jeanne by Xandra!

If you’re wondering why there’s so much fan art, it’s because it’s October and it is therefore time to get as much SPOOK as you can. Also Kumquat ran a little contest on Friday only giving away soundtrack keys. Sorry if you missed out but you could maybe go on the discord and get in his face about it.

If you’re an amateur and want to draw some spooky ghosts from chapter 1 as fan art, now is the ideal time. Do it. DO IT.

Brand New Link Pile

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!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Whispa!

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!