indie-games – Pandemonium Development

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

January 14, 2025 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).

Development Update: December 16th, 2024

December 17, 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).

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

December 3, 2024December 3, 2024 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 Prototype Released!

November 18, 2024 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: November 11th, 2024

November 12, 2024 SaltyJustice

Witches of Ravenbrook Prototype Will Come Out On November 18th

The Riders lost.

The prototype is largely ready, we are running over it for bugs and new potential features. Navigation is better, it got some new items, I fixed a ton of memory leaks, and the art is now done and loaded in.

I think it’s good and fun and I want to be done with it because I am insane. Yes, I can’t wait to go back to working on WHI. I look forward to different work. A unique kind of madness.

Other Things

Artists for Witch Hunter Izana, Chicmonster, made a silly Itch.io game about Moo-deng. It’s free. Go play it why not it’ll take you five minutes.

She also made a video about making the game, because she’s a nard. If you want to see Chic talk about learning to code (which is VERY amusing to me) and making sprites and stuff, this is your big chance.

WHO IS THAT?