Hello hello all you gorgeous raccoon friends! It’s time once again for the monthly round-up, and we’ve got a lot to talk about!

First off, June was absolutely incredible for us thanks to two events we got to take part in: the Women-Led Games Steam event, and Steam Next Fest. Between those two events we got about two thousand additional wishlists on Steam, putting us over 14k total. That is a truly bananas number and we are so grateful for it.  If you know some things about Next Fest, you may be wondering something right now concerning our release date, so we’ll skip to the good part: we’re currently planning to release Keir and Cirrus’ second chapters in September! We’ll have more specific information to share closer to release, but for now we’re just hyped to be able to share that news with you!

You may have noticed a new build being uploaded, too. Version 1.6.1 just covers a few bugs and typos, including a bug triggered by choosing they/them pronouns. Sorry about that. There’s no new content, but we wanted to get this fix out.

On the development side, things are moving smoothly. Mugi wrapped up work  on all the NPC sprites and backgrounds we requested for Keir and Cirrus’ second chapters, which means she is now free to add a layer of polish onto assets. For example, here’s a look at the new countdown timer!

It’s a small thing, but it does so much to make the game feel just that bit nicer.

On the audio front, it’s a little hard to just go “trust me bro, Cajsa is knocking it out of the park”, but trust me bro, Cajsa is knocking it out of the park. I’ve been replaying parts of the game that she’s been working on and getting chills. I cannot wait for you guys to hear her new work.

In the world of writing, we’ve left the drafting phase and are elbows deep into the editing phase, which is unfortunately not nearly as exciting to talk about. Personally, I’m thrilled when I make a tweak to give a line of dialogue a little bit more flow, or give Griff another chance to cuss, but it’s not the most exciting thing when you’re not up to your knees in writing, y’know? That said, we can’t complain too much. Editing is important and we want the stories to feel polished and responsive.

And we have been working on some stuff we’re pretty sure you’ll like. Here’s a very little peek at an achievement screen we’re working on (the achievements here are for Chapter One content, so these are things you can already do).

Achievements won’t be for things like endings or the like, since you’ve already got a way to track those. Instead, achievements are to gently incentivise exploring, or to highlight harder-to-find moments (ie. that Keir achievement only happens when you don’t get called a “good egg” in his good ending). The achievement screen will be available in all builds, and it should be compatible with Steam’s achievement system too, hopefully! We still have to test that bit thoroughly.

And to wrap up, we should mention that it was sweet baby angel Francesco’s birthday this month! Mugi helped us celebrate in style, with this stunning piece of art.

And that sums up June in the raccoon den! July is set to be both gorgeous and fun, and we’re looking forward to all it has to offer. Until next time!

Love,

The Rotten Raccoons Team 💙🦝