The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe!
There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here:
Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade
These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time.
Streaming Guidelines
Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, since some of them may not be stream-safe without certain considerations. In addition, I'm looking into making a more official presskit with the game logos and promo images.
The current page for streaming guidelines can be found here.
Game Six
Since wrapping up Life as Designed, I've been working (on and off) to draft some other stories set in the Nightshade universe, some of which may end up being games if I can find the budget for art and music. One project that has been slowly coming together is a game that already has most of its art finished, which continues the stories of the characters from Blooming Nightshade. Unlike Flowering Nightshade, this game doesn't have any direct continuations of previous stories, instead exploring other possibilities for each character. While I'm trying to make each story standalone, some character details from BN/FN stories will be assumed knowledge.
The game isn't quite ready for a full reveal and announcement, but I'll consider putting out a demo or early version once at least two stories have been finished (and figure out how to package the bonus mode, which will take much longer to be content-complete). For now, I wonder who has followed the development of this series long enough to already know who the new character is...?
Beyond Nightshade
In other game development news, I've finished a lot of the prototyping work on a game that has a lot more to do than a visual novel does. It looks nothing like it hopefully will (as it is currently making use of "programmer art"), but most of the planned features are nearly complete. I don't want to give away too many details until things are more finalized, but I will say that it's intended to be an open-world exploration game (in the vein of Uncharted Waters, Sailing Era, or Star Traders) set in the world of Tarishu (the setting for the novel "The Last Respite").
And that's about it for the current update. I'm hoping to get the BN/FN version update finished in 2026, as well as potentially the first version of the next game. Beyond that, we'll see how each project goes in the coming year.
I hope everyone continues to enjoy the games, and be sure to let your friends know about the Winter Sale! (And don't forget to leave a review if you liked one of the games!)