Hello, everyone! We are back with a new update!
It's been a while since we last spoke. A lot has happened since this summer. We're going to tell you all about it in detail. it's gonna be a long post so, sit back, relax, and enjoy your reading.
Devlog
To begin with, we are still working on Chapter 3. It takes time because it's a big chunk, and above all, we are continuing to make progress on the additional content. Because, in fact, we've looked back at how things have progressed after a year of being available on Steam and GOG.
We realized that the narrative content doesn't interest many people except for the big fans of the game. Nobody plays the main story, only 2% of Steam players have completed Chapter 2. And that's okay, it's normal, people play adult games for the NSFW content, not for the story. And even though we are very grateful for fan art and the people who interact on social media, on Discord... this still represents a very small audience.
So we made a decision. We will release Chapter 3, then Chapter 4 next year, which will be the end of the game for now. That's why Chapter 3 is taking so long; we decided to make it longer. We combined the last three chapters of the game into two big ones.
Development & troubles
So, what has happened in recent months? Well, we recoded half the game in two months. The game's foundations were too unstable to work on quickly. As we mentioned earlier, 8th Heaven is a very technical game.
It's also our first indie game, and our programmer learned a lot at the same time. So we had to change a lot of things. To summarize, the day/night cycle, NPC system, routine system, and dialogue system have been completely remade. Once again, we're only three people, including one programmer/designer, one artist/writer, and one animator. It takes time to achieve the level of quality we want.
If you want a rough idea, integrating an NPC used to take two to three days, but now it takes only one little hour. An event/quest takes two days instead of one week.
Anyway. It was a complicated year in every way too. With everything that is happening in the world, our country has been affected financially. C'est la vie! Our programmer had serious health issues too, that left him very tired and weakened since January. Fortunately, everything has been resolved since October. The studio has been operating at full capacity ever since!
Thank you again for your support. 2026 will be a great year, and we will be more present than ever!
And don't forget to check out our Discord server, where we post weekly updates/talk with you if you want to stay up to date : https://discord.gg/ZPGVPv4vpC
Roadmap to 1.0
The game is scheduled for release out of early access in 1.0 on Steam next summer. The game will need to be extremely stable and have enough content to be interesting for new players. That's why we're going to focus on improving what we already have in the game and adding the missing mechanics.
And after?
When the game comes out next summer, it will only be the beginning! We will share a new post-release roadmap. However, development will take longer. We will likely go from an update every 3 months to an update every 6 months. Why? Because we'll probably have to work on another game.
Yes, we love 8th Heaven as much as you do, but we have to be able to make a living from video game development. We decided that we should make more small games. 8th Heaven was very ambitious, and we want to return to smaller NSFW productions.
But for now, we're focusing on 8th Heaven.
Thank you again for your patience, and enjoy the new update! It took a lot of work, but we're proud of it.
Patch 0.50
So, this update is mostly a tech and QOL update. The game should run better on your PC now. We have optimized a lot of things, and many annoying bugs that have been in the game for a long time have been fixed. There are surely still some left, but the game is pretty stable right now. We obvisouly added lots of content, but there will be even more in the next patch.
📝 Content
Introduction Extended and Reworked - The introduction tutorial of the game is now complete! A new section has been added after the one in the village. Your new friends give you a quick tour of the Lighthouse!
The Lighthouse - You can walk around the lighthouse. There's not much to do there at the moment. But you have a bedroom to customise! (Three months of worldbuilding and texturing, please explore it, we beg you...)
Raphael Bedroom Upgrade System - You can customize and upgrade Raphael's bedroom in the lighthouse and purchase stuff to unlock features.
Raphael NSFW event #01 - The Mighty Plumber ~
Louis' Battles - Two new NSFW scenes to unlock by “purchasing” Louis' ticket!
New character - Summer. The shop assistant. She replaces the salesgirl in the Chapter 2.
New side quest - The hammer and sickle.
You can now buy items in the grocery shop. More to come...
Finn Event 01 Reworked - The event is now taking place in the lighthouse instead of an old, ugly, dark hallway. The entire staging has been reworked.
Unified NPC System - There are now 3 categories of NPCs. They can all have routines, event Static's one:
Dateable - The NPCs you can date, who have a social level, events, fights, sodas and everything (Finn, Dimitri, Dolce, Dolores).
Fightable - You can fight, but you cannot give items/soda/flirt (Louis). You need to buy there tickets from Louis anyway.
Static - Don't move and are mainly used for quests or to dress up the scenery (Steve).
🛠️ Misc
The dialogue system has been improved. You can skip dialogues by pressing the keyboard spacebar. A short delay has been added before you can spam skip, to improve the staging and movement of NPCs during cutscenes.
NPCs now have an on-the-fly routine system. Later in development, the routines of certain NPCs may change depending on the story. We also added a few lines of dialogue. Yes, it's a teaser. And also a flex. It was a pain to code.
New input system to anticipate futur controller inputs. Yes, that's also a teaser. I like the Steam Deck. And the Steam Machine. And Steam. Steam.
New shader on NPCs. They fade when they change zones now, and other stuff. I've wanted to do this for like, three years.
Various level design rework.
Various interface improvements (dialogue soda, talk-to, smartphone, main menu, gallery, etc...)
Log feedback system rework. All items now have a log that appears when you pick them up, including quest key items. You will now also see the social points you earn from NPCs with items, topic sodas and events.
One new steam achievement, based on the second new side quest.
🐞 Bugs
Unfortunately, I fixed so many bugs that I couldn't count them all. Like, really. But the game runs much better than before, and you will have fewer headaches with routines, menus, and the day/night cycle.
The ping indicator now disappears correctly.
Lots of posing/dialogues correction.
Global optimization (UI batching, prefab optimization, more world mesh batching, etc...)
💾 Save notice
You should know that the save system has been update too. Unfortunately, you cannot read your old backups prior to this update. I say this every update, but sorry, that's the law of early access.
HOWEVER, we decided to not encrypt the save files. So you can change the values in your file, such as money, items, etc... Nevertheless, it is at your own risk. Certain values must not be modified, as this may cause the game to bug or crash. We will not provide support for save file issues.
For the moment, there are no other solutions. However, the next update should not require you to create another save. You will be able to play Chapter 3 without any problems.