It’s been one heck of a February, hasn’t it? Something about it being the shortest month just makes it seem even more action-packed! So let’s talk about what happened this month, my beautiful raccoon friends!
Francesco Chapter Two came out!
Did you enjoy your date with Francesco? We hope so! The big headline this month was finishing beta testing and getting Francesco’s second chapter released for Valentine’s Day, as well as getting out a small patch to fix some bugs (oops!) and add a few more things the info broker can talk about with you. There are probably still things that can be tidied up here and there, but unless there’s something game-breaking that comes up in the future, we can assume version 2.5.1 will be the final update we push for a little while as we turn our attention to Chapter Three.
And we wanna say a huge thank you to everyone who has played this new chapter and seen what exactly Franceso’s been keeping to himself. We’ve been so excited to share this part of his story, and even more excited to see how everyone’s been reacting to it. It does the heart good to see people enjoying your work, and it does the heart even better to see all those reaction images and gifs that people have been posting in response to his chapter’s ending 🩵
We made a new friend!
(He’s not the new friend, per se, but am I going to not share the eye-candy?)
So Wraiith303, the solo dev creating Infinite Stars—a choice-dense sci-fi otome/amare—has a tradition of sharing recommendations and cross-promoing other visual novels they love whenever they do a major update, and for their most recent update they reached out to us! Given that previous cross-promo partners have been When Stars Collide and Andromeda 6, we’re extremely touched by this. Infinite Stars is different from Obscura in a few key ways; for one thing, their setting is very Up (spaaaaace) while ours is very Down (caaaaave)!
But jokes aside, the story of Infinite Stars is full of danger and tension, the main cast are all competent professionals doing the best they can in bad situations, whatever that means for them, the amount of choices offered for sculpting the MC’s personality is really impressive (plus picking your pronouns, sexuality, and body type!), and the romance elements I’ve encountered to this point have been very sweet.
The game is free to play, with 18+ content on Patreon, and as part of the release celebration Wraiith303 is offering a month of free Patreon access to you, our lovely raccoons friends. You can claim the Patreon access here, or check out the game here on Steam or over at Itch.io.
We’re taking it easy, but haven’t stopped working
So, what else is happening in the raccoon den? Right now, we’re taking things a little easier. The release push process is always satisfying, but it does take a bit out a procyonid, you know? But there’s not no work being done, of course!
Tobi and I are getting up to mischief plotting the beats of Chapter Three, of course! And Mugi is in the middle of the process of getting the Chapter Two poster of Oleander and Francesco ready to roll right now. It shouldn’t take too long before it’s up for everyone to get their paws on (including me!).
We’re also planning on having a little Raccoon Jamboree and general planning meeting a little later in March, where we’ll draw up a general outline of the Chapter Three schedule (internal deadlines that will almost definitely be revised later down the line) and make some decisions generally regarding production. Most of it’s not going to be interesting to share publicly, but there is actually something we’d like a little input on.
Let’s hear from you!
As we turn our focus to Chapter Three development, we want to ask y’all about your hopes for Chapter Three. Not for the content, which we’re already gleefully plotting, but for the release structure. We’ve put together a very small (only three mandatory questions!) survey, asking you what your preference is regarding release. You don’t need to take the survey if you’re not particularly fussed either way, but if you have an opinion this is a great way to share it! We’ll look at the results during our partying and plotting sessions, to see if we can make plans that’ll make everyone happy.
And that’s all from us here in the raccoon den! We’ve got a lot of nice stuff to look forward to this March, and we hope you’ve got plenty of fun things lined up too. And if not, there’s no reason you can start plotting fun things now!
Love,
The Rotten Raccoons Team 🩵🦝