Hello everyone!
This is Kay Yu, the lead developer of HoloCure and I wanted to write this little blog(?) post to speak directly with you all. Because it has been quite a while since the past update, and as this year comes to a close, I decided I wanted to talk about the game, the update, and whatever else! I'm kinda just writing this on a whim, so please excuse me if it's not organized, this is just sorta me rambling and I'm just going to say whatever comes to mind. This is a first for me as I'm just writing here on this game's steam page and not on any other social media (I've essentially quit twitter as of now, which was my only other place I talked about the game before).
First of all, thank you very much for your continued support as usual, to those that still play the game, and those who are looking forward to the next update. Let me confirm that yes, we are still very actively working on the next update, albeit slower than before. The next update, 0.8, is also a fairly large update. There will be a lot of balance updates this time around as I am trying to fix and clean up the main game more. (Note: I promise there are no plans of nerfing any character.) There is a bigger focus on making the main game experience better as opposed to update 0.7 where there was a large focus on side content. Update 0.8 will bring a number of new mechanics, new types of content, and some other changes to the main game overall. And yes, we are also reworking achievements for 0.8 - separating out achievements that aren't for the main game, so that the achievements on Steam will strictly all be main game content only. These will be considered as the real achievements, whereas any side content achievement will become a separate sub-section. For the rest of the changes, I won't reveal too much right now as I'm still trying to make sure these updates and changes are solid.
I also want to acknowledge that update 0.8 is taking much longer than I planned. A lot of that is my own fault, so I do apologize for the time it has already taken. As some may know, game development is only a personal hobby for me, and I can only afford to work on HoloCure when I have free time. Over the past 3-4 years of working on this game, my work obligations in my career as an animator in the anime industry has grown exponentially. That's both a good thing and bad of course. Good for my overall career, but bad for anything else in my life that isn't work. As I continue to strive to become a better animator and receive bigger opportunities, it has become much harder to find spare time to dedicate to HoloCure development. I care a lot about both my career as an animator but also my game projects as a hobby game developer, so it becomes hard to juggle both, and I can't ignore either of my passions. I want to explain this in hopes that people can at least understand and be aware why updates take so long, and do not think we aren't trying to update the game anymore. We very much are! This also applies to some of the other people on the team that regularly help out. The other programmers and other creatives have more things going on in their own lives too since we started this project, which is great for them of course! For this next update though, I brought on a significant number of new helpers for some big features. In the end, things will still always take time because everyone has their own obligations and we need to take the time to make sure things work well.
I really did try my best to get this update out within this year, but as time went on and my work in the anime industry became more serious, it became harder to finish the update in 2025 and I really did not want to rush things. I want update 0.8 to be a memorable one, so I want to make sure we take out time and create something special - or at least we strive to!
But it's not like we haven't made any progress throughout the year. We're a pretty good ways into it and we're getting closer and closer to completing the update. It's just a matter of time and I hope I can ask you all to be patient with us once more. Lately I've been watching older streams or videos of people playing HoloCure. It's both super re-invigorating to continue working on the game, and also very educational as it helps me find any pain-points of the game where the experience could be better. So while we've taken a long time working on update 0.8, I also thought we might as well take the time to finally address a bunch of pretty old issues that we've pushed off in the past. Again, I want update 0.8 to be an important one!
If you've taken the time to read this message, I truly thank you for your time and patience with us. One of my goals for 2026 is to balance my schedule better so I can dedicate more time and be more efficient to working on HoloCure. I'm already backing out of a lot of projects I didn't really need to be involved with in the anime industry. There's so much I still want to do for not just HoloCure, but my other game projects - and I absolutely plan to. So until then, I hope you all will come back and enjoy this game for yet another update in the coming future. Thank you and Have a Happy New Year!
-Kay Yu