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Blooming Nightshade

 
Life as Designed is Now Available!Aug 28, 2024 - Community Announcementshttps://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36329174/231d434f540d1a3c58364971a611536b18da6d3c.png Life as Designed, the romance and coming-of-age story featuring Cho Fukuda, is now available for purchase! Cho Fukuda has spent much of her adult life as a freelance costume designer, to the point that she feels like she's been typecast. Her motivation to work on projects that all feel the same flounders until she ends up botching a commission, leaving her with no leads and the feeling that she's made a mistake with her life. With Cho out of a job for the time being, she and her girlfriend will soon have to explore how their love will adjust to this new challenge. Taking place about ten years after the events of Eldritch Academy, this visual novel continues the story of Cho Fukuda and her friends Akomi Miyazaki, Kagami Nakayama, and Yue Ishikami. (Some knowledge of Eldritch Academy is recommended, but not required to understand this story.) This game explores how the direction of Cho's life might change depending on who is her pillar of support, including an unlockable bonus route that depicts a relationship not seen in Eldritch Academy. Each of the three main routes has two endings, with neither of them being more or less valid than the other.Life as Designed will release on XX XX!Aug 19, 2024 - Community Announcementshttps://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/36329174/231d434f540d1a3c58364971a611536b18da6d3c.png Life as Designed, the romance and coming-of-age story featuring Cho Fukuda, will be releasing on XX XX! The planned price is $6 USD or the converted equivalent.Life as Designed Demo Released + Other NewsMar 22, 2024 - Community Announcementshttps://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/36329174/231d434f540d1a3c58364971a611536b18da6d3c.png The demo version of Life as Designed is now available for download! In this demo, you can play through the first three scenes of each of the main routes. Also, the original announcement for the demo on my blog featured a few other announcements as well, which you can find here. In particular, the post introduces Mysteries of Akiramine, a series of short stories that focuses on Shizuka Hirose (from Shireishi and Eldritch University). I hope everyone enjoys the demo! Which character's story will you try first?Nightshade Games SurveyJan 10, 2022 - Community Announcementshttps://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/231d434f540d1a3c58364971a611536b18da6d3c.png In order to gauge what level of interest there might be in potential features and such for the games set in the Nightshade universe, I've put together a short survey. The survey can be found here: link Just to be clear, the only features that are currently planned for certain are: Eldritch Academy v3 update Additional stories for Flowering Nightshade Life as Designed for PC/Android The other features brought up in the survey are being considered, but interest in them will be important in determining their priority going forward. If you have other suggestions regarding potential features for the games, be sure to leave a comment and let me know! https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/ba75973107620a8cd1581a963b79d0f42a2945fe.pngEldritch Academy v3 Beta AnnouncementSep 11, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsLast year, I announced that Eldritch Academy was getting a major update for Version 3. After a lot of on-and-off work, that update is nearing completion. In the meantime, I figured it was time to give a better look at the update while the last chunk is implemented. For that reason, I'm planning to make a beta branch for the game here on Steam once I've double-checked the common route for any major bugs or issues. What's in the Version 3 Beta? The current plan is to have the full game be available in the beta, though some scenes will not have finalized art implementation and final script checks. In general, this is the breakdown: Prologue/Act 1/Act 2/Act 3: Implemented Act 4/Epilogue: Art not implemented, script under review Aftermath stories (standalone): Implemented Bonus Features: Implemented If there are any major issues in the "implemented" scenes and features in the beta, bug reports would be very helpful in removing these issues from the final v3 build. How do I access the beta? When the beta is uploaded, you will be able to switch to the beta by: Right-clicking on Eldritch Academy in your library and selecting Properties Navigate to the Betas tab Select the v3 beta branch and apply your selection After this, the game will replace the files from v2 with the v3 beta. Once the final version is out, you may need to opt out of the beta build to download it. (Needs comfirmation.) This is the same process, but choosing to not opt into any beta builds. When will this beta be available? I'd like to do some final checks on the existing content before uploading the beta, so I'd say the beta will be uploaded within the next week or so. I'll delay the beta if something major comes up, but otherwise I'd like to get it out there so people can pick up on any issues that escaped my notice. I'll post an announcement on the Eldritch Academy page once the beta is available, so keep an eye out if you'd like to try the beta. What's different about Version 3? Many of the changes can be found in the original announcement. A quick summary: Resolution, UI, and art changes New (custom) BGM tracks Common route script changes (particularly involving choices) Redundant scenes removed or combined For those who are more visual, I'll leave you with a few new screenshots of the game. I hope everyone looks forward to the update! https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/518dae700b3bc2779e379df29645653a25b6505c.png https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/98d2807227499c3536c0fe785e1d3dc2065dedf4.pngFlowering Nightshade Released!Jun 11, 2021 - Community Announcementshttps://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/ba75973107620a8cd1581a963b79d0f42a2945fe.png Flowering Nightshade (v7) is now available for download via Steam! Check out its store page here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1652030/ Almost five years have passed since Himeka sought friendship and romance at Solana Academy. She and her friends have grown now, and have to face their adult responsibilities. As a direct sequel to Blooming Nightshade, Flowering Nightshade continues the lighthearted romance story that began there. The player may choose to resume one of the six romantic storylines from Blooming Nightshade or begin a story featuring a new character. Features 6 returning love interests, with stories focusing on the transition to adulthood and maintaining long-term relationships A new character and storyline Each story is longer and more focused than the story routes seen in Blooming Nightshade I hope people enjoy this continuation of the story of Himeka and her friends in Akiramine!Flowering Nightshade Store PageMay 28, 2021 - Community Announcementshttps://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/ba75973107620a8cd1581a963b79d0f42a2945fe.png The store page for Flowering Nightshade is now visible! Go here to learn more about the game as it is prepared to launch on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1652030/ Due to recent updates to the Ren'Py engine and some code that needs to be updated to properly track Steam Achievements, the game will probably be made available on Steam with the v7 update. The current plan is to have the update ready sometime this summer. I hope everyone looks forward to seeing the game come to Steam!Achievement Changes 2May 24, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsTo coincide with the release of v12, the achievement list got another look-over. Since the current structure of the game makes a number of the achievements redundant, I removed said redundancies. I also went and made the names more unique and tried to update some of the descriptions for ones that have changed a bit since v9. Highlights: - Prologue achievement modified. - Matchmaker and Dateless achievements tweaked. - Ending achievements got unique names. - Friendship/Romance start achievements removed.Poll: Flowering Nightshade on SteamMay 21, 2021 - Community Announcementshttps://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/ba75973107620a8cd1581a963b79d0f42a2945fe.png Now that all of the main routes for Flowering Nightshade are implemented in the public version of the game, I've decided to see how interested people are in having the game come to Steam. The game is currently free/donationware on itch.io, so I don't want to rush into a decision to launch on Steam (with its waiting periods and up-front fee). However, I didn't want to shut down the possibility entirely, so I've put together a basic poll for players of Blooming Nightshade to submit their opinions on a Steam release. Flowering Nightshade on itch.io: https://jackkel-dragon.itch.io/flowering-nightshade Google Forms Link I'll keep an eye on the responses, and we'll see where things go from there. Thank you for your time and interest!v12 Hotfix (Afterstory Fix)May 16, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsFor some reason, some of the changes made to the credits scene in v12 would prevent the player from ever seeing the after-credits scenes for romance endings. A hotfix has been uploaded to try to restore access to these scenes. If there are any remaining technical issues, be sure to mention them in the discussion threads. I hadn't even noticed the afterstories weren't playing until earlier today, so there may be other bugs still left in the game.Release v12 UpdateMay 8, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsIt's been a while since this game got an update, but the next milestone for Flowering Nightshade is fast approaching and I felt like it was time to bring some of the improvements back to this game. One of the biggest changes this time is the replacement of the old music tracks with custom music, but there's also some new art for the menus and other minor fixes. The major changes in this update include: New art for the title screen and story selection menu GUI changes ported from Flowering Nightshade Music replaced with custom tracks by JadeVater (from Eldritch Academy, Eldritch University, and Flowering Nightshade) I hope people enjoy the changes from v11. I'll try to get the next version of Flowering Nightshade out in the near future, but until then, I hope you enjoy this game!Life as Designed AnnouncementApr 12, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsI've mentioned it a few times elsewhere, but today is the opening of the store page for Life as Designed! https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/231d434f540d1a3c58364971a611536b18da6d3c.png Life as Designed is a romance story with coming-of-age elements that focuses on Cho Fukuda, who first appeared in Eldritch Academy. There are three main storylines planned for the game, each of which follows from the paired endings in Eldritch Academy. (It's not required to play that game to understand this one, but some character traits are assumed to be familiar to the player.) Life as Designed takes place about ten years after Eldritch Academy. Cho now lives in the city of Yamashiya with her girlfriend, who both reside at a share house. All four main characters from Eldritch Academy have jobs in this city, but Cho's freelance work ends up sapping her motivation after a string of projects that feel unfulfilling or end in failure. Each story shows a different path Cho's life could take, depending on who she was closest to before the story began. In addition, near the end of each storyline Cho has to make a choice of which career path to follow. Neither of these endings are the "correct" or "wrong" choice, simply different ways Cho's life could go as she moves forward. The game script is projected to be about the same total length as Eldritch University, with the possibility of one or more bonus scenarios depending on how development goes. The game will have custom BGM, with a few tracks returning from the Eldritch Academy v3 update. However, the game is not currently projected to have event illustrations. The final price is not yet decided, but will likely be in the same range as Eldritch University. If you have any questions about the game or its development, let me know! I hope people look forward to Life as Designed!Eldritch University is Now Available!Jun 12, 2020 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/36329174/cc8310802104a2083391245f56eec7c13011b31b.png Eldritch University, a horror/romance visual novel, is now available for purchase! The nightmare is not over. Kasumi Kawamura just wants to get through university while rekindling her relationship with her girlfriend. But not long after she arrives at school, a strange epidemic starts to infect the city, causing the afflicted to have terrible nightmares and lose the motivation to live their lives. Coinciding with the appearance of this “Nightmare Syndrome”, an old wound that Kasumi thought healed starts to burn and cause frightening visions to those around her. Caught in the center of this situation, Kasumi and her friends try desperately to find a solution. Yet all the while, Kasumi wonders if she might be to blame… This game is a sequel to Eldritch Academy. It is recommended, but not required, to play that game first. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1132290/Eldritch_University/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1032580/Eldritch_Academy/Blooming Nightshade v11Apr 30, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsWhile things start to wrap up for Eldritch University, I've been looking into what can be done for Flowering Nightshade and my other future projects. In the process of doing some GUI cleanup for that game, I decided to port some of the improvements and changes back to Blooming Nightshade as well. The major changes in this update include: A new title screen that hopefully feels less bland. The "Start" option opens a story selection screen, like in Flowering Nightshade. After finishing the prologue, the other stories can be started from this menu instead of playing the prologue again or skipping it. This screen has also been updated to show the face of the character associated with each story. The file menus have been modified to be less reliant on pages. Now there are just 3 pages: Main, Auto, and Quick. Each page has 12 slots, which are accessed via scrolling. NOTE: This means that saves past the first page from previous versions may not be visible after updating to this version. The quick menu bar has been rearranged to include more options. The ability to set text background and font has been brought over from Flowering Nightshade. All of the character portraits have been re-exported at a higher resolution. This can cause some strange resizing artifacts when the window is too small, but will improve the maximum quality of the character art when in fullscreen mode (based on the resolution of the device). I hope everyone enjoys the update!Blooming Nightshade v10Dec 17, 2019 - Community AnnouncementsAs those who follow me on itch or Twitter may have already heard, I've been working on a major update to Blooming Nightshade that re-works a lot of the game to hopefully improve the story. That update is finally here as a release candidate build; hopefully there are no issues, but I will also be taking a look at any problems that may arise to make sure the update is as polished as it can be. "I want to keep playing v9"If you'd prefer to continue playing the release version of the game, there should be a new beta option for "v9_release". If you enter this beta, you will download the original version of the game instead of the v10 update version. "What has changed?"Quite a lot. I went over a lot of the planned changes on itch when I first started working on the update, but here's the short version: Randomized weekly events removed and incorporated into route storylines. Date choices have been removed; the player selects a specific route to play at the end of the prologue. Potential side couples are now based on the route chosen, and one cut from the previous builds has been added. New/modified scenes for every route. Romance afterstories will automatically play after the credits. "Jealousy"/cheating events and the scene gallery removed. (Steam version) Achievements for going down the friendship route with a character have been added, as well as an achievement for helping a side couple get together. Hopefully these changes make the story seem a bit more connected in each route, while also encouraging people to try just being friends with the characters they don't want to date. "What about the itch/Android versions?"Those are on the way, but I'd like to see if any issues arise from the Steam version before I put out the next itch build. That way, I can fix the issues before people have taken the time to install the game in a way that doesn't have automatic patching. Final NotesI may also update the survey that is linked to from the discussion forum to reflect v10, but I'm not sure when I'll get the time just yet, so no promises. If you notice any bugs or issues with the game, be sure to let me know so I can take a look. I will probably do another testing run before I put out the itch version, but sometimes I'll miss things during testing. If it's a bug that doesn't seem obvious, it may be a good idea to point it out. At any rate, I hope people enjoy the new update!Changes to AchievementsDec 9, 2019 - Community AnnouncementsDue to some currently behind-the-scenes work, both Blooming Nightshade and Eldritch Academy are getting some changes to their achievement lists. Details are below. Blooming Nightshade Thanks to the process leading to v10, a number of the achievements in the Steam release no longer made sense with the planned revisions. While v9 will be available as a "beta" branch for those who want to play it after v10 comes out, I felt the achievements should probably reflect the main version of the game. Because of this, some achievements were removed (the cheating achievement) or renamed (romance achievements). In addition, a number of achievements related to playing the friendship route of each character have been added. These new achievements cannot be acquired just yet, but hopefully v10 comes soon enough that people can get started on those in the near future. Eldritch Academy For reasons I'm not ready to share, the breakup achievements have been removed from the game. In exchange, most of the placeholder art for achievements has been replaced with CG art from the game. It doesn't mean much until the game is allowed to be featured on profiles, but I hope people like the updated achievement art regardless.Blooming Nightshade (v9) Heading to Steam!Aug 23, 2019 - Community AnnouncementsThe desktop version of Blooming Nightshade v9 is coming to Steam! This version of the game does not include the Android packages, but will include a full set of Steam achievements. Any future updates to the game will also come to Steam after a short period on itch.io for testing. I hope everyone enjoys Himeka's search for friendship and love!

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