Dating Sim! Luna’s Lovely Summer – Release Date Set and Beta Testing Info!

November 25, 2023 at 5:04 am | Posted in Plans, Progress | Leave a comment
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Hey folks, hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. With the final CG sets done, I’m happy to announce the release date of Dating Sim! Luna’s Lovely Summer (DSLLS), which is slated for January 6, 2024 (Saturday)!

Just finally, a full release is just around the corner. After two years of development, I’m in the stages of wrapping up the project. I’ve tested the game myself and you can expect a play time of roughly 2 hours (give or take 10 minutes), and I didn’t notice any serious bugs during my runs. Which brings me to the next stage – beta testing!

I will open beta testing applications this upcoming Monday (Nov 27) for two weeks until Dec 11. You will have access to the full game and report any issues with it and/or the user experience. I will select individuals on a first-come-first-serve basis (up to 10 individuals). Incentives for beta testing include:

  • Itch.io key for the full game on release
  • Your name in the credits

EDIT 11/27/2023: Beta testing is now open! Fill out the form here if you’re interested. Hope to see you there!

EDIT 12/11/2023: Closed, thanks to those who applied!

I’m really excited as we near release! Are you?

-Ryne

New Artist to the Rescue

September 30, 2023 at 5:13 am | Posted in Artwork, Characters, Commissions, Plans, Progress | Leave a comment
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It’s been a little over a month since my former artist Arctic Fox had stepped down – I think I adapted well. It’s easy to throw in the towel after that huge setback, but my motivation to finish this project was much stronger, formulating an emergency plan after her resignation. I must admit, I had my reservations about having a replacement artist trying to mimic Arctic Fox’s style for the remaining two CGs of DSLLS, out of fear of the chance that the styles will clash, and heavily leaned on redoing all the artworks from scratch and thus delaying the game for at least a year.

But based on the replies from my Twitter (X), the general conscientious was to hire a skilled artist to finish the remaining CGs, especially considering the project was (and still is) late in development. And so, made a recruitment post late last month, had it run for a week, and selected an artist.

The result?

CG artwork by replacement artist Cele

Folks, I want you to meet Cele (his tumblr here), who is currently working on the remaining CGs of Dating Sim! Luna’s Lovely Summer. 🙂 I am highly impressed at his skill in mimicking Arctic Fox’s style – the outlines, coloring style, shading, eyes and whatnot… I couldn’t be any happier.

Here’s Arctic Fox’s version for comparison (right before she resigned):

CG artwork by former artist Arctic Fox

With my new artist in tow, the end of development is on the horizon; I roughly estimate a December 2023 / January 2024 release date. Once the remaining artworks are finished, the game will go through beta testing – I will test it myself, but I’m also planning a closed beta. Oh, and there’s marketing I have to consider – not gonna lie but I’m absolutely terrible at marketing my games, but considering this is a commercial project and I only have one shot at release… it’s something I must do – currently reading some articles on it.

Thanks for reading!

-Ryne

DSLLS – Replacement Artist Needed

August 28, 2023 at 9:01 am | Posted in Artwork, Commissions, Recruitment | Leave a comment
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UPDATE 2023/09/04: Applications are now closed! I will be contacting you shortly if you’re selected. Thank you all to those who applied and shared your artistic talents!

I’m recruiting for a replacement artist for my visual novel, Dating Sim! Luna’s Lovely Summer (DSLLS)! If you’ve read this post you’ll see that my original artist has stepped down due to personal issues, and I’ll need an artist to pick up where she left off.

Overview of the project

Requirements

  • Anime style, but I’ll need someone skilled enough to match the style, coloring, shading and whatnot of my previous artist as close as possible.
  • This project just needs 2 event CG sets to be done (with variations), all other artworks (sprites, the rest of the CG sets, etc.) are already completed.
  • An artist who can do ecchi is highly preferred due to the game’s heavily suggestive scenes. The last two CG sets involve romance, with one of them involving suggestive nudity. Characters are 18+, but there are no full-blown NSFW scenes.
  • CGs need to be at least 1920×1080 minimum, but it’s highly recommended to work at a higher resolution than that to allow for flexible resizing. For reference, my previous artist worked with a 3840×2160 resolution.
  • PSD format if possible, with expressions on separate layers.
  • No AI please: DSLLS (and future projects) will not use machine-generated content of any kind.

Budgeting and deadlines

  • Budgeting (EDITED): Since this project is late in development please hit me up with your rates, my budget is (almost) anything goes. Also, this is a commercial project, let me know if you charge a bit more for that.
  • Deadlines: Hoping to release this project by the end of this year / beginning of next year. Progress every two weeks preferred, but I’m flexible with the deadlines should the unforeseen happen.

Recruitment process

IMPORTANT: If you haven’t already, please look at the links in the project overview section above to get an idea of the project, art style and characters before applying. I will send additional references should I decide to select you.

Send me an email here with samples of your work. Note: Don’t send samples as attachments, but rather link(s) to your portfolio of some kind, like your DeviantArt, Pixiv, website, or similar. Speaking of which, if hired, I’d appreciate if progress and completed works are sent via link as well (dropbox, google drive, etc…), not email attachment. I do use discord but I’ll only give that out to those I selected and upon request (as well as mutual friends).

I will be keeping this open for at least a week, or until I find someone. As always, let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Looking forward to hearing from you, thanks!

-Ryne

DSLSS’s artist has stepped down

August 21, 2023 at 8:44 am | Posted in Artwork, Commissions, Plans, Progress | Leave a comment
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My artist Arctic Fox will be unable to continue working on the remaining artworks of DSLLS due to personal circumstances going forward.

Honestly, I’m feeling rather disheartened upon receiving that message. I’ve been working with her on that project for at least a year and a half, and she even worked with me on my DSRM project and other commissioned artworks. I was seriously looking forward to the completion of the remaining two CG sets and releasing the full version of DSLLS this year, my first commercial project. And then… this. It certainly is difficult to retain people for long term projects, but to be fair there’s nothing I can do to keep her. Judging from her messages she seemed to be going through lots lately with health and personal issues getting in the way. Nevertheless, the past three years working with her has been a joy. She’s especially talented at what she does and it’s a shame we won’t be able to finish DSLLS together. I completely understand that she needs to step down and focus on herself. I wish her the best of health and luck for the future.

As I’m still trying to regain my bearings, I’m now faced with the task of hiring / scouting a new artist, which should happen within the coming weeks. I have two options:

  • Have them finish the remaining two CG sets and try to closely mimic Arctic Fox’s style. Will push back the release date to at least several months. Or,
  • Redo all the artworks in the game, will delay release by at least a year.

I’m leaning towards the latter option as I’m more in favor of a consistent style across the board – I could go with the former option and minimize losses but there’s a chance that art styles will clash. Either way, it’s a bitter pill for me to swallow. But I do have more than enough resources and it shouldn’t affect my personal finances much (even though I wish I did, I don’t have a bottomless bank account). I’m not scrapping this project as with Café Memoria Deux, as I believe DSLLS is still feasible.

Also, for the record: I will never use AI in my projects. Especially in a situation like this, generating the last two CG sets with AI using Arctic Fox’s style is pretty disrespectful, even more so considering that she stepped down due to personal issues.

This is possibly one of the biggest setbacks to happen to me as a VN dev, considering the project is (or was) nearing end of development. I’m so sorry to those who are looking forward to DSLLS‘s release this year… but please bear with me. I can totally make this work in the end!

-Ryne

So close yet so far

June 28, 2023 at 8:44 am | Posted in Artwork, Characters, Commissions, Plans, Progress | 2 Comments
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We’re getting ever-so-close to the end of development of DSLLS! But unfortunately, that doesn’t mean everything’s going to go smoothly from here on out. As you might’ve read in my previous posts, it’s mostly refining the game’s code and waiting for the game’s remaining event CGs to be completed. With the latter, I received a sketch of the first of the last two CGs about three weeks ago. Here’s a preview of what’s to come:

How romantic, right? I can’t wait for this to be colored 🙂

If you’ve been following my Twitter you might be aware that my artist had seemingly gone AWOL for the past three or so weeks, but now she has responded to my message as I type this. Not gonna lie, it sucks to have one of your team members seemingly disappear when development is getting closer and closer to the end. I place a lot of emphasis on communication, expecting others to let me know if something comes up ahead of time (and vice versa)… but it’s completely understandable if there’s something that’s preventing them from sending out a message.

So yeah, as I wait for artwork updates for DSLLS, I’ll work on my next VN some more (aka editing and gathering art references) as well as work on some other side projects. Wait, side projects? Yeah, lately I’ve been working with another fellow VN dev with an OC I’ve designed for his project, definitely can’t wait to show artworks of her and the said project in question!

BTW, what do you all think about the new DSLLS voiced demo I released last month?

-Ryne

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