Today we have a good handful of announcements to make, so buckle up.

Outclassed

The first one is that nanoff has finished his latest comic, Outclassed, and now it is available in its entirety over here on Itch. I assume many of you have been following it already, but just in case... It tells the story of Walter, a hyena who just failed his latest Physics exam — no doubt because of his professor, well-known as an absolute asshole. But things become more complicated when Walter and Professor Suarez bump under very peculiar circumstances.

Outclassed is available now on Itch, for free!

Outclassed was made possible by the support of nanoff's patrons, who gain access to pages one week earlier than it's made available to the public in general. Now that this project is done, nanoff will be going back to telling Boomer's, Zoomer's and Miles' story. Consider pledging to his Patreon if you want to follow along as pages come out! You can also follow the regular release of pages on his Twitter.

Now, on to...

Harvest Lab

Our good friend, Roddo, author of Nerus took some time off to work on a smaller project and recharge his creative juices. He started work on a short novel based on Minotaur Hotel, which happens in his version of what the hotel might look like in a distant future. It stars Juan, a hydra who can't leave the hotel and falls in love with a guest from the outside world. It explores some of the themes we touch on Minotaur Hotel but with a different take, projecting them into a hypothetical future.

Juan is based on an upcoming character called Black, who should show up in the game in a while. We posted about him in previous devlogs, he's been planned since the start of the project. He was designed by Eddio, developer of Killigan's Treasure, who also made the cover art for Roddo's Harvest Lab.

Some of you who read the original drafts of Minotaur Hotel (back when it wasn't a visual novel yet) might have an idea or two about this character and their story. If you do, it gives some extra spice to it.

Harvest Lab is coming out on July 22nd.

I don't want to say too much, but it made me emotional quite a few times.

Bara Audience Survey

Back in 2020 we organised a very comprehensive survey to get a grasp on what are the preferences when it comes to gay furry visual novels. The results were very interesting and productive, I know for a fact that in many aspects it supported devs to make good decisions for their projects. But it's been a while since, things have changed, and, more importantly, that survey really was engineered for the furry side of things first and foremost.

Now, ChellayTiger, developer of Barachoda Bloom, is conducting a survey of his own, focused on the "Bara" audience. If you have a few minutes and if you like bara games and visual novels, I highly recommend that you answer the survey. This kind of input is a game changer for developers as we can see a snapshot of what players as a whole want, what they don't want, where our assumptions are right and wrong.

Back in 2020 we got more than 700 responses. Let's see how many come in this time! Click here to check the survey.

By the way, this initiative is entirely Chellay's doing. We didn't do much beside telling him to go ahead. I'd be very happy if you could check his game out and give it some love. It's important that we support our fellow LGBT creators, doubly so when they are doing a dedicated effort to improve this creative environment for everyone else.

So, if you have some time, please check out Barachoda Bloom!

To close it off...

Now, I imagine some of you must be asking about about the next scheduled update, the Hinterlands Expansion. We promised to release it in July, but we haven't announced a release date yet. I wanted to take a minute here to clarify the situation and give you a little bonus for sticking with us until the end of this devlog.

The Hinterlands Expansion is fully written, edited and 99% implemented. There's only a handful of things left to do, like picking some backgrounds and testing it. It's all good. That said, both nanoff and I have been extremely busy with irl stuff. Don't worry, none of it is bad! We are doing great and those things going on are excellent. nanoff is moving soon after changing jobs just a few weeks ago, and I'm finally on a trip I had planned all the way before the pandemic started. These are good things, but we both need time to get stuff done.

Now, as a bonus, I'm going to announce a thing we've been holding on for a while now. I planned on only revealing it when the update came out, but let's do it now.

After the Hinterlands Expansion, the next update will add CHAPTERS 19 & 20 to the game's main story. This means that we will continue with Asterion's story, seeing the aftermath of Chapter 18 and, of course, the player character and Asterion taking some much needed time to take their relationship to the next level.

I think you will love these next chapters. We are working hard on them, really going all out. In a way, this next update is a celebration of what the story has accomplished so far, and the community's sentiment towards Asterion and the cast.

The writing and editing for these chapters is going on right now even if we had to take a little time to release the Hinterlands update. It's hard to say how close it is to being done, but it's very certainly past the halfway mark.

That's it for now! Thank you for tuning in.