Ahh, July! We say it every year, but July is a traditional time for Swedes to take vacation, and normally we don’t have a lot to report. But not this time! We’ve got all kinds of things to talk about this month, and all of them are some level of very exciting.

Let’s start with some extremely cool news from the larger romance VN sphere: our friends at Best Laid Plans Productions (who organised the Summer of Magic and Mystery) are having a Kickstarter campaign for their game Save the Villainess! The demo is whimsical, surreal, and spooky, with a lot of affectionate nods to villainess and otome isekai stories. The visuals are also beautiful and really cinematic—trust me when I say moving things around the screen like that is a ton of work, and things are constantly moving around. And if you like your MC with an established and vivid personality, it’s safe to say Jane Neville has that in spades. Definitely give the demo a spin and check out that Kickstarter, they’ve already hit their base funding goal so now it’s all about how many bells and whistles they can add (I want to smooch Roshan so much, he’s So Handsome).

As for things happening in the raccoon den, we want to start with a thank you to VV. She has been working with us as a project manager for a while now, helping us with production workflow, making sure we know our schedule, and generally being a total angel. While her work is invisible in the final product, she has made everyone else’s work so much smoother and ensured we’re all always on the same page in terms of business and creative needs. VV is now leaving Rotten Raccoons for (very good and exciting!) personal reasons, and we want to send her all our love.

In production news, we are working on Keir and Cirrus’ second chapters at a brisk clip! Everyone is doing the last fiddly bits of work. Cajsa’s soundtrack work is jaw-dropping, as usual. The magic she is working to make the soundtrack perfectly fit with the gameplay is incredible. Ren’py is a great engine, but its audio capabilities are pretty basic. It’s not always easy to tell if you haven’t worked with Ren’py before, but her work is incredible.

On Mugi’s side, we are getting lots of small spots of polish and general updates to assets. After making the timer bars more beautiful, she’s updated the choice buttons. It’s a small change, but look at how much more the buttons pop now!

On the writing side of things, Tobi and I are now spending most of our time on Francesco and Oleander to get them ready to rock and roll. Poor Francesco has been a bit absent from these updates (I was able to get a bit of a head start on Oleander, hence his peeks), so here’s a look at part of his trash draft.

(According to Tobi, the Tumblr meme reference was unintentional, but now it’s very intentional!)

The last bit of news is definitely the most immediately relevant to you, the players of this game. Obscura is going to have a beta test for the new content, looking to catch bugs and typos and other issues. Our previous test for Chapter 1.5 was extremely helpful to us, and we’re eager to repeat it! Sign-ups for this beta test are happening soon, and exclusively through Discord. So if you’re interested in participating and are eighteen or older, we invite you to join our Discord server and sign-up for the test! We need 50 testers, and all names will be randomly drawn from applicants.

And that’s what we have to share for July! It’s been a big month for us: an upcoming beta test, a teammate going on a new adventure, and a studio friend’s very thrilling Kickstarter! With September looming ever-closer, we’re getting really excited to finally be able to share what we’ve been working on! We’ll be back with more news soon enough. Until then,

Love,

The Rotten Raccoons Team 🦝💙