I am usually so good at knowing what newsletter number we are on, but it's been a while since the last newsletter, and over the Christmas break, I forgot how to count, so... Welcome back! How's it going? How was your Christmas/New Year/non-denominational winter holidays? Or summer holidays, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere? You know, I've actually never been south of the equator. Maybe I should make that my new year's resolution!
Our break was great, and we're already working on some COOL STUFF FOR SOON TIMES. Can't tell you about it yet, but maybe I'll give a little hint: I had to write a lot of new stuff! It's the first time I've done a significant amount of non-item-description writing since the game released!!!!! How exciting.
New Year, New Meeeee!!
I wanted to do a little retrospective of 2023, because I saw other games studios doing it, and it looked cool. So! Let's go! 2023 retrospective!!!
- Sandy and Kate (the lead dev and the writer, AKA me) met for the first time at GDC, and we got to show off the game as part of The Mix
- I wrote about 100,000 words of dialogue and we sent it to localisation ON TIME ????
- We had a demo in the Steam Next Fest
- We announced our release date
- We ran multiple closed betas to make the game really really good
- We released Moonstone Island on September 20th (how has it only been 4 months what)
- We got Steam Deck Verified ✅
- We announced the Switch version (coming Spring 2024!) at Nintendo's Indie World in December
- We released three DLC packs (Decor, Halloween, and Winter)
- We did 12 big patches that added tons of content, too
- We hit 50k Twitter followers which honestly feels less cool now that Twitter is in the toilet but STILL
- Our Discord hit 4,000 members
- We met all of youuuuuuu
I can't believe we got so much great fan art in the last few weeks! I honestly expected it to get real quiet on the fan art front, but no! There's so much!!!
Okay, admittedly, this first one is not technically fan art. It's commissioned emotes, made by Briggyea for Eylime's Twitch and Discord, themed around YOURS TRULY. Look how cute these are! There's a chad Fishbo, a sus Ribbite, and a "This Is Fine" Bonfire! Amazing work, 10/10.
And you know what else we love to see? People's OC Spirit designs! Seriously, it's probably the cutest fan art we get to see, and we wish we could make them all real! This lil guy is by TenaciousTurnip, and he's an ice Spirit that lives in a stocking. I want to eat him.
*contented purr* Meow.
(Mr Morris had a great break, thank you for asking. But now, it's back to CEO duties for this sleepy kitty.)
And that's all for this week! Welcome back, and happy 2024!
– Kate, Community Manager and Writer of Many Secret New Words
