As we near the end of another year, it’s time for me to do a few quick updates on what I’ve been working on. A few things finally got finished earlier this year, specifically:
The Last Respite was revealed and released in both ebook and paperback formats
Previous ebooks have been published to other storefronts and made available in paperback through Draft2Digital
Eldritch Academy and some of its related games were part of the Fall in Love Festival on Steam
If anyone has enjoyed these stories, I’d love to see feedback or reviews about what you liked. Feedback helps me figure out what people enjoyed about my stories, and some storefronts (like Steam) use reviews as part of the algorithm for determining what to promote to users.
With The Last Respite on the way, it’s time to introduce a few aspects of its setting: Tarishu [טארישו].
A word of warning to start with: while any setting’s information could be tweaked or changed behind the scenes during the writing process of stories in that setting, Tarishu in particular among my settings is “under construction” or “to be discovered”. It doesn’t have an easy fallback (like Nightshade has with our own world) or a specific focus (like Kigenishi on the island itself), and it originally wasn’t even going to be the setting for its debut story. So, even more so than with Kigenishi, details provided in stories take priority over anything presented directly from my notes.
I’m excited to announce an upcoming fantasy romance story that I’ve been working on: The Last Respite.
Within the lands of the Hye people, there is a haunted wood known as the Crawling Forest. Few travelers dare to brave the darkness within unless they seek treasure and glory.
Just outside of this dangerous expanse, on an old worn-down road, lies the Last Respite; an inn that caters to the adventurers that come from afar to test themselves in the Crawling Forest. Run by a mysterious innkeeper that is rumored to be a powerful witch, the Last Respite is the final beacon of civilization for those who risk the dangers of the Crawling Forest.
When a magical accident sends Gunnar to the Hye lands, the young man quickly finds himself with nowhere to turn for help and no easy way to return home. His road leads him to the Last Respite, where he must carve out a new home for himself with the aid of Sangmi, the innkeeper. Despite the shadow of the haunted forest, this corner of the world may yet be the shelter these two drifting souls have sought.
It’s been a while, with the last update being the release of Life as Designed. I’ve not gotten as much done as I’d have liked in the last few months, but I do have some exciting news and teasers to share.
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.
As part of the process of trying to get back into creating things for public release again, I’ve been working on getting a few projects ready for something sort of like a “soft launch”. Today, we have announcements for two of those projects: Life as Designed and Mysteries of Akiramine.
2023 was a rough year for me creatively, and I feel like I’ve let people down by not yet delivering the things that I’ve promised. Going over the final progress update from last year, I realize that all the same things are on my list for next year. And with my gradual withdrawal from a lot of social media sites, I can’t really say I’ve been keeping anyone in the loop on what’s been happening.
So, in the interest of trying to catch up anyone who was following my projects, I’ll go over what is currently planned and what has happened this year. I don’t think I can make any concrete promises on when anything will release, but maybe I can at least clarify what is still in progress.
I fell off doing proper updates after the first quarter of this year, so as 2022 comes to a close I figured it was time to provide some more information on how things are going. I wasn’t able to finish as much as I wanted to this year, but there’s still some progress to share, especially for anyone not following me on other sites.
The biggest update to Eldritch Academy is now live! This release brings us to the end (at least for now) of the long journey that started in 2013 (pre-production) and 2019 (v1 release).
For those who have not been following the project on Twitter and other sites, Eldritch Academy v3 (internally known as EA-R, or the “Eldritch Academy Revision”) is a major update to all aspects of Eldritch Academy. The highlights are:
Redone character and event art
New, custom music
Reworked UI
Script revisions, including a few new scenes and the removal of “filler” scenes
A proper (non-experimental) Android version
I hope that this version of the game allows both new and returning players to really enjoy discovering the secrets of Solana Academy and befriending Yue’s classmates. If you don’t already own the game, maybe now is the time to check it out!
Aside from support for any remaining bugs, this will likely be the last major update to Eldritch Academy. However, the story doesn’t have to end with this game, as many new stories in the Nightshade universe have been announced or released since 2019. For instance:
If you liked the story of Eldritch Academy and want to see the continuation, you can roll right into its sequel, “Eldritch University”.
If you want to see more of the main characters of Eldritch Academy, the upcoming game “Life as Designed” will focus on Cho, Akomi, Kagami, and Yue as they adapt to their adult lives, ten years after Eldritch Academy.
If you want to see more romance between women in the Nightshade universe, you can play the spin-off games “Blooming Nightshade” and “Flowering Nightshade”, both of them expanded versions of games initially created for the “Yuri Game Jam” (2017~2018/2019~2020).
If you enjoy the Nightshade universe and its themes of a mundane world crossed with elements of the supernatural, there are a number of ebooks set in the same universe. In particular, “Shireishi” and “Those That Linger: GhostSense” have similar themes to Eldritch Academy, featuring students coming up against supernatural threats.
Thank you for your interest in this nearly decade-long journey to create Eldritch Academy and Eldritch University, and I hope you enjoyed it! I hope that I can continue to share more stories in the Nightshade universe, so be sure to keep an eye out for those future stories!
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