twoandahalfstudios

December 2024 Monthly Update

Added 2024-12-06 01:54:49 +0000 UTC

Hello lovely patrons!

Welcome to our newest monthly update where we update you on all things Two and a Half Studios. As always, these will come out every month on the 6th (AEST).

Beyond the Bet releases in just three days - this year has absolutely flown by! I hope you're all excited to play the new DLC so soon. On top of that, we also have the artbook releasing the day after, so we're juggling a lot of releases at the moment. It's an exciting time!

A Date with Death - Beyond the Bet

Artbook Release

On the 10th of December (AEDT), the A Date with Death Art and Guide Book will release to the world! It's full of beautiful art, developer commentary, sketches, promotional work, and much more.

We had a lot of fun working on this release. It's crazy to look back at all we made for A Date with Death after around two years of working on it.

Huge thank you to our UI artist Kathaeris who formatted the entire thing for us. It's beautiful!

And a look at the completed cover illustration again:

OST Release

On the 9th of December (AEDT), four new original A Date with Death tracks will be released for streaming by Flehmann!

Getting to work directly with Flehmann on new, original music was such a fun time, and they're all huge bops!

Make sure to go follow him on Twitter or search it up on Spotify upon release!

Beyond the Bet Release

Also on the 9th will be the release of Beyond the Bet! So many releases right now... while we won't have many updates to share on A Date with Death going forward, we still have some content we're working on - the Japanese and English voice acting, releasing some time next year, and some additional character customisation options.

Merch

We're working on shipping our Kickstarter and Backerkit merch at the moment, here's a little preview!

We have around 1200 in total, which is admittedly a lot for two people, but we're getting through them! We hope to have leftovers available on our webstore early next year.

A Date with Death Anniversary Week Celebrations

The A Date with Death Anniversary Week Celebrations just began, and we're starting it off with a brand new YCH from dehubbleton!

Animation Update

Unfortunately, we also bring some bad news this month.

We'd previously shown off the WIP of our new credits animation by IMHEL. Since then, IMHEL has had many physical and metal health issues, and has been in and out of hospital. They have decided to give up all future work, including anything in progress.

This is obviously sad for many reasons - we were very excited for the animation, but health always comes first and we hope IMHEL gets to a better place soon.

We would have liked to replace the animation with something else, but we only learned of all this recently and now IMHEL is unfortunately uncontactable.

Hopefully in the future, we can work on something else to replace it, but for now lets all wish IMHEL good health into the future.

The Future of A Date with Death

While Beyond the Bet is our last planned DLC for A Date with Death, we still have a lot of exciting things planned for Casper! Of course, he'll always be Patreon's art poll golden child, but we're also working on something that will begin releasing on the 11th 👀

The Willowmist Emporium of Antiques and Curiosities

The Willowmist Emporium of Antiques and Curiosities is our unannounced, upcoming shop/narrative sim about running your aunt's antique store for three months and meeting the strange inhabitants of the small and isolated Willowmist.

We're only in very early development, but we plan to begin working on it in earnest once Beyond the Bet is complete.

Art

Artwise, we've been making great progress on our backgrounds and sprites! We're working on the sprite for our protagonist, at the moment.

The way we've decided it'll work is that there will be two bases for Sage (renameable). You will be able to choose their pronouns, but their actual design will be set. This leaves it easier for us to include them in CGs and show their family members.

How about another character preview this month?

Just a tiny preview! She lives(???) in the antique store.

Screenshots and Programming

One of my favorite things about programming the UI is watching a game go from...

To...

We still have a lot of screens to go, but even here there's a lot of moving parts - text in different positions depending on the contents, an animated cleanliness bar, a clickable calendar that updates over time... the dice rolling took us a bit, too!

We'll be working on this more early next year, when the dust has settled from Beyond the Bet.

Astralis Publishing Title - The Inn Between

Writing

Big news - the Leon route has hit 50,000 words! At the time of planning, 50k was supposed to be the entire route, but the developer has decided that it still needs some additional scenes. We're excited to see where it goes!

Art

It'd hardly be a The Inn Between update without a look at some brand new, beautiful art!

Support the Game

You can support the The Inn Between by wishlisting on Steam, following the team on Patreon, or following them on Twitter!

Astralis Publishing Title - Cage of Roses

A short update this month to say that developer ebi-hime has completed the writing, editing AND programming on Cage of Roses! It's nearly ready for release early next year.

There will also be an updated demo available to play on Steam with some bug fixes, so make sure to check it out!

Support the Game

You can support Cage of Roses by wishlisting the game on Steam and following the developer on Twitter!

Astralis Publishing Title - The Last Rose

Art

November brought with it a brand new illustration of A'taeris, a major supporting character who features in all the routes, as the love interest of our MC's brother!

Atty started life as a magical firefly, but followed his heart to the human world. I'm looking forward to more people meeting him soon!