August 2024 Monthly Update

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).

It's been another busy month with a lot of behind the scenes work (boring things like taxes, unfortunately), but we're also made more huge progress on A Date with Death... and our new game?

A Date with Death - Beyond the Bet

Art

Artwise, we're starting on two new backgrounds from October when Jenny's schedule is freed up. We're super excited to work with Jenny again on these backgrounds. We'll be sharing some non-spoilery previews once we start working on them!

For our CGs, we're now onto the final artworks we need for the DLC. We'll show some small snippets of these in the future, but we also don't want to spoil where any of the endings are going!

For now, here's a little preview of our colored optional NSFW scene 1:

Writing & Editing

We've continued very quickly in our writing and editing. The first, second and third day of the DLC are now playable in game (though we're still finishing up some testing for the third day). The fourth day, the final full day before the endings, is aorund 95% written. We're still going back to add to some parts of it.

We have a couple of gaps in this day, since players will have the chance to dress up Casper in one of a few outfits thanks to some of our lovely Kickstarter backers who grabbed the "dress up Grimmy" reward! We're very excited to get working on them.

In the next month, we plan to finish up on day 4, get it programmed, and get into testing it. 

We've also planned out all of our endings. The DLC will bring with it 1 new bad ending and 3 new good endings. They're quite different to our original endings, so look forward to it!

Music

We're so pleased to announce that we're working with the amazing Flehman on 4 original songs for A Date with Death! We were so pleased ot use some of their available music in our original game, and we're even more pleased to add some of their original music to the DLC!

Programming & Beta

Day 1 of the Beyond the Beta beta was released a little while ago now! We're currently finishing up testing the second AND third day before we release it as a new beta. 

We've also been working on a small new feature - a history screen for the call sections of the game. Take a look:

We just finished the progamming on this yesterday. It'll release in an update on Steam shortly.

How about a few more testing screenshots?

Voice Acting

Voice acting work will continue as soon as possible, but if you hadn't heard there is a voice actor union strike happening in the US which does affect A Date with Death. While it will delay things a bit, we absolutely stand in solidarity with the members of SAG-AFTRA. Editing work on already recorded audio continues, and hopefully we'll be back to recording soon.

Like we've mentioned before, likely all the voice acting will release in a free patch sometime next year.

Sleepy Time Grim & Azrael Jumbo Plushie Available Now!

For the next 21 days only, we're so happy to announce that a brand new Grimmy plushie is available now on Makeship!

 Grim comes in his signature black pajamas, with a perfectly sized Azrael in hand.

Go grab him here!

New Game

New game still doesn't have a name, but we're workshopping things! For those new here, we're in the beginning stages of a supernatural shop simulator about running an antique store. We're super excited to try something new!

Art

We've hired a lead artist for our new game, and they've already completed two sprites, with a third one in sketch form. We're very excited to begin showing these off this month!

With our backgrounds, we showed the sketch for our first one last month. It is now complete (both day and night), and we're moving onto our second one!

How about a tiny preview?

We've also begun getting references together for the UI artist. UI really can make or break a game, so we're taking our time to get it right!

Outlining

We've begun outlining the demo! We're around halfway through with the initial outline. The genre this game is in requires a lot of writing, so we're still unsure exactly how long it'll be.

Astralis Publishing Title - The Inn Between

Art Teasers

We have a few little previews for TIB this month. All of these can be seen directly on the developers Patreon in full, and we'll link to each below for ease!

BG: Hellebore Bazaar (The Inn Between)

CG: Flower of Temperance (Leon)

New Characters

We're so excited to show off a little preview of... brand new characters for The Inn Between! Even more exciting, these are characters designed by us, Two and a Half Studios. We were overjoyed to get the chance to add to this wonderful game.

We're really excited to see these three in the character routes. If you know us, we do like our sad boys, so we've got a couple of them planned here <3

Writer Role Open

We are also currently helping to hire an additional writer/editor for The Inn Between. If you're over 18 and have experience with the genre, consider applying here!

Patreon Support and Wishlists
For now, you can support the game by wishlisting on Steam, following the team on Patreon, or following them on Twitter!

Focus for the next month

• A Date with Death - Writing, editing and art creation

• New project - Background art, love interest planning, system programming

Thanks once again for reading, and I'll see you next month!