twoandahalfstudios

May 2024 Monthly Update

Added 2024-05-06 03:07:47 +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).

It's such a weird feeling to only be doing a Patreon update today! Usually, today is the update day for both Patreon and Kickstarter, but with Dreambound out, I only need to update here!

That'll change pretty quicky though, with the A Date with Death Kickstarter on the 15th of May. I'm very excited and nervous for the campaign!

But, let's jump into a quick update on our work for the last month:

New Projects

There's not a lot I can say here yet, but I wanted to mention to everyone that alongside working on the new A Date with Death DLC, we will likely start on some brand new projects!

One of these will be further work on the TDS universe, since we currently have the plans for two more games on hand. In the future I'd like to do some more independent games in the universe, ones that don't depend on playing all the previous games with a new set of characters, but for these projects they will be about character like Nox, Soren, Morwen, Sylvir, Lucius and more.

On top of that, we have the idea for a new project. It would be a cozy management sim with romances and friendships to balance while also running a business that we won't talk too much about yet, but it's still in the "I'm thinking about this" phase. Maybe it'll come to be, maybe we'll decide it's far too big of a scope for our small team to manage. We'll see!

A Date with Death - Beyond the Bet

Art

We've actually moved on from Grim's new sprite, and we're currently working on the second CG in the DLC! Obviously working on a project extensively before knowing if you'll get funded on Kickstarter is not always the best idea, but we're pretty confident that it'll succeed, so we're okay working on future CGs!

At the moment, we have one CG complete (with a lot of variations), and a sketch of our second CG (which is NSFW).

Here's a small preview:

We're currently planning TWO optional NSFW scenes in the game. The first one will just be some set teasing, but the second will have different options depending on your character identity and what they have going on.

It should lead to a total of four options for the second scene (top/bottom and two genital options). Neither will be decided for you/dependant on your character body type, you will be able to choose what parts your character would have and what they want to do with them. We're still planning this at the moment, but we believe this is the best way to do NSFW with a custom MC. It's definitely more tough than our other NSFW VNs!

Also a reminder that these are TOTALLY optional. They won't be present at all in your game without 1) buying Beyond the Bet and 2) installing the optional NSFW patch. Installing the patch without the DLC will do nothing, and installing the DLC without the patch will not have those scenes included.

Writing & Outlining

Writing has begun on Beyond the Bet, though minorly! We're still working on the first new day (the new day 6), but we're got a much more set in stone outline now. It feels good to have it all written down and planned, but like with the main game, we also add so much in dialogue to the game that is not planned. A Date with Death thrives on this natural banter and silly conversations, and I think that's the kind of stuff that's pretty difficult to plan ahead of time. We just write, know the general story beats, and see what hits the paper (or, google sheet in this case).

We'll be showing some previews of new scenes and writing soon now that writing is in full swing.

Kickstarter

Our Kickstarter begins in just ~10 days, on the 15th of May at 6:30pm EDT/ 16th of May at 8:30am AEST! The image above shows our actual initial goal for funding the DLC, $28,000aud or roughly $18,000usd. This accounts for all the brand new art and writing.

We've been in a flurry finishing getting everything organized for the campaign, and we still have a few things left to do. However, we have locked in all of the tiers and merch items. Here's a quick recap on a few that we've shown:

We're working on some pretty graphics for them at the moment, and we'll be showing off the finished totebag, manjuu and notebook soon. We'll also have a set of postcards of the Kickstarter countdown artworks, which will begin posting on the 9th (AEST). Here's a little WIP preview of one:

Don't forget to follow the Kickstarter to get notified the second we go live. Some tiers are very limtied (1-3 spots), so you may have to be quick if you want to grab them.

Now, stretch goals! We know some of these are deeply wanted, so I wanted to show them to you all first.

English voice acting is our first stretch goal. It's a bit of a jump up from the funded amount, because this accounts for a professional actor (we have already spoken with him about this and he's very keen to take the part) being paid union rates for video game work. While it is possible to get voice actors for less, we really wanted to work with him and voice actors completely deserve to be paid properly for their work.

This also accounts for the editing and insertion of the lines in game to our wonderful sound editor C.L from Cats on a Lilypad Studios. This is really tough and time consuming work.

Next we have additional animations. If we reach this goal, we'll likely do an ending animation for the credits as well as some other small animations with IMHEL. We love working with them, and would be so pleased to do even more.

Lastly, we have an absolutely massive jump up to Japanese voice acting and localization. Unfortunately there's nothing we can do to lessen that gap - it's just the cost of it. We're already speaking to two different studios in Japan who can handle localization and voice acting for us, but this cost also includes directing, studio rental, sound engineers, scripting for at least 12 days of work, and also the Japanese "cross platform fee". Unlike in the US and Australia, Japanese seiyuus take extra fees for each platform you release a game on. For us, that would be PC and also overseas use, since we're a studio overseas. Of course, the cost for the seiyuu and translation is also very high.

This is an absolutely huge goal and at first I was unsure if we'll hit it, but I think we have a chance! If so, there is a possibility that the voice acting will be added AFTER the DLC is released, but we'll have to play it by ear a little since it'll be our first time working on a Japanese dub.

Hoodie and future collabs

There's only a few days left to grab the A Date with Death Hoodie on Makeship! It's been SO successful and we're immensely thankful to Makeship for inviting us to be the very first, and for all of you for grabbing it. It really means a lot to us and it helps us continue as a studio when you grab our merch <3

On top of that, because of the success of A Date with Death merch we've done with them, we've been invited to create more campaigns with them over 2024/2025. We'll be working very closely with the team to work out exactly what these will be, but I can confirm it will include some new plushies and maybe even.... a chibi figure?! You'll have to wait and see!

Astralis Publishing Title - The Inn Between

Writing

With the common route complete, our wonderful friends at Cats on a Lilypad have been working on reading through the current Emrys route and rewriting/scrapping/repurposing where needed. There will be three routes in the game, at around 50,000 words each. Pretty hefty!

Our team is currently assisting with proofreading and editing, and it's been such a fun game to help with. I'm sure all fans of The Divine Speaker will really enjoy the game. Plus, our dev team has three character in it, I wonder if you can spot them when it releases?

New UI

The Inn Between has had an awesome refresh on their UI!

So much beautiful UI... I love beautiful UI in visual novels...

Art Teasers

We have a few little previews of various new sprites, CGs and backgrounds ready for you. All of these can be seen directly on the developers Patreon in full, and we'll link to each below for ease!

Sprite: Niles Nel

Who doesn't like a shifty looking man?

CG: Awaken (Solas Version)

Pretty boy with white hair save me...

CG: Flowers of Temperance (Emrys)

NSFW CG :O!

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!

Astralis Publishing Title - The Last Rose

Writing, editing and programming on The Last Rose continues, but a lot of the progress to show this month is art related!

Art

Just a small preview today of a brand new CG for the game! As mentioned before, though the game is not a romance game directly, there are romances strewn throughout the game with the various characters.