Thaewyn

Big things coming!

Hey everyone! Happy holidays to everyone who celebrates, and I hope everyone is staying safe and warm this winter.

I wanted to start off strong by sharing a hacked-together 'preview' image that I put together from some of the commissioned art that I've been requesting for the game! (That my lovely patrons have been funding!) I know I've shared some teasers before, but here's an even tease-ier teaser. I recently asked McDead to sketch out a 'lineup' of Amber as she progresses through the...

Progress, a new engine, and new art

Hey all!

So as some may recall, last time I posted art was with some bad news. The artist I commissioned told me they couldn't continue. Sad news, but since then, I've been working with a new artist, and we've been making a lot of progress on character art. Everyone say hello to Mister McDead! We've got portraits for the first 3 girls, and more on the way! I would also love to hear what you fine folks think of Kiva's redesign. McDead suggested a more bestial look, and I really liked wha...

Channeling 0.1.6 alpha release!

Hey friends, happy Friday!

So first off, I'm keeping the same semantic versioning I had been using, so this is the sixth release in chapter 1, and when we get up to the start of "chapter two" that will be when 0.2.1 happens.

Also, this is the first release with Ren'py! A lot of the first half of this year was me porting everything I could out of RPGMaker (which I've grumbled about previously, so I won't go back into that), but the results have already been very encouraging! File s...

June 2022 Update!

Hey everyone!

So I know I don't update very frequently, but there has been some interesting news in the past few weeks! I wanted to thank everyone again for their continued support and let you know how things are going.

First off, a direct announcement about the game. While I started off using RPGMaker to get the ball rolling, I've started running into numerous frustrations with the limitations of the engine. That and I've realized that the game is very dialog-heavy. It's...

Late May Update

Hey everyone! Checking in as I usually do every other month (or so).

To be honest, I do feel bad about not having much to show. It's been big behind-the-scenes work for the past 2 months, and I'm feeling really good about the current direction... but that doesn't give you fine people much to work with.

Still, efforts are underway to wrap up what I am considering 'Chapter 1'. It's in that late phase where I really just want to start on Chapter 2 things (and I do switch over to the ...

Slow growth story collab

Hey friends!

So I ran across an opportunity to collaborate with another growth author, working on a slow-growth story over the winter. Considering the funk that I've been in, it's been a great opportunity to just have fun and write, without thinking too much about a 'bigger picture' or things like that.

If you want to give it a read, here's a link:

https://www....

What is this town called?

Okay, so next up in our adventure is the town that I have tentatively called "Targrove", but boy oh boy am I kind of bad at naming things. A lot of the time I find a 'random name generator' and push the button a bunch of times until something I like comes out, but this time I'm not 100% sure I like where it landed, so I'm opening this up to you fine folks to help me out.

I'm going to do my usual process of hitting 'random name' a bunch of times, and I'll pick the top 10 that I ...

Definitely Not April Fools

Hey everyone! Happy end-of-March thing. I dunno, I can't think of a particular event for this one, but it is the traditional "Oh hey I should probably make an update at some point this month, whoops"

As I may have mentioned before, my previous day-job contract wrapped up about a week ago, and I've been using that time to get back into the swing of things working on Channeling. I've included a screenshot here of an early pass of the 'welcome' cutscene to the next town in our adventure. E...

Macro March Short Stories!

Hey everyone!

I'm trying to avoid starting off every post with an apology, because I've been doing that a lot and I'm trying to keep positive about things lately. The winter months sucked, and I'm not exactly 'over it', but I'm trying to move on. 

Anyway, lately, I've been inspired by some of the 'Macro March' stuff that's been going around, and decided to write a couple of "dream sequence" short story blips featuring some of the characters from the game! Let me know...

Channeling version 0.1.5a

Okay! We did it. Kind of. More or less, haha.

I wanted to get this release out before the holiday weekend, and while it's basically right down to the wire, it's here.

Download: Mega 

Note that this is definitely the 'early testing' version. There are likely some bugs and weirdness, especially as this is the first proper update I've done sinc...

Turkey day!

Hey everyone,

For those of you who celebrate it, Happy Thanksgiving! I know I quite enjoyed having a bit too much food yesterday, and I'm looking forward to tasty leftovers all weekend.

In game news, things have been slowly getting back to normal. I've been working my way back from the next 'major' story beat I have in mind, so I can connect that up with what happened most recently in the current game. There is an emphasis on the 'slowly' part, but that's mostly because I've been ...

Back in the saddle (again)

Hey friends!

Happy November. So after my little sabbatical during October, I've been feeling a lot better. I'm writing again, and I'm looking forward to getting back to work on Channeling.

When last we left our heroes, we'd dealt with the situation just outside of Lawrenceburg, so we'll need a few scenes to help that situation wind down, as well as setting off toward our next destination. I'm also planning on dropping some small hints that should start hooking us into one of the l...

Not charging for October

Hey friends,

I've had a rough couple of weeks in my life outside of the game, and it's seriously damaged my ability to get any work done. I was never going to 'force myself' to get something done on the game, but I also don't want people to be charged if I'm not producing anything because I'll feel bad. And the last thing I need right now is more things to feel bad about >_>

So, temporary pause in billing. Hopefully back to business as usual for November =]

-Thaewyn 2021-10-12 07:01:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Mid-September Update

Hey friends!

So thanks to a bunch of great feedback from you guys after the release of 0.1.4, I was able to track down a bunch of little bugs and also slap on some more improvements as well! So without further ado, here's version 0.1.4b:

Download: Mega 

What's in this update? Some more background music (hopefully it doesn't appear in any awk...

Channeling 0.1.4a release!

Okay, we got there. Phew. Just past midnight my time, but with my sleep disorder, this is basically the middle of my day, haha.

Anyway.

There have been a bunch of changes with this release, and since it's already kind of a pain to migrate a save file between new game versions in RPGMaker, it is my recommendation that you guys start a new save for this iteration.

Without any further ado, here's the download link: 2021-08-31 04:03:18 +0000 UTC View Post

End-of-month update

So over on the Discord, I made a commitment to ship the next release by this weekend... I haven't *quite* made it under that time limit, but I have made a huge amount of progress on writing that I had been behind on thanks to the slump that I had been in. This release should be ready to go for patrons within the next 2 days, but I wanted to send a brief message to let everyone know where I was at.

The scenes being written should bring us to the end of the Lawrenceburg arc, and start us ...

Building a Tower, Building it Taller

A bit of Behind the Scenes for you guys, what it looks like just kind of slapping things into place to build up a little scene in RPGMaker. I decided to take a break today and just screenshot wherever I was at to share. Where is this? Why is it important? That you'll have to wait and see. But things continue to progress, and I'll probably continue to tweak this spot as well to try and make it really fit the scene that it's for.

I hope everyone has an excellent week!

August!

What the? When did August happen? Where did July go?

Eh, must not have been that important. Much as I would have liked to have done a ton of work on the game, most of this month was taken up by the end of my 'real' job, and then giving myself a half-vacation to get over the weird slump I was in (if you noticed, the theme of the last couple of updates were very 'I'm in a slump' without actually admitting it to myself).

I also got myself a little over-excited about getting some 'aud...

Populating Lawrenceburg!

Hey all you lovely patrons!

I don't know if this comes across in the game so far, but I struggle with naming things. Fortunately I've been able to make it work for major parts of the story, but Lawrenceburg has a lot of empty rooms at the moment.

So! I'd like your help in populating the University town of Lawrenceburg. This post is patrons-only, and if you have an NPC that you'd like to appear in town, just post a comment with the name of the NPC, and their one-li...

Mid-July update

Hey everyone!

Wow, is it July already? I know that looking back it always feels faster, but here we are. My day job has wound down as of last week, so I've got a lot more time to focus on the game again. It's going to take a little bit of time to get back into the swing of things, but I'm looking forward to really being able to dedicate time toward the project. There's still a lot of story to tell, and I look forward to telling it =].

I jumped back in and implemented some of the s...

The Harpy Mountain

Hello everyone!

I hope this month has gone well. I spent much of it on a bit of a weird off-cycle, but I did manage to scrape together some fun stuff for you to try out. The adventure area that opened up last build (at the foot of the mountain) has been populated with some new enemies, and a couple characters have been given new skills. These have only been extremely lightly tested (just making sure that nothing is horribly broken), but if you find any weirdness, *please* swing by the <...

Welcome, new friends!

Hey everyone! Wow! So many new folks this week! I'm a bit overwhelmed, to be honest. I started this project to finally just go and *do the thing* instead of telling myself over and over, and I am so happy at the response! It's great to see so many people interested in the story I'm telling, and this now means that I can start ramping up efforts to get some quality artwork included as well!

Thanks to all of your contributions, here's a bit of commissioned artwork of Kiva's 'normal' size ...

End of May update (Patrons-only preview release)

Hey all!

So here we are at the end of May. For those of you in the US, I hope you're enjoying the holiday weekend. Progress on the game has been off-and-on while I do my other job and deal with life things, but I have been slowly chipping away at it. This one isn't really up to my standards of quality, but you guys have been awesome for supporting me, and I wanted to at least make this available for you if you want to play around with the couple of new things that have made it in. This ...

Mid-May Update

Hey everyone!

I hope folks are doing well now that we're into the Summer months. Personally, I gave myself a bit of a week off this past week. I got my second vaccine shot, which is great, but I spent 2 days feeling like I was sick, which was not great. I mean, it was great because it meant that my immune system was doing its job, and now I should be in much better shape to fight off covid. I'm still going to mask up if I'm in a crowd or around people I don't know, but it's been a huge ...

May Day (+ 7 or so)

Hey everyone!

I hope things are going well now that we're in to the month of May. The last content update has been live for the public for a little while now, and I wanted to let everyone know where things are at. I pushed pretty hard to get the update all bundled up and took a bit of a brain break at the end of last month to get over a minor bit of writer's block, but I've started getting back into the swing of things this week.

Thanks to a suggestion made on the 2021-05-08 20:57:52 +0000 UTC View Post

Channelling v0.1.1 release!

Hey friends! So here it is. The first non-alpha release of Chapter 1 content. Main thing to note: this is definitely not the end of Chapter 1, there's going to be at least one whole dungeon that's coming next, but it's not done yet.

This release focused on global system improvements. For example I bought a whole pack of RPGMaker plugins with custom script code to improve the overall play experience, as well as writing a bunch of my own scripting to handle things like displaying the girl...

March Alpha(?) Build

Happy end of March!

Another month down, and things are progressing, slowly but surely. Chapter 1 is taking shape, bit by bit, and I've also been doing a *ton* of behind-the-scenes updates, doing scripting work and such in order to set up systems that I'll only have to extend with more content as the game continues to grow.

Still, for you guys who were brave and generous enough to jump on and help out early, I wanted to make available an in-progress build of... basically 'whatever ...

Mid-March update!

Hey everyone! I hope folks aren't too badly affected by daylight savings nonsense. As for me, I've been slowly chipping away at things in Chapter one.

Stuff that's happened in the past 2 weeks:

• Made a whole bunch of 'scholar' sprites to populate Lawrenceburg
• Wrote the scripts for a bunch of story cutscenes at the University, and began plugging them into the engine
• Wrote a new intimate scene for Amber
• Wrote an introductory scene for...
  2021-03-14 22:25:14 +0000 UTC View Post

State of the Game - Feb 2021

Hey everybody! Happy Sunday. It's going to take some figuring out of how regularly I want to do things like this, but I figured with the launch of the Patreon and the Discord, it's a good time to at least get started sharing where I'm at with the game's development.

As I'm sure many of you know, I released the 'Prologue' of Channeler, which contains the introduction cutscene, the first mini-dungeon, the first 3 Partners, and a number of intimate scenes, both one-offs and repeatable.

Discord server! (and other links)

There is a discord! For those of you who found this page first, this discord server is where most of the moment-to-moment conversation is happening. I'll work on getting an official connection between here and there, but for now here's the manual link.

For folks looking to try out the game, here is the Prologue release of Channeler, available for download:

- Mega (PC ...