Hello everyone,

We’re back at it again with a combined devlog!

I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long. Admittedly, things have been a bit quiet these past 2 months, but I still wanted to update you all, just so you know we’re very much still working behind the scenes ^^

The Good

As many of you already know, we shared our ‘2025 Halloween Special’ last month, featuring mini-AU stories and new artwork for both Helios (as an angel) and Shyloh (as a werewolf). If you haven’t checked them out yet, you can download them from our game page!

Alsooo… we officially passed the 1k download milestone! So as promised, here’s the *VERY *important, *HIGHLY *educational image of shirtless Shyloh. A reward for the soul, truly ^^

On the same note, writing something outside the main plot of the game was a really fun change of pace, and I honestly wish I could do it more often! Though it didn’t seem to get a particularly strong response from the community (maybe because it wasn’t in a VN format, or that the AUs didn’t catch players’ interest, I’m not too sure).

As such, I don’t think I’ll be adding any additional CA content like this in the near future (goodbye, Valentine’s AUs… you will live on in spirit).

The Bad

On a more personal note, remember when I mentioned my wrist was hurting in the previous devlogs? Well… turns out I’m showing some early signs of carpal tunnel.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it’s basically a condition that causes numbness, tingling, and pain in the hand and forearm, often as a result of repetitive motions, long hours of computer use, certain hand positions, or inflammation (median nerve be damned XD)

I’ve got a brace from a physiotherapist now + even sewed myself a tiny pillow to rest my arm on (the heroes might be jinxing me, who knows LOL) I did look into ergonomic keyboards and mice, but wow… they’re expensive af ;; So for now, I’m relying on stretches and regular breaks to keep things from getting worse.

This is also part of the reason you haven’t seen me around itch as much lately. Sorry about that, folks TT I appreciate your understanding and patience <3

The Ugly

I was looking back over our timeline to see what a realistic release window might look like and whether it’d be possible to wrap everything up in December.

As most of you who follow our updates know, all of our art and music assets are fully done. The parts still stalled are the script, programming, and updates to the character customization (CC) menu.

On the same note, our CC menu artist is dealing with some health issues (as mentioned in our previous devlog), so they can’t work on the game at the moment. Our new editor is also preparing for surgery, which means December probably won’t be very productive for the three of us. Health always comes first, though, and I fully believe it’s vital to take time for proper recovery!!

Unfortunately, this does mean** the game will have to be delayed to 2026**.

We’ll announce a specific date once we’re confident in our timeline and everyone’s health + workload’s stable again.

And for anyone curious why CA has stretched past a two-year development cycle, and whether it will be finished (which it will), here’s the breakdown I came up with to keep it transparent with all the fans:

Starting from 2024:

• (March): Released the game’s demo for NaNoRenO 2024, showcasing the intro up to the point where Sev (MC) meets Shyloh.

• (April – June): Launched the extended demo for Otome Jam 2024, including 2 endings and introducing all remaining LIs. This build was less polished due to certain team members not completing their tasks and leaving parts half-finished (thankfully, they’re no longer with the team) // which meant the rest of us had to scramble and cover for them to meet the deadline.

• (July – September): Team break; little progress was made during this period.

• (October – March 2025): Decided to do a revamp of the demo AKA rewriting, reprogramming, adding animations/cinematography, incorporating player feedback, etc. (Basically making the game from scratch since the Otome Jam version was... something). Several team members had moved on during this period, so the bulk of scripting and programming fell on me (hence why it took nearly 6 months).

Continuing into 2025:

• (April): Break from revamped extended demo.

• (May): Finished the remaining portion of the prologue and began work on the character routes. Meanwhile, the team was busy finishing up any leftover assets.

• (June – July): War broke out in my home country and, as you can imagine, it was quite the life-altering event. On top of that, itch.io hit us with the NSFW purge and de-indexed the game = traffic went poof. Accordingly, I had to remove some content and rebuild parts of the game just to get back in line with their rules (my heart is broken still ngl) TT

• (August – September): Shifted focus from script work to programming and UI tweaks (adding new skin tones, CC menu updates, log screen change, etc.), and wrapping up the last of the art assets (including bonus CGs celebrating our first fanart and fanfic milestones). But just as we were gearing up to expand the CC menu based on community suggestions, progress had to pause due to our CC artist’s health issues.

• (October): Focused on preparing the Halloween booklet to re-engage the community + my wrist issues worsened into early signs of carpal tunnel.

In Closing

To summarize: we’ve dealt with team changes, health issues, platform complications, and shrinking manpower— some of which come with the realities of a volunteer project, since it’s hard for people to stay on long-term without compensation, and some of which are due to the unpredictability of life.

That said, the plan for 2026 depends heavily on recovery: for myself, our editor, and our CC menu artist. Because of all this, I can’t give a specific timeline just yet. I’m still hoping to finish the game, but I also worry about engagement dropping and all our efforts going unnoticed if interest fades...

Truth be told, I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety over this matter. Our marketing attempts haven’t really taken off + struggling to generate interest on socials + CA has never been a particularly popular game to begin with. So I worry that if it flops, that’s 2 years of work gone with no compensation, nothing to show for the time and energy the whole team has poured into this.

That’s why, although this goes a bit against what I said before about releasing everything at once, I started thinking about doing a content update featuring a character of the community’s choice. You can check the poll results on Twitter, however, since we only received 65 votes, I feel like it didn’t fully capture the overall community’s opinion (even though we do *technically *have a winner). So I’m debating whether I should run another poll or just move forward with the current winner and release a portion of their route as part of a patch update.

That’s all for now! As always, thank you so, sooooo much for your support, and I hope you’ll stick with the CA team through 2026 too <3

There won’t be a December devlog, but I’m wishing you all an amazing holiday season and a new year filled with happiness, love, and everything your heart desires.

Until next time~

Files

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