Highway Blossoms March Update

Long time no talk. Sorry about that. This’ll probably be the last HB-blog post before release, since everything is pretty close to completion. Let’s start there.

Draft 1 of the script was finished back in December, and our editors finished going over it about a month ago. As you might imagine, there was a lot of stuff to change up. Second drafts are about halfway done so far, and we manage to complete a scene every day or so. Going off that rate, editing should be finished within the next couple weeks. Obviously, that makes our mid-April estimated release date impossible, but hey, that’s why we never formally announced it. We’re still not gonna commit to one, but it shouldn’t be much longer; certainly before summer.

Speaking personally, I feel like I’ve improved immensely at writing over the past few months as I incorporate Auric’s feedback and criticisms into my rewrites. Extremely harsh but almost always right, he’s been everything we could ask for in an editor. Hopefully you guys will feel the same way once you get to read it.

Most of the art for the game is complete, with just a few more assets to go. Weee has just a couple CG’s left to do – the lewd ones. Shiyun also has a handful of CG’s to finish. Plus, we just asked Badriel for one more last-minute background. Once those are all done, all of the game’s art will officially be complete! Big thanks to Myuto who helped out with a couple character designs and some coloring, as well as Katzchen, who also did some coloring work.

As a preview, here are some of the sprites of the Trio as they’ll be appearing in-game. The images that we released before were Myuto’s initial character designs, and not actual in-game content. The sprites’ linearts were drawn by Shiyun, and they were colored by Myuto.

Musically, almost everything is done. Anna’s finished all of their tracks, which will be mastered by our very own Mondonater – who’s also working on SFX. We’ve got two more tracks in the works from Jake, too. In addition, we have an exciting new member of the HB music team – an old friend of mine who goes by the name Able Kirby. He spent a few years working on the EVN “American Jurassic,” and wrote quite a few tracks with a nice Western twang. You can hear an in-progress version of his track “Age Old Ghost” just below. With the new songs, our soundtrack is looking like it’ll be well over an hour of music total – you’ll be able to purchase it separately from the game if you’re interested.

(For some reason it didn’t wanna let me embed the more convenient small player)

Once everything is done and implemented into the engine, we’ll be doing a brief period of internal testing, just amongst ourselves and a very small number of outside testers. After we make any adjustments based upon their feedback, we’ll be submitting the game to Sekai Project’s QA team. When that’s complete… Well, then we’ll release the game! Shouldn’t be too long now.

One last thing: originally, we had hoped to release a deluxe physical edition of the game once it’s done, with a nice box, the soundtrack, a keychain, and some other stuff. Unfortunately, we underestimated the cost and so that probably won’t be happening. That said, we’ve got these keychain designs still – would anyone be interested in purchasing one? It’s a lot easier to make keychains than full deluxe sets. Let us hear what you think in the comments!

Also, please watch for an HRP update in the next day or two. Thanks for reading!