2023 went by SO fast, and I thought it would be fun to take a look back at this year and how much we’ve actually accomplished as a team. Originally, we wanted the demo to be publicly released in January/February 2023, but we ended up delaying it to the end of May to address player feedback (which was a really good decision!). At the beginning of 2023, we did external playtests and some “big” issues came up. Originally, the demo started off with only two residents in a house, which was supposed to be the tutorial. However, playtest feedback showed that this pacing was too slow and felt too limited, since you are forced into starting with only one couple. The fun of matchmaking is being able to choose the couples you want and the original tutorial prevented that. There were also some issues with the gifting mechanic, so we decided to push back on the demo release and fix these before releasing it to the general public. And what a great decision that was! Not only did we fix all these issues, we also had time to slot in another character for the demo. We were originally going to include only 4 characters (Mina, Gerard, Noir, and Calathea), but the extra time we took meant we could also include Ollin in the demo. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//41591309/4d841a9e3c9e20778bdd57b9ea53716b25384ff5.png[/img] [i]Here’s a screenshot of the manor with only 2 residents, which was in the original tutorial but we ended up cutting from the game.[/i] In April, we did more external playtests and we were told how much better it was than the previous build, so we decided to open up playtests to a larger group of people. In May, we continued to do lots of playtests, with friends of friends, strangers, fans of the game, etc. We got super positive feedback and only had minor issues to address. By mid May, we felt very confident in what we had for a public demo and were preparing for the public release. Fast forward to when the demo was publicly released - people were posting videos of Love, Ghostie and streaming it. We tuned into every stream we could possibly watch. We were so nervous and weren't sure how the demo would be received. Would people find it funny? Would they think it’s boring? What if they didn’t like the residents? So many anxious thoughts ran through our minds, but they all went away as soon as we saw people play through the demo. The genuine enjoyment and laughter that we saw eased all our anxieties. We started to get so excited knowing that people actually enjoyed what we had made. I cannot explain the relief I felt, seeing all the demo feedback and how much people enjoyed it. I know it’s not a perfect game, but with such a small team, I’m super proud of what we’ve accomplished. So huge thank you to everyone who’s talked about Love, Ghostie, who’s played the demo, who’s streamed it, who’s made content, who’s recommended it, etc! Honestly, whenever I lose motivation or feel like I’m in a slump (because game dev is so draining and such a long process!) I think of all the people’s smiles and laughter and “awwwww”s, which make me want to keep doing this. At this time, over 8,000 people have played the demo and have spent way longer on it than I imagined! Our wishlists have more than tripled since we released the demo and it's all thanks to you! Since the demo has released, we’ve been very heads down on finishing the major features for the game. In case you didn’t know, the demo is only an alpha demo! We got lots of feedback and mentions about how there wasn’t much content past day 20+ in the demo, but honestly, there isn’t SUPPOSED to be! We expected people to stop immediately after getting that end of demo popup, but it's so validating to see people wanting to play more anyway. We haven’t shown off too much of the new features yet, because 1. there’s placeholder art, 2. they're subject to change based on playtesting and 3. the UI isn’t quite complete yet either. But, you should know that we’ve added more mini-games, re-decoration of resident rooms, and decoration of common rooms / Ghostie’s attic! We’ve been working on a lot of quality-of-life features, like being able to rewatch relationship talks and dates, better menu flows, and logs for reviewing dialogue. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//41591309/407f31619554dd839a2072b6b8748f61b0b8686d.gif[/img] [i]Here is the Memories Board, where you'll be able to rewatch relationship talks and dates, but also you'll be able to view and collect unique art per couple![/i] I haven’t been as active on socials, but that’s because these last couple months have been a lot of polish to get ready for another set of internal playtests, starting in early 2024. If all goes well, we’ll be spending LOTS of time, playtesting, addressing feedback, bug fixing, and polishing - just like we did in early 2023. We haven’t updated the alpha demo in a while, but we plan to do an updated demo before the full release. We are planning to [b]release in 2024,[/b] so we hope you’ll be a little more patient with us. Just like with the alpha demo, we want to make sure the game has its time to address player feedback, bug fix, and polish before the full release is out. We’ve put so much love into the game and we really can’t wait for you to see it all. Thank you all so much for reading and we hope you have a great holiday season! See you in 2024!