Breaking radio silence to explain some short-term plans:

1: Before the end of summer we’re going to start a closed testing environment. We’ve gotten to the point where we want some outside opinions while we gear up for a larger release.

2: We plan to update our testing build monthly, so we are looking at making the changelogs public (albeit some censoring to avoid spoilers). Don’t consider this a promise but it’s something we’re weighing on.

3: Every month we’ll make a short blog post and include one piece of media alongside it (music, cg, sprite, screenshot, WHO KNOWS) alongside a quick “what we’re currently doing” recap. This will be grouped into the changelog if we end up doing that, but we’ll still do this even if nothing comes of posting the changelogs in public.

So on that note, let’s end on a new music sample:

SEE YOU NEXT MONTH PROBABLY

Wow, okay, so we’re officially a YEAR overdue on our release date. That’s sort of embarrassing. The good news is we’re not dead yet!

While we aren’t ready to release the full VN yet, we’ve made a significant amount of progress. Mehkanik has been juggling the Mekki/Caprice paths and All-Maker, our CG artist, has been working tirelessly alongside him on the Hayley route. As Caprice and Mekki share a writer (whom is also writing the first act) they aren’t really ready to show off. All-Maker, being able to focus solely on his CG art and writing, however, was able to finish the Hayley path in a good amount of time. It’s been sitting in our pre-release build on it’s own (that is to say, without the previous act 1/ the Mekki and Caprice paths finalized) so after some discussion we’ve decided that we’ll be releasing the Hayley route as a standalone demo.

You can download the Hayley path here:

Windows

Mac

Linux

Keep in mind that Act 1 is missing from this build so you might miss out on some context, but as-is you shouldn’t be missing out on anything vital to the path.

Apart from that, we’ve added some more music to our soundcloud; taken from the Hayley route obviously.

We hope you enjoy it!

Took us a while, but our website is finally live.  You can check it out here.** We took the website launch as an opportunity to change the name of our project from Salty Tears to **Work in Progress.  Salty Tears started as a joke name for a joke VN.  Some members of the team had an attachment to the name, but we decided that it didn’t really represent what the project has become – the change is mostly just a formality at this point.

One last note: since our last blog post, we got a new musician on board.  Pradius is a great musician and we’ve been enjoying working with him. You can find his audition sample on the media page of the new site (which is a bit empty, but we intend to update it as time goes on).

As briefly touched upon in our previous blog post, we’ve spent the past little while restructuring and rethinking our process to make sure we’re on the right track for development this year. Today we’re going to build on that by opening up a spot for a second musician to join the team.

If interested, keep the following in mind:

1: We’re going to need a Soundcloud or some other alternative where we can view some of your previous work. It doesn’t have to be “this is stuff I’ve made for a VN before” (but can be, of course!). We’re just looking at your talent as a whole.

2: We’re looking for musicians who are willing to think outside the box a little. We want something that compliments both our art and our writing, so walking into this thinking “I’m going to make some soft piano music!” isn’t necessarily the best idea. We like someone who has preferably thought a bit about what’s on the blog and has something in mind that would fit that.

3: You’d be on a team of two, but we expect tweaking and experimenting to come in between pieces (see point 2) so there’s a decent workload here. Also worth noting is that our team is fairly streamlined with one person in charge of each major job in order to keep quality consistent. While music is an exception to the rule, we’re going to expect that you work with our current musician, Qwheeler, to ensure that all of the music flows nicely with each other.

Wow okay that sounds a lot more strict than it actually is. If you’re interested feel free to hop on our public chat or drop us an email at us@salty-salty-studios.com.

2012 has come and gone and Salty Tears is now nine months late of the promised April 1st release. OH WELL. Rather than dwell on that, we’re instead opting to look forward and figure out what it is we intend to accomplish this year.

First: we’re doing some team restructuring (again). We noted this a while ago on our Twitter account, but Mehkanik is now the sole writer for Salty Tears, with new member Kenji! acting as a “writing assistant” (making sure the workflow remains consistent by handling scenes that Mehk can’t do in a timely manner) and Karmadon playing the role of editor. The past few weeks have been a matter of trimming out the fat that 2012 piled onto the project, so we aren’t entirely sure if we’re done rebuilding ourselves yet. If something happens, a blog post will ensue shortly afterward.

Second: we have a website that should be ready soon. The design itself is done, but we want it to have a sufficient amount of content in it before we throw it out in the wild.

Third: We’d like to actually, you know, get the VN done. That’d be swell. And thats that for now, I think. Happy New Years from the Salty Tears dev team~