Faintlyspotted on SubscribeStar.art

The light of heaven shines on all; the eye of providence judges all labors.

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May 07, 2026 12:33 am

Public post

Hello!

I hope everyone's enjoying the warmer weather. Chapter 7 is pretty well underway; on my end, it's that awkward time of the development cycle where I'm mostly waiting for finished art. Consequently, there's been time for me to do a lot of housekeeping and little things I'd meant to get around to, so there's quite a lot to go through this time. Let's get right to it:

Merch!

Starting today, we've got a merch store set up! For now, it's just canvas prints of some art you may have enjoyed in the game. Getting this done has been an interesting experience- I certainly know more about RGB vs CMYK than I used to- and for now it's probably going to stay fairly focused. That said, at a future date we'll probably add one or two minor things like mugs or mousepads that needed something a bit more custom than just using an existing game asset mostly as-is. Of course, if there's anything in particular you'd be interested in seeing, feel free to say so in the comments below.

In case you missed it, we also recently launched the UH soundtrack on bandcamp. This is, unfortunately, only the non-stock tracks due to the rights issues involved in reselling stock music. However, the page itself does have details on where you can find and download the stock tracks yourself. The album price will get you the entirety of the future soundtrack as it comes out- that price will be updated on an ongoing basis at the end of each chapter.

Patron Posts!

For disc tier patrons, both the asset preview for chapter 7- including two character designs and a new music track- and a behind the scenes article detailing the creation of the 'wreath' sequence in chapter 5 are now available. Hope you enjoy!

Streamer Mode Updates!

The in-game streamer mode option that previously just allowed for skipping adult scenes is having its functionality expanded. Starting with the next build, there will be the option of either skipping scenes or proceeding with all visuals censored (note that this option does not censor adult text).

Chapter 7!

It's happening! Kind of by coincidence, part two seems to have followed a bit of a 'smaller art update, bigger art update' repeating cadence and 7 is one of the bigger ones. At present, my best guess is late may to early July for beta. But, as always, this is a project worked on by many people with busy lives who aren't doing this full time and estimates can only ever be estimates. Still, this is a fun one, and I hope you'll enjoy it. Of course, with the new release schedule this also means that chapter 6 will be going public at the same time as the full patron build of chapter 7. For the sake of release management and not putting out more than one fire at once, I'll probably be aiming for a 'patron build Thursday, public build Friday' cadence going forward.

Anyway, that's all for now.

See you around,

Faintly

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Faintlyspotted

May 07, 2026 12:33 am

Hey folks! We're trying something a little different this time with the previews. Historically, w...

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Faintlyspotted

May 07, 2026 12:32 am

Hey folks, Been a while since we did one of these! Today's is a pretty meaty one. It's a bit of a...

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Faintlyspotted

Mar 13, 2026 09:32 pm

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Heya! Got a big post for y'all today, so let's get right to it.

Chapter 5 is now available for free on Itch! If you haven't already seen it, we put out a new trailer for the story so far that you can check out on the Itch or Bluesky pages. But, beyond that, Chapter 6 is now available for patrons! This comes alongside some changes to the structure of the Patreon that I wanted to spend some time talking about.

Going forward, patron releases will be one chapter ahead instead of one month ahead. Beta builds will continue to aim for about one week ahead of patron builds.

So, why is this change happening? Well, there isn't really any way to talk about it without addressing the elephant in the room: UNDER | HEAVEN targets a fairly high production value and, consequently, is pretty expensive to make. To date, about 10% of project expenses have been covered by revenue and my estimates of costs for part two put ongoing revenue somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of ongoing costs barring significant delays.

The project's future is not in any danger. If Patreon revenue remains steady or, frankly, drops to zero, this thing will still get made. However, besides somewhat easing the burden on me personally, greater Patreon income will allow me to do things like use less stock assets or push for a higher number of new art assets and a higher level of polish generally. Not to be a downer, but it will also give the project's current levels of polish greater resilience against any future personal financial hardships that affect the degree to which I can fund the project.

So, sure, Patreon income is good. Is the hope with this change just that forcing people to wait two or three months instead of one will make them more likely to buy access?

Well, not really.

It's certainly possible, but I'm not convinced that the difference between 'one month' and 'two or three months' is actually that significant when somebody is considering whether to back the project or not. In any case, the time between subsequent free builds isn't actually changing; they've been targeted at two to three months per so far and, with the help of today's double release, will continue do so going forward without interruption. This change isn't aimed at the absolute delay of the Patron release, but the timing.

While I've been doing what I can with social media marketing and I remain deeply grateful for any word-of-mouth spread, a pretty overwhelming portion of the project's visibility comes from its visibility on Itch.io. This visibility happens almost entirely around anything tagged as a major release, which is to say the public builds.

So, the project gets the most eyes on it thirty days after the Patreon build's launch.

Or, put another way... it gets the most eyes on it exactly when there's never a patron build available to new readers. It is this specific discrepancy that the change in release cadence is aiming to address. Of course, ideally it could be addressed by just putting out a new build every month, but that is fundamentally not possible while meeting the desired bar of quality for this project.

With all of that being said, I don't imagine that this is news that anyone is excited to hear. Nonetheless, it is my hope that it will ultimately leave the project in a healthier state going forward. It was important to me that the shift to this model not include a sudden gap for free readers suddenly needing to wait one month + a build cycle, and it is for this reason that plans for today's double release were put in place before the release of chapter 4. I want to deeply thank the artists whose hard work made pulling it off possible. Whether you're a patron or a free reader, it is my hope that you'll enjoy the chapters to come; there's some exciting things in store.

...With that being said, hey, chapter 7! This is still a development update, after all.

Art briefs have already been out for a bit; as part of the big end of part one reshuffle I also implemented some process improvements, so with only a couple exceptions art briefs are currently out for multiple upcoming builds. That said, 7 in particular has some challenging components so I wouldn't be surprised if it falls on the longer side of build timelines. For our higher tier patrons, I'll be taking a hard look at the survey on Behind The Scenes content and hopefully have something new out within a month or so, besides of course getting the full resolution assets for chapter 6 up.

Separately, there's been some interest in from a few folks in a digital soundtrack, prints, and similar available. A soundtrack does pose some challenges, as the game contains a mix of stock and custom music; the most likely format will be a sort of 'selected tracks' version that contains only the actual custom tracks by Benny. That said, it's something I'd still like to make happen, though the exact format is yet to be determined. I've also done some preliminary research into getting prints done and believe there's a viable path forward, though that's certainly going to be on a longer timescale.

That's about all I have today! If you haven't played the new build(s) yet, then have fun!

See you around,

Faintly

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Faintlyspotted

Mar 13, 2026 09:32 pm

Surprise! You can now download chapter 6 right here:

This post also includes Mega.NZ content links

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Faintlyspotted

Mar 01, 2026 02:33 am

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Technically a week late or so, but here we are! It's been a full year since UNDER | HEAVEN was launched out into the world.

It's hard to describe how much things have changed since a year ago. Getting the first build out the door involved somewhere in the neighborhood of a year of work confined to just myself, other members of the project, and a few personal friends that were interested in that VN idea I kept going on about. Today, I've just gotten out of a pretty lively discord call of the anniversary read (the last chapter will be next week!) and I'm on the edge of my seat to get chapter 5 out to the public knowing that there are other people excited to read it. On a personal and creative level, it's hard to describe what a profound change that's been.

Of course, it's hard not to consider the past year in light of the broader world. UNDER | HEAVEN itself has been caught repeatedly in the crossfire of the increasing censorship of queer art and the erosion of online autonomy and anonymity. At more dire stakes, we've seen the tightening grip of authoritarianism threaten people and communities- but so, too, have we seen those communities come together in defense of their most vulnerable. It can make it feel silly, at times, to spend so much time and effort focusing on my little furry vanity project. But, it is a fact in which I have absolute faith that the people and community that this project is for will outlast these times, and so the work must continue.

Looking ahead to the coming year, I'm eager to see what new changes will come. With chapter 5 bringing part one to a close, the story itself will be entering something of a new era. The arc to come includes characters and themes that we haven't been able to delve into properly yet and which are very near and dear to my heart. Likewise, I'm very excited to see how some of the more ambitious written scenes will be brought to life by the art team. And, yes, I'll finally get the soundtrack up somewhere, promise.

I think that's about all I've got this time. Stay safe, take care of each other.

I'll see you around,

Faintly

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Hey folks! We're trying something a little different this time with the previews. Historically, w...

Hey folks, Been a while since we did one of these! Today's is a pretty meaty one. It's a bit of a...

Surprise! You can now download chapter 6 right here:

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