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What a wild few months. Ever since August, we have had our face pushed into the dirt.

News outlets have covered our story on various channel, including Bellular News​.  For those unaware, we were one of the first to suddenly be denied Early Access on Steam. In any case, we have to adapt.

WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW MORE THAN EVER
If you can subscribe to our channel for at least a little while, that would help immensely.

If you have been paying attention, we have been working on finishing the game. This is a blitz. "Crunch time", if you prefer that unpopular term. Not because we want to, but because we have to complete this game *before the rules change again*, and we are denied Steam entirely. 

None of us are happy about it. But it is necessary. Cheka and his team are working overtime to deliver Art Assets that are needed to complete the game. 

Here is what is changing:

Reduction in remaining updates:
I will be reducing the amount of updates in order to make sure this game gets finished. It is high risk, low reward but it has to be done.

You will see in the next update:
1. A completed main story. There will be some new lewd scenes but the focus will be the story. This means that after ~ the 80% mark on the story, you will begin to see it become more focused on completing Luccia's mission rather than the team getting caught in silly/dirty situations. 
2. A new upgrade system and additional combat levels
3. All new worlds available to explore
4. The ending
5. Bugs, probably.

What you will see in updates beyond that:
1. Achievements/side missions that result in lewd stuff.
2. A complete achievement system
3. Crew Lv3 Lewd scenes
4. The other ending
5. Bugs, probably.

What you will see in the Steam Release (hopefully February) which will also be the final release for all platforms:
1. A complete experience
2. No bugs.
3. I may leave certain exploits because those benefit the player.

Here are some images to hold you guys over.

An update on Heavy Hearts / Censorship

Good Afternoon, Lewd Gamers.

I've received so much love over the past few weeks following the recent Steam censorship conundrum. Many people have come to me to offer suggestions on how to proceed without Early Access. Many of them have been great ideas. 

Heavy Hearts lost half of its funding when Itchio de-indexed us. We thought we could make it up with Early Access on steam, but of course we had our legs cut out from under us with that one.

While Heavy Hearts has been featured in many news outlets due to the censorship debacle, I'm happy for the exposure but it doesn't solve the problem. We are in a bit of trouble.

Many people are criticizing Steam for this, but the truth is we all know who is the real villain pulling the strings. Do not direct your discontent at Valve.

But, I don't want to get too deep into that.
I just want to talk about what we are going to do with the game now that we have lost half of our funding (itchio) and were denied early access (steam).

Heavy Hearts doesn't feature any content that would be considered fringe. It gets close sometimes with content where characters engage in scenes with a Werewolf man, but we have generally stayed away from content that would otherwise be considered bannable.
That being said, we still have a game to finish.

We want to finish Heavy Hearts hopefully by February, and ship it complete on steam. This means a programming/art blitz to completion.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN WE ARE RUSHING THE PRODUCT, AND IT CERTAINLY DOES NOT MEAN ANYONE ON THE TEAM IS GOING TO BE OVERWORKED (except maybe myself, which is something I accept freely).

It simply means that I have to direct my resources differently that I previously have. In the budget's current state, that means 100% of funding to art/animation and 0% to programming (I'm going to be working for free). 

I'm OK with that. Heavy Hearts is a labor of love (even when I get criticized by players for the things they find buggy, or for content they don't like.)

This has to happen before the rules change even more, and something else prevents us from offering Heavy Hearts on Steam.

If you enjoyed Heavy Hearts, and can offer some support, i'd ask that you find one of the supporting avenues and toss a couple bucks in (which will go completely to the artists). There is a lot yet to do, and a little bit from a lot of people will certainly help out.

Thank you so much, lewd gamers. I appreciate all the love and support you guys have poured out to me over the past few weeks.

Dammitbird

First of all, if you are reading this, that mean’s you are helping in my efforts to release Heavy Hearts to the world in it’s complete form, defiant in the face of censorship.
As you likely have heard, payment processors such as Visa & Mastercard have threatened to debank multiple sites that host adult content. In a knee-jerk reaction, many of them fully disabled adult video games.
As a result, about 50% of Heavy Heart’s revenue collapsed almost immediately. Surprisingly, Patreon and Substar are still holding us afloat. It is incredibly uncertain how this will proceed.

If you are able to, please subscribe. As of now, this platform is the only one that generates revenue for the game and I cannot afford to pay my partners at this rate. I have a lot of followers, many of which are not financially capable of supporting the game. I get it.

But if you are able to, a few bucks from a lot of people will keep this game afloat.

That being said, here is where we stand:

Itchio is basically dead for adult games. HH’s traffic went from high to abysmal overnight. If you own the game on that platform, it will continue receiving updates, however, It doesn’t seem feasible to promote any longer.

We have joined SAIKEY as a new platform to sell on. You can find it here: https://saikeystudios.com/product/heavy-hearts/

As of Tuesday, August 19th, we have officially submitted the build to Steam. As it goes through the review process, I keep my fingers crossed tight that it makes it through the censors. If you have both of your hands, please cross your fingers for me too!

This is a copy of the previous subscriber only post, with the WIPS and additional notes removed. It would really keep the game going if you subscribed. We need it now more than ever.