Hello, hello, my beautiful raccoon friends! Ive said it for three July round-ups before \\[note: but this is the first time on Steam!], and Ill say it a fourth time: July is typically the month when Swedes take their summer vacations! But despite us getting chances for rest and relaxation, weve also gotten a lot done this month. So lets go over whats been happening.

Thank you for 200k downloads!

The wildest thing on our list of happenings was definitely doing the math and realising that between Obscura and its demo, if you add up the downloads on Steam and [u]Itch.io [/u] we have hit over 200k downloads! In our first July round-up we were absolutely blown away by getting 7000 downloads, so as you might imagine were pretty tickled by this new milestone. Thank you, everyone who has supported us this far. We literally could not have reached 200k downloads without you.

Oleander Chapter Two

You may have possibly heard about this already, but Oleanders second chapter came out on the 7th of July! We have been thrilled by the positive feedback weve gotten from you about how his story has progressed, and Violet is rubbing her little paws together with evil glee over everyones reactions to the chapters end. Getting this chapter out has been so satisfying, and were so happy to hear you all enjoying it, too!

Theres merch now!

Appropriately for the update for our own merchant gadfly, weve also opened up [u]our own little merch shop for business [/u]! (Dont worry about the Kaguya Project name, thats us when were wearing our publisher hat.) Weve kept the number of items there small for now, but we expect to keep adding items and designs as time goes on, hopefully with some input from the folks on our Discord! Right now you can get stickers of the love interests, the gorgeous Chapter Two announcement art featuring Keir and Cirrus on a poster, or a t-shirt or tote bag with a new piece of Cirrus art from Mugi.

OST Updates

Cajsa has gone ahead and updated the Obscura soundtrack to include the music thats been added to Chapter Two so far! As always, her work has been amazing. Ive been blasting the tunes for the entirety of this round-up!\n

She has a [u]full array of links here [/u] to the first chapter, but if youre looking to stream the new tunes on Spotify you can find them [u]here [/u], and the album is also available to purchase on [u]Bandcamp [/u] and [u]https://store.steampowered.com/app/3854750/OBSCURA_Soundtrack/\"" style="color:#bb86fc;text-decoration:none;">Steam [/u]! Weve also set up a Steam bundle for the game and album together, in case anyone could use it.\n

Payment processor hullabaloo

So this was not my favourite thing to happen during my vacation >:| Weve put out a full statement a week ago about whats been happening, you can find it on our Discord or Tumblr. The short version is this: payment processors have pressured Steam and Itchio to remove games containing explicit content or else lose the ability to buy and sell games. There has been an immediate and very loud backlash to this, and we encourage folks who disagree with the financial censorship at play to make their voices heard.

Ultimately, weve been very lucky, given the dark and mature content at play in Obscura. So far weve avoided having our game delisted, shadowbanned, or removed in any capacity, and while were keeping our eye on the situation it looks like were in the clear for now. Obviously well update you if that changes. Not exactly the note we wanted to exit July on, but were hoping this ends the way it should: with payment processors backing off, and mature games remaining on both platforms.

\nArt Progress

In much more cheerful news! Now that Oleanders chapter is in the books, we have turned our focus over to getting Francescos second chapter ready! For Mugi, that means getting visual assets locked and loaded, and let me just say that shes really been putting the work in. Heres a little look at a new asset shes just added to the game which we are very excited to play with!

[img src=\"https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc5wS3IH_KnJvsg8p3i7va_RKG8_2owud71AqSFRYr_tMQD0tkHs1700YadnLg55FGkh3bqaYFe7FUTFYjIXgMraBWEIFxVEF18lMQbvcKL_EmHcpX3bgzzw8i68f-vQdPTM0em2g?key=O8W465JSf6LnJcr7OwIvJA\"][/img]

Writing

While I certainly didnt plan for it to work out this way, turns out that pretty soon after Oleanders second chapter went out I went on vacation! So there is nothing meaningful to report from me.\n

Thats alright, though, because Tobi has been plugging away on Francescos second chapter and absolutely killing it. Every time she pushes new text Im always excited to check it out. And since its Francescos time to shine, heres a snippet of the script that may give a clue to part of the Chapter Two adventures.

[img src=\"https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeE--E-5rMtXyklzC0usN_Xjj7yj4BzB0AmLI8SZJqzLrLQwltIcPhTmlorvAOSbvWm8_BC4SLp8NhUssEQTzcveJItWVCmfDb0gfw-4Df3Cgj_XdhIgySwPa4PtSZEO8sVxpBYmA?key=O8W465JSf6LnJcr7OwIvJA\"][/img]\n

And thats the end of the news from the raccoon den for this month! Its been a very active July on a bunch of different axes, and were already moving forward into more new and exciting things! Well try and keep this momentum going forward and get Francescos second chapter closer and closer to release!

Love,

The Rotten Raccoons Team