A small update, but hopefully a fun one: We've made some modifications to the online yearbook to improve the ability to easily share your characters on social media.

First off, we've added new link options for tumblr and mastodon (along with the existing twitter and facebook options), so that if you have accounts on those sites you can more easily auto-generate a link by clicking on the appropriate icon.

Second, we've tinkered with the page code to get it to create a more logical "preview" option on sites with link-previewing. The easy post options should now be able to correctly load character names and thumbnails for display. An example:



(Apologies to the creator of that character, but it was an amusing one to share!)

Both Magical Diary games are on discount this week, so this is a great time to share your characters with your friends and encourage them to join the madness!

The internal review team has played through Magical Diary: Wolf Hall and declared that everything is running a-ok on Steam Deck, so we now have a shiny new green checkmark on the game page.

Are you playing on a handheld? (I don't personally own one so I'm curious to hear how that's working for others!)



While you're here, check out our other products on discount as part of the Steam Winter Sale!

We hope you're having safe, peaceful and happy holidays.

The latest update is now available, containing a number of bugfixes, mostly for dungeon interactions with a few dialog tweaks. More information on the list of changes is available in this discussion topic:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/974910/discussions/0/3546050190328285894/

Because this is a fairly large update (and we broke a few things along the way and had to un-break them) there is a chance that something will have gone wrong. PLEASE report any strange dungeon behavior in that linked thread so that we can take a look!

How are you holding up in the summer heat?

Magical Diary: Wolf Hall and all our other titles are on discount for the Summer Sale. You can find the main game here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/974910/Magical_Diary_Wolf_Hall/

as well as bundle discount offers on this and other titles!

Fixed a bug in the steam integration code that could cause crashes when unlocking kiss CGs or viewing them in the gallery.

No story content affected.

Please let us know if you run into any problems.

This is a minor update which does not affect game content.

It should:

• Allow for achievements to pop during the game instead of waiting until you exit
  
• Check the Steam Cloud settings properly before loading cloud saves
  
• Make some files work better between the full and demo versions
  

The end of 2021 is approaching! I hope you've all had at least a few good things happen to you this year, despite the struggles we've all faced. To celebrate the season, some bonus artwork featuring Corrinna from Magical Diary and the little vampire Buttercup from our latest release, Cute Bite, decorating a tree together:



Have you played through Corrinna's side route yet?

As for Buttercup, you can find her here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1586960/Cute_Bite/

Which, along with all our other games, is on sale until January 5, 2022!

Take advantage of the Autumn Sale to get Wolf Hall for 50% off - the first time it's been this low!



Check out the rest of our Steam products as well for more sale offers - or get Wolf Hall together with other games for a big bundle discount!

The latest update is now available on the beta branch. This contains several bug fixes and tweaks, but also makes available a scene which was previously failing to trigger on appropriate playthroughs.

Full changelog details here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/974910/discussions/0/4263206669451671366/

The latest update is now available, containing a number of bugfixes, mostly for unusual dungeon interactions (including a crash that could occur after the final-exam tutorial) with a few dialog tweaks. More information on the list of changes is available in this discussion topic:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/974910/discussions/0/3046105389668740868/

The latest update is now available on the beta branch, containing a number of bugfixes, mostly for unusual dungeon interactions (including a crash that could occur after the final-exam tutorial) with a few dialog tweaks. More information on the list of changes and how to access the beta branch is available in this discussion topic:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/974910/discussions/0/3046105389668740868/

If no major incidents are reported, this will go forward onto the main branch later this month.

In the meantime, check out all of our discounted products during the Steam summer sale!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/2671/Hanako_Games_Collection/

The latest update has now moved to be live on the main branch.

If you encounter any difficulties, please post on the main discussion forums so we can see and respond more quickly!

This patch includes:

Dungeon:
* Crash that occurred when some things (like players casting Flames) happened next to poison gas or dungeon exits fixed.
* Knocking out a partymember in the last practice dungeon now properly hides the dungeon screens, fixing a bug where you'd have the dungeon stuck on screen until Sunday night and then crash.
* Mindstorming yourself and partymembers should now work properly. In particular, the game no longer crashes afterwards.
* Saves made on the turn you mindstormed a monster now load the monster's mindstorm reactions right.
* Shield spellcard now mentions how long it lasts.
* Tweaked handling of mana drain messages.
* Antimagic fields should work better.
* Adjusted the code for falling down holes.
* A crash jumping into poison gas fixed.
* Grammar fix for Entangle bridges.
* A bug that would sometimes expose cells you shouldn't be able to see on the minimap in the final tutorial has been fixed.
* Wrong Way traps no longer physical, so they no longer get damaged by
lightning and area effect spells. (This manifested as Floors being damaged or defeated).
* When there are multiple targets with the same name, they now get directional info to help distinguish them.
* Teleport Other no longer treats the motion as voluntary.
* You can't teleport onto an exit if you have immobile party members.
* A bug where you could climb the exit stairs after you were defeated if you were standing on them before your defeat fixed.
* Animated effects now properly animate when viewed through Farsight.
* NPC-on-NPC Drain Magic display now cleaner.

Story:
* Typo fixed (you now try to avoid being overHEARD when talking to Minnie, instead of overHEAD.)
* A few spots where you'd get a dialog box sliding out under a dialog box fixed.
* Spells targeting yourself give better feedback.
* If the fire didn't happen, you no longer talk to Grabiner about it on Luke's route.
* Kyo's name no longer shows up in the candle-selling scene if you don't know who he is.
* Minor bugs in the last Bingo game's dialog and diary entries fixed.

* Loadsave system a little more robust. In particular, certain errors that
would cause a crash on the next turn in the dungeon are now only warnings.
* Tweaks to the debugging code.

The latest update is now available on the beta branch, containing a number of bugfixes, mostly for unusual dungeon interactions (including a crash that could occur after the final-exam tutorial) with a few dialog tweaks. More information on the list of changes and how to access the beta branch is available in this discussion topic:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/974910/discussions/0/3123786356702840853/

If no major incidents are reported, this will go forward onto the main branch sometime next month.

In other news, today is the final day of the Cute Bite kickstarter:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1586960/Cute_Bite/

You can back now to get in on the beta, or wishlist the game on steam to be notified when it launches later this year.

Hard to believe it's been almost a year since this game was released! (And what a year it's been, but that's another story entirely.)

Anyway, to spread a little Valentine's cheer, we're giving away another set of the chibi sticker sheets that were originally made for the Kickstarter. I'm happy to mail these anywhere in the world and don't anticipate any problems.



To enter, visit our twitter:

https://twitter.com/diary_magical/status/1360348015639359499

Retweet that post with a valid account before midnight GMT on Feb 17th to be entered to win. (Accounts that exist only to enter contests will be disqualified.)

The sticker characters are:
Professor Potsdam
Professor Grabiner
Barbara Solmoro
Damien Ramsey
Ellen Middleton
Luke Phifer
Manuel Arias
Minnie Cochran
Raven Darkstar
Suki Sato
William Danson

We're pushing out a new version onto the main branch. This is largely a collection of small bugfixes, plus a minor dialog adjustment for one path.

If you encounter any problems with this update please let us know, both through posts and through the in-game traceback uploader if possible!

---

Patch notes for this update:

[h2]PLOT:[/h2]

* William's birthday presents on his path are no longer from both you and
Donald if you did not actually make a deal with Donald.

[h2]DUNGEON:[/h2]

* Should no longer be able to talk to monsters when silenced.
* Should now get the Lucky branch on exam3 if we blundered around in the dark
but managed to avoid falling down a dark hole.
* Spellcards now have the caster passed to them when we're in party mode, so
the PC's charm will no longer reduce the displayed cost of partymembers
casting spells. Crush spellcard now displays correct damage for Donald
instead of for the PC when he's casting it.
* Silenced mana burn fields no longer make noise.
* Solo Nain Rouge now drawn offset when he reaches the group.
* Sealing a carving in exam2 when it's already got something on top of it
no longer reports it moving into the down position.
* Talking to the sparkle should now fully lock the dungeon UI.
* Monsters no longer plan to attack things they can't see. This means Bladen
Beasts will now go into your cell if tracking your scent.
* Monsters should now be reported as planning to stalk some prey if they
have no queued action but the preferred potential action would be to sniff
and follow (so when the Bladen Beast follows you into a cell but can't
attack because you're cloaked, it won't complain that it can't figure out
what its plan is.)
* Foresight should now report "isn't planning to do anything" instead of a
bug. Fixes a bug where a Bladen Beast has no particular plans if you
decloak in front of it.

[h2]TECHNICAL:[/h2]

+ steam.rpy: only notify once if an error occurs initializing
SteamRemoteStorage when checking fileinfo. This should fix the bug where
the load/save screen no longer responds to buttons being clicked, but still
responds to hover, if SteamRemoteStorage didn't work.
* No longer require value deindirection when the scrubber is just
creating a new empty Python dict. Fixes a crash loading saves with
__warningregistry__ (which gets set by certain SDL errors.)
* http_get_progress() now uses a binary string, should fix encoding errors
trying to download GPG.

[h2]POLISH:[/h2]

* Saining codex entry should now unlock on William's path.
* Extra word removed from detect charm lesson.
* Extra 'the' removed from the vote for me speech when rebutting Minnie.
* Serenade diary entry should no longer name Kyo if you don't know his name.
(He will be 'some guy' if you know Minnie's name, 'a guy' if you don't
know he was singing to Minnie.)
* Now note joining the nature club properly in the diary.
* More sliding dialog box fixes
* Diagnosis' default string for health conditions now has a period at the
end.

We hope you're having a good holiday season and looking forward to the end of 2020. All of our products are on sale right now, with bonus discounts if you buy the whole kit and caboodle!

The new version 1.0.31 of Magical Diary: Wolf Hall is currently available for testing on the beta branch.

Mostly this is minor fixes and dungeon improvements (notably, handling of Cloak so you can sneak around better) and one minor plot adjustment. As always, we welcome any feedback and suggestions, so if you have the time or were about to replay anyway, try switching over to the beta version and see how things work for you.

To access the beta, right-click (or equivalent) the game in your steam library and select Properties, then Betas. From here you can choose the beta version from the dropdown. Your install should update - you'll see 1.0.31 on the title screen if it's got it right.

If no errors are reported this will probably move into the main branch next week.

Patch notes for this update:

PLOT:

* William's birthday presents on his path are no longer from both you and
Donald if you did not actually make a deal with Donald.

DUNGEON:

* Should no longer be able to talk to monsters when silenced.
* Should now get the Lucky branch on exam3 if we blundered around in the dark
but managed to avoid falling down a dark hole.
* Spellcards now have the caster passed to them when we're in party mode, so
the PC's charm will no longer reduce the displayed cost of partymembers
casting spells. Crush spellcard now displays correct damage for Donald
instead of for the PC when he's casting it.
* Silenced mana burn fields no longer make noise.
* Solo Nain Rouge now drawn offset when he reaches the group.
* Sealing a carving in exam2 when it's already got something on top of it
no longer reports it moving into the down position.
* Talking to the sparkle should now fully lock the dungeon UI.
* Monsters no longer plan to attack things they can't see. This means Bladen
Beasts will now go into your cell if tracking your scent.
* Monsters should now be reported as planning to stalk some prey if they
have no queued action but the preferred potential action would be to sniff
and follow (so when the Bladen Beast follows you into a cell but can't
attack because you're cloaked, it won't complain that it can't figure out
what its plan is.)
* Foresight should now report "isn't planning to do anything" instead of a
bug. Fixes a bug where a Bladen Beast has no particular plans if you
decloak in front of it.

TECHNICAL:

+ steam.rpy: only notify once if an error occurs initializing
SteamRemoteStorage when checking fileinfo. This should fix the bug where
the load/save screen no longer responds to buttons being clicked, but still
responds to hover, if SteamRemoteStorage didn't work.
* No longer require value deindirection when the scrubber is just
creating a new empty Python dict. Fixes a crash loading saves with
__warningregistry__ (which gets set by certain SDL errors.)
* http_get_progress() now uses a binary string, should fix encoding errors
trying to download GPG.

POLISH:

* Saining codex entry should now unlock on William's path.
* Extra word removed from detect charm lesson.
* Extra 'the' removed from the vote for me speech when rebutting Minnie.
* Serenade diary entry should no longer name Kyo if you don't know his name.
(He will be 'some guy' if you know Minnie's name, 'a guy' if you don't
know he was singing to Minnie.)
* Now note joining the nature club properly in the diary.
* More sliding dialog box fixes
* Diagnosis' default string for health conditions now has a period at the
end.

Nominations are open now for this year's Steam Game Awards, and we'd love to be nominated in the Story-Rich Game category. We hope you remember all those hours spent collecting dates for the May Day Ball fondly!

(Also, the Autumn Sale is on, so now is a good time to pick up this or any other Hanako Games titles.)

But I promised you a wicked demon...



(Artist: Pepper-n-Bento)

Enjoy, and stay safe!

Visit the Steam store page for either Magical Diary: Wolf Hall or Magical Diary: Horse Hall and select the 'Magical Diary Collection BUNDLE' offer - you can buy both games together or, if you already own one, you can pick up the other at a discount.

The game has been updated to a new version, which fixes a number of small bugs and adds some new spell responses as well as a new solution for exam 2. The most obvious is a fix for the Blind spell, which was not wearing off correctly at the end of its duration previously.

For more information on all the changes visit the changelog thread here.

Please post feedback and bug reports on the discussion forums so Spiky can see them! (Comments after announcements are harder to search for.)

If you DO encounter problems, please let us know right away so we can look into them! Instructions for switching back to an older version if necessary are posted in the forum thread.

Thanks, and hope you're enjoying the Summer Sale! (This game, along with the rest of our catalog, can be found on discount in our collection.)

We've just put out another patch on the main branch (so it should be updating by default for players). This includes a lot of bugfixes, typoes, and a few new lines of dialog, but the major difference that people are likely to notice is the removal of the "Dismiss" button from the dungeon textbox.

To give a vague technical explanation, the 'Dismiss' button was designed to hide the textbox immediately, including if you'd rolled way back in the text to look at previous events, where the 'Next' button was designed to move forward to the next line of text/code. This meant that it was possible to Dismiss the textbox even if there was new feedback text you hadn't read yet (because it was on the next page!) and also that Dismissing the textbox would not immediately trigger the next event. Since the 'Dismiss' button was so convenient, most people clicked it all the time - missing some text and ending up with dungeon screens that looked 'stuck' briefly until they clicked a second time to trigger what was actually supposed to happen Next.

Basically, using Next instead should lead to a smoother dungeon gameplay experience for everyone, but it may be briefly confusing for current players because the button you're used to clicking on isn't there anymore. Click Next!

This may be adjusted further as we see how it plays out.

For more information on what's been added to the game recently, check out the Changelog thread on the discussion forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/974910/discussions/0/4052614347228391098/

Please let us know if you run into any difficulties. You can always check what version of the game you're currently running by looking at the lower left-hand corner of the game title screen.

Cards have now been enabled and should be dropping - considering the length of the game those of you who've been playing already will probably get all your cards at once.

As well as cards featuring the main route characters, we have an emoticon set featuring badges for the six different halls.



For those who have been asking about the lyrics to the song that plays over the credits, I've asked our musician to add them to the video description of the song on youtube, so you can find those by going through below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64-s_jnKaxE

We're giving away sets of stickers featuring the cast of the game in chibi format:



These are physical sticker sheets which will be mailed out anywhere in the world to winners.

To enter, retweet this message announcing the game and the contest!

Entries accepted until midnight (GMT) on February 23rd (Sunday).


The sticker characters are:
Professor Potsdam
Professor Grabiner
Barbara Solmoro
Damien Ramsey
Ellen Middleton
Luke Phifer
Manuel Arias
Minnie Cochran
Raven Darkstar
Suki Sato
William Danson

Almost a year after the kickstarter completed, we are now available on Steam, with a 15% discount for launch week!



We are also running a twitter giveaway contest for a set of cute chibi stickers from the kickstarter merchandise. For details and to enter, please go to:
https://twitter.com/diary_magical/status/1229496330902482945

This is a big and complicated game and there are guaranteed to be more updates in the future (we will be adding a bonus endgame dungeon later!) We hope you enjoy exploring our magical school!

In preparation for launch, we have updated the demo version of the game to use the latest code, including new options for the character creation screen, some added interface hints, and the bonus wand for Horse Hall players.





If you've previously played the demo, you don't need to play it again! The additions are small and really just to improve the experience for newcomers.

Professor Potsdam reporting in to let you know that we have been cleared for Steam launch and are planning to unveil the full game on Monday, February 17!

For those who haven't been following in the beta, this is a pretty huge adventure. Over 400,000 words (the equivalent of SEVERAL books, though you won't see them all in a single runthrough.) Eight first-person-dungeon challenges, and an array of practice dungeons to prepare for them. Five major pursuable-character routes (three female, two male). Seven side character routes (five female, two male). Adjustable PC personality traits that will change your dialog as you go. Different clubs you can join, or not, as you choose. There's SO MUCH to see and do, and we are looking forward to letting you all loose inside it!

(The old Kickstarter demo will be updated at some point as well, I'll post another announcement when that happens.)

A big thank-you to anyone who came by the Magical Diary: Wolf Hall table at this year's AdventureX conference in the British Library!

I hope you enjoyed what you got to play of the game and scored a cute chibi sticker of your favorite character in the process.

This game is actively in development!

The Kickstarter was successful. The in-progress game is available to people who backed at beta-access level or above. More content is being patched in as it is written.

We do not intend to do an Early Access period on Steam. The game will be available here when it is complete.

In the meantime, if you are interested in following the updates as new content is released, you can find the developer log on itch.io here:

https://hanakogames.itch.io/magical-diary-wolf-hall/devlog

This project is now live on Kickstarter!

By backing us now you can receive early access to this game as it's being developed, unlock new romance options, insert custom cameos, and get other Hanako Games titles at a discount. Who the bonus romance options will be depends entirely on what gets the most interest during the kickstarter, so this is your chance to have an impact!

Or check out the demo available on Steam! This covers the first week of gameplay - creating your character, meeting people, learning your first spells, etc.

To get the latest news and updates about this game, please follow the Magical Diary twitter account.

We also have a general hanakogames twitter account, for discussion of other titles and general chitchat.