Hey everyone! Happy New Year, first of all! How have you been these last few months? I moved to Japan back in October, and I've been having a lovely time over here in the big city (when my good ol' brain has been letting me do so). I've been touching up on python again lately, improving my Japanese fluency by talking to every person over 50 in the neighborhood, and squishing my brains dry trying to conceptualize the plot for the sequel. It's getting there, but also, I realize that after 11 years in the industry I'm burned out on making games like you wouldn't believe. I'm still unemployed, and every day I feel like creative work is something foreign that I managed in a different lifemy brain isn't braining quite as well as I'd like it to. I'll get there, I'm sure. The concept for the sequel is already awesome, and I just need to hammer it into place. Since the last update back in July my husband Alex and I have been working tirelessly on the Spanish translation for chapter 4. It should hopefully be ready in the next couple of months! Which leads me to the first problem we'll be facing in 2025: So far, the French and Japanese localizations were carried out by two close friends: Benjamin Beziat (French) and Shion Otsuka (Japanese). They offered to provide these translations voluntarily all the way back in the first chapter and chapter 3 respectively, and that was all good and well except that The Hayseed Knight got really freaking long over 7 years of development and they both have lives that take priority over this project. Their situation has changed, and so I'm without a translation team at this moment. I'm writing to let you know that the French translation is currently indefinitely on hold, and the Japanese translation will take a long time to resume. I've worked as a translator for many projects, and I love localizations with all my heart the fact that Ader's story can be read in different languages, that more people can laugh at the translators' choices and marvel at the way Ader's accent was localized however, the truth is that even if I were to add all the sales for both the French and Japanese markets since the game was first released on steam I'd have a grand total of 125 sales. THK hasn't even hit a total of 4,000 sales globally yet and that's a tiny figure in comparison all the same (3,3% as of now), but I'm Spanish and I know how it feels to be part of a market that only focuses on English releases. I truly wanted to offer The Hayseed Knight in as many languages as possible, so that we didn't have to play in someone else's language. Localizations, beyond my friends' good will, are a cost that I cannot afford for a story as wordy as this (220k words total). With about 100k words remaining for French (chapters 4 and 5) and 160k words remaining for Japanese (chapters 3, 4 and 5). Assuming a rate of 0.07 per word in French and 10 yen per character in Japanese, completing the localizations would cost over 25,000 EUR. That's a cost I can't justify to fully translate the game right now. The only way I see forward for localizations, short of finding a team that would be willing to assist the original translators, would be a publisher picking up the game for some form of re-release. There is definitely a TON of space for optimizations by people who know what they're doing better than me, and for release in consoles as well... but that's a pie in the sky sort of talk, as the industry is kind of in shambles right now. No matter how and how long it takes, I promise I'll find a way to continue the translations. I want to give one more thank you to Benjamin for being one of the first people ever to support The Hayseed Knight and for his determination to get the French translation out there (check out his channel SireRed so that I can keep on teasing him for being a youtubeur fameux); to Shion for being my friend and working in her spare time always to get the Japanese translation sorted out whenever I needed something for a new update, and to my husband Alex for always being willing to help out with the Spanish translation. Thank you as well, for your patience and trust in me and my passion project. I hope 2025 brings you nothing but happiness.

[ 2025-01-08 04:58:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How have you been this last month? After a fairly nice start, summer is getting hot as hell in Spain. Instead of resting as one ought to, I've been working hard on this update, and I hope it'll be one that helps a lot of people get to experience the story comfortably! Introducing 1.8.1 aka FULL STEAM DECK, CONTROLLER AND KEYBOARD COMPATIBILITY! I had to ditch the original plan of upgrading to Ren'py 8 as my game depends on a whole lot of stuff that is specific to the version 7.5.3 and doesn't play nice with python 3, so I rolled up my sleeves and started scouring the internet for fixes that could make this version steam deck and generally controller compatible! (Thanks to Ashley of Gods of the Twilight for helping me out and testing, and to Kam aka Elbar's voice actor for testing as well!) I've added a lot of custom functionality to buttons so that you can navigate comfortably, play through every minigame, and get from start to finish of the story without needing to use a mouse! In fact I kinda enjoy navigating with a controller much better now, woops. I also added a handful of new encyclopaedia entries, improved encyclopaedia and diary navigation (made the entries a little prettier too), fixed a few visual bugs and generally just made stuff nicer all around. I believe this should be the last important update for a while until the localizations for each chapter are ready. After that, my plans include:

• adding a descriptive mode accessibility function for visually impaired people
• implementing a function to hover over a word to see a small encyclopaedia preview (which I managed to fully implement but sadly had to remove as it didn't play nice with localizations)
• continuing to work on the next THK project sshhhhh

As a last personal note, I'm currently unemployed and could use some help gathering funds for the next project if you enjoyed the game. I have a Patreon page if you'd like to leave a tip, and if you have any leads on writing gigs (English, Spanish), voice direction (English, Spanish, Japanese) or generally overseeing a project, I'd really appreciate if you could tell me about it. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks for taking the time to read!

[ 2024-07-13 08:34:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How have you been these last few months? Me, I've been enjoying my new-found freedom after 7 years obsessing over my project. I quit a 5-year-long job that had caused me massive burnout, and I've been trying to just learn how to exist again. I spent some time in USA with friends, I've been practicing different painting styles, I've been streaming a lot of fun games on twitch, and I've taken up singing lessons again. The Hayseed Knight was born in therapy, in a space between jobs and finding a new life, and it's in this moment between calm and uncertainty that I find the most fertile breeding grounds for creativity. I'm not the kind of person who does well under pressure to tell you the truth, so I hope I can keep this peace moving forward. On to the meat of the announcement! 1.8.0.2 was a rather small update to fix typos and a couple silly mistakes here and there, add hints to clarify how to get all the endings... and also to update all my socials to MaxiMJdev. Sandra took me here, and I'm very grateful, but I'm ready to start moving forward as Maxi Molina everywhere. I'm planning a 1.8.1 update once I can figure out how to (or more likely find someone to help me) update a few custom functions I use so that they work with Ren'py 8 as it uses Python 3. That would also supposedly make it work with steam deck! I don't own one so I can't check, alas. And lastly, but not least importantly: I've started working on the next THK-related project. I don't want to pressure myself for now, so I'm keeping it vague! I will let you know more about it when the time comes. I love the world of Dakhn and the characters I created, and there are a lot of things I want to do with them in years to come. Look forward to all of them! I hope you have a wonderful and queer June, Maxi

[ 2024-06-01 09:40:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

IT'S OUT! THE FULL VERSION OF THE HAYSEED KNIGHT IS FINALLY OUT!

Welcome to The Hayseed Knight v1.8, or what would have been v1.0 if I had known anything about versioning when I started!! Heck, given that there's essentially nothing left unchanged since the start, this may as well be v2.0. Short of anything failing catastrophically and needing patches, this should be the last big update. The main game is finally finished, and I don't even know what to say. I've been frozen solid for the last couple of weeks, just trying to process the fact that 7 years of work were finally coming to an end. What started in late 2016 as a picaresque novel in Spanish I wrote for myself during my first time in therapy to try to untangle the Gordian knot of painful memories I always carried with me, has somehow turned into... this. All of this. 7 years and a half of this. I'm terrified. I'm hyped as hell. I'm going to eat something nice to celebrate. On to the meat of the announcement, though! While the saves should be compatible with any save past 1.6, my suggestion would be that everyone start a new game because HOO BOY, THIS UPDATE BRINGS A TON OF NEW STUFF!

• Chapter 5 (all new 7 hours of gameplay on average!), with 3 main endings and a few non canon detours!
• All new high quality animated intro so we can both cry thinking of a The Hayseed Knight cartoon!
• 100% rewritten Sep and Ader meeting in chapter 1, so I no longer have to cringe playing through it!
• Lots and lots of remade art. And I mean LOTS: [olist]
• Whole overhaul for Ilegrab; touched up Berbiz, Djao, Elbar, Eina, Sep and Ader!
• Better rendered, more varied backgrounds full of life and random people walking around where relevant!
• New and improved illustrations through every chapter!
• Better particle effects! [/olist]
• A new Gallery and Music Room that unlock automatically as you find new illustrations and songs! I didn't know I'd made about a hundred illustrations for THK, but apparently I have!
• More wonderful voices yet for the cast, including a recast for Bammet!
• New songs? I think?? I don't even remember anymore if they made it to the previous version!
• I'm sure there's more stuff I've forgotten! Oh no!

While the English version of the game has been finished, work continues on the Spanish, French and Japanese localizations. The French and Japanese translations have been labors of love from my good friends Benjamin Beziat and Shion Otsuka, and we work relentlessly to bring you the finished product in other languages as well. The current available languages were languages I spoke to some degree, so I was able to help my friends overseeing the translations, but there are so many languages I would love to translate THK to! In the future, I'd especially love to be able to find the funds or a publisher to get a Chinese translation, and a pipe dream of mine would be Japanese and Spanish dubs, haha. I think that should be all. I'll leave you with a link to the intro animation, as a treat. [previewyoutube=0xtEjjsCpeI;full][/previewyoutube] To all the people who have been along for the ride since the beginning, thank you. To the people who just arrived, thank you. To you, for reading this, thank you as well. I really hope you will love Ader's story as much as I loved making it. I've been Maxi. You've been wonderful.

[ 2024-02-29 18:56:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Now that The Storyteller's festival has started, it's time to make a couple more announcements yet!

First off:

To celebrate the announcement of the full release date (29th February, don't forget!), I'll be holding a Steam live broadcast playing through the as-of-yet unreleased full game demo! including lots of cool new visuals, voice acting, and the all-new rewritten meeting scene in chapter 1. I'll be answering questions and hanging out with the chat, so come join us on the THK discord, and click on the event to get a reminder! The schedule for the broadcast is: PST - 9 AM, Friday 2nd of February CDT - 11 AM, Friday 2nd of February GMT - 5 PM, Friday 2nd of February AEDT - 4 AM, Saturday 3rd of February (sorry :<)

Secondly:

The Hayseed Knight is 20% off for the duration of the festival! This will mark the last chance to get The Hayseed Knight discounted at the current price of 14'99. After 7 years of development, and 3 and a half years on steam in a low-key early access state, the full game is finally going to hit the metaphorical shelves. By the time chapter 5 is out, there'll be more than DOUBLE the amount of gameplay as when chapter 3 was released! The Hayseed Knight was the first game I ever worked on, and it has grown massively in scope over these years. I want to make sure I can continue to support a future where it keeps reaching new heights, be it potential console releases, side stories, sequels, merchandise, or even new additions to the game itself. That's why I've decided that the full release will be priced at 19'99 USD, effective on the 29th of February. This change won't affect the current owners! As promised, everyone who bought the game in its development state gets a better price, and free updates for every chapter. Thank you all so much for your time! I hope to see you in the livestream!

[ 2024-01-30 12:47:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How have you been these last few months? I've been working a lot (and I mean a LOT) to bring you the full version of THK. In fact, as I write this my 9 year old cintiq 13HD has just died and I'm waiting to get a new tablet because I wanted to update a lot of backgrounds to bring them up to speed with my latest ones. Just my usual luck, but I really think you'll love them. Sep thinks so too.
...I think. So! On to the matter at hand! The Hayseed Knight Chapter 5 and therefore the full game will release on

FEBRUARY 29TH, 2024

If you're thinking "Maxi, did you see it was a skip year and made a silly choice" yes, 100%, you are correct. Chapter 5 is almost done (only animations and SFX remain at this point), but the last half of it is a very involved minigame and I need the buffer time to do a lot of QA, and pretend that I'm mailing press about the release. I hope you'll love it as much as I've loved making it. Thank you all for sticking with me these 7 years. Have a lovely week, and a lovely rest of January!

[ 2024-01-29 09:04:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How are you all doing? I've had a few really chaotic months. I spent all of October working on an amazing project for a client that I can't yet reveal, and then my PC which had been malfunctioning for a while kindly broke down and I had to wait a few weeks for it to be repaired. Chapter 5 progresses quickly, but I'm afraid there's still a lot to be done and I can't give you the 8th December deadline I was hoping for. I can give you, in exchange, a preview of a little something that is very close to my heart:

A preview of the animated intro trailer for the full game!

My friend Piti Yindee and I have been working for four months to bring you the first ever animated version of THK. Piti handled the animation and clean up, I handled corrections, compositing and backgrounds. We also counted with the lovely help of Patt Jewanarom and Mookie handling the rough animation for one shot each! This animation has been a labor of love, and we hope you'll love it as much as we loved making it. I can't give you an exact release date yet, because I need to figure out when's a good time to release in early 2023 and I don't want to keep telling you one thing just to push the date further and further. I'm hoping for early Q1 2024, and as soon as I'm CERTAIN of when exactly, I'll let you all know. Thank you always for your patience. I really hope Chapter 5 will live up to everything you're hoping for and more. Have a lovely day, and a lovely rest of November!

[ 2023-11-20 08:22:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! How were you these last few months? I had to endure a hellish July and a muggy August, but it's been going alright overall other than some health hijinks as usual. My original plan was to release chapter 5 in September. That might have been optimistic, but nothing could have prepared me for how incredibly cursed the recording for chapter 5 would be. I'm not talking cursed as in painful memes and laughing. I'm talking car accidents, near-death events, general sickness, people quitting voice acting, a hurricane, having to rerecord several parts because of recording mishaps... to the point that it still is not yet complete (there is very little left, but it is not complete despite having scheduled all recordings to be complete before July) So yeah. If I can have at least all the audio ready this month, that'll be a victory. Then that will only leave my greatest enemy: scripting all the animation and each single scene. Which will then leave my other greatest enemy: making all the necessary art. Please wish me luck. My new self-imposed deadline would be 8th December 2023, my birthday. I don't have all the confidence in the world I'm going to get the game out before I turn 28, but I'll try. If you happen to be headed to Indie Dev Days Barcelona next week, make sure to say hi! I won't have a table, so just keep an eye out for the short pale black-haired dev in a blazer with massive dark circles under their eyes trying not to perish. Hope you have a lovely September! See you soon!

[ 2023-09-01 15:28:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How are you doing this fine June? Summer begins today here in Spain, but I've been melting under the Sun for a couple of weeks now. In my town, Alicante, we celebrate the night of summer solstice by going to the beach and jumping over bonfires where we burn stuff we want to cleanse ourselves of. Like notes and exams. Some people really just never want to look at their grades ever again in their lives. Me, I celebrate by bringing you all a new update while working tirelessly on chapter 5 to hopefully have it ready by September! The 1.7.1 update will be fairly minor to English, Spanish and French speakers (some typo fixes, updated credits, and little else), but it brings about a newly rewritten Japanese translation courtesy of THK's new Japanese editor, Chisato-san! Chisato-san, Shion-san and I have been working tirelessly this last year to bring together a stronger Japanese translation. With the addition of Chisato-san's expertise with literary wording and attention to detail, the style of the Japanese translation has truly been elevated. Chisato-san is a freelance editor and translator, and you should definitely keep her in mind for your English to Japanese projects! I am one step closer to fulfilling my pipe dream of having a Japanese dub of The Hayseed Knight, haha. For now, however, all the budget is going to chapter 5, and I can promise you this: it's going to make you cry, laugh, and cry again. Even though it ended up being 70k words long, it's still not everything I wanted it to be, given that my budget is limited and it couldn't cover the expanse I originally planned. There are still multiple endings, with one super hard to find Golden Ending that I'm not expecting anyone to figure out for a while, but I hope you'll have fun finding all of them! Thank you so much for all your support as always! Have a lovely day, and a lovely summer!

[ 2023-06-21 15:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! How are you all doing this April? I'm a little freaked out because I'm off to Japan tomorrow. It's my first time there, and it's going to be 30 hours of a journey. I'm very excited all the same!! On the matter of Japanese, in fact: the next significant update, 1.7.1, has sadly been postponed until May. The update itself contained small fixes in English to typos and such, but the major update was on revising the current Japanese translation. Localization QA is still ongoing and the Japanese editor, Chisato-san, really wanted to make sure it was in perfect condition before it was released. : Going back to chapter 5, though! The current casting call is now live until May 6th 2023! Check it out and take a look at a few of the characters yet to come! Chapter 5 continues advancing, and I'll keep writing during my trip! Remember that you can help finance the voice acting for a faster release sending a tip on patreon. I think that should be everything for now, thank you all so much for your time! Have a lovely rest of your month!

[ 2023-04-07 15:40:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Welcome once more to: episodic releases and the fear they instill within my very soul. If you've ever had a project that ran on updates, you know what that's like the fear of keeping people waiting. The "oh no, what if I run out of energy", "this writing sucks, what am I even doing" and who can forget the eternal "am I allowed to take so much as a break?" To everyone's surprise, and mine's first of all... Chapter 5 is pretty nearly written by now! Far, FAR faster than I expected. You may have realized that, perhaps, slicing the original plan for chapter 4 in half and having nearly 20k words written by your past self would help in the process. If you did, you're a bit sharper than me, and I'm proud of you. Be that as it may, I'm now sitting on the 50k+ word count for chapter 5 (I don't know what it is about that number but this keeps happening to me somehow) and facing three incredible facts:

• There's a new casting call on the way for the remaining characters
• I'm maybe two months away from recording this script (would be one, but I'll be in Japan in April making business contacts!)
• I only have two months to save for the voice acting

That's right -- if everything goes well, I'll be recording in May, and hoping to release chapter 5, THE LAST CHAPTER at the same time as the epilogues, in September 2023. Let me zoom in on that last bit about voice acting first, however: with a large word count comes a large voice acting expense. Since this is the last chapter, I decided to go all out and make something I would be proud of for years to come! The way things usually go, I would spend years saving for new chapters, pinching coins wherever I can from my day job and patreon, and then build a voice acting budget from that. This time, however, I have but two months to save close to 5k USD. In the immediate term, I should be able to face that cost. I've been developing the game for six years, and I've had time to learn not to break the entire bank for an update. In the long run, however, that's an incredible blow to my budget and therefore my ability to make anything after this. If you'd like to throw some extra support at The Hayseed Knight, I'm currently passing the tip jar around and trying to gather some help on patreon. I don't have a whole lot to offer in return other than my gratitude and the promise that chapter 5 will be the strongest yet. I'll update you all again when the update to the Japanese text for chapters 1 and 2 and the new casting call for chapter 5 are ready. Thank you so much for your time and your support every time. It really does mean the world to me to see people enjoying the game.

[ 2023-03-22 14:04:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome, everyone, to v 1.7.0 AKA CHAPTER 4 RELEASE! After two years of work, it's finally here. Finally done! 6 hours of all new gameplay! Picture the Frodo LOTR meme gif here. Originally, it was going to be just the one chapter to rule them all, but it grew so large I had to slice it in two! You can see it's still pretty large. Among other things, Spanish and French translations are up to Chapter 3 now! And there's an update to the Japanese translation for chapters 1 and 2 on the way! Exciting stuff!! And now for the full update list:

• Updated to Ren'py 7.5.3
• Switched to GL renderer, so now there are tints, blurs, and all sorts of cool new visual updates!
• Updated Eina's sprite majorly, plus a few other bits and pieces in others
• Updated a few backgrounds to make them clearer!
• I added a couple of new mini scenes around
• Added a new bad ending to chapter 3 (dundundundun)
• More tracks from Emilio Villalba
• Found a (potentially big on older machines) performance bug from the old versions of the diary
• The only way to fix it in a save game is to go back to the diary, see a memory and click the button "Skip memory" uh... 50-80 times.
• No I found no other way to fix it I'm so sorry
• OKAY THAT SHOULD BE ALL
• Updated a few typoes in the Spanish version! If you find any typoes in any other version, I would really appreciate it if you could notify me or send a screenshot thehayseedknight(at)gmail.com

After this, all that's left is chapter 5!! Hopefully shorter than this has been, so look forward to that! Hope you all have fun! I'm gonna go lie down again and see if I stop screaming (And if you do enjoy it, a review on steam would mean the world to me! Thank you!) PS. AAAAAAAAAA!!

[ 2023-02-01 14:15:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How is 2023 treating you? Mine has been: BUSY. I've spent many hours working on my computer and taken up boxing again, to help my back a bit. I've also organized a trip to Japan for spring! I'm very excited to see it for the first time, even though I've been directing voice actors in Japanese for a while now! (Maybe one day I'll have the funds to actually have a Japanese dub of THK) Chapter 4 will be coming out for real, at last, this February 1st. That's just about 12 days, I can hardly believe it. It's the result of two years of work, and I truly feel it's the best (an already excellent) voice acting has ever been. I've been so busy developing that I haven't been able to do much PR at all, so if you're or you know any game press that could cover this, I'd really appreciate if you could send me a contact that I could mail the press release to at thehayseedknight(at)gmail(dot)com ! Hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day, and a wonderful rest of your week! I'll be screaming over here.

[ 2023-01-20 18:58:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I hope November was a kind month to you! I spent practically all of it developing chapter 4, working day after day to get all the audio edited before sending it off to THK's lovely audio engineer, Natalie van Sistine, for levelling! All the audio for chapter 4 is in the game now, but being that this is a Visual Novel, I still have a lot of art assets left to make, press to reach out to, old and new typos to crush in Spanish... Just the usual, really. And after 3 months of intense work since I first started recording with the voice actors, my back has really taken a toll. If I continue working at this rhythm, I'm going to open up the hernia that had me go on hiatus after chapter 3 again. That's why, I've decided to delay Chapter 4 into early 2023, exact date TBA. I really wanted to make it to the December 8th deadline and celebrate alongside my birthday, but more than that, I want to make sure I can give you the best result I can make and not hurry or leave things half done while I'm murdering myself. Thank you all for all your patience, understanding and support, I hope you have a lovely December! As usual, you can keep up with the project and me more easily on my twitter account, @SandraMJdev I'll go ahead and leave you with some of Ader's wisdom before I go:

[ 2022-12-03 17:20:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I hope you've had a lovely October! Mine has been a bit hectic (my own particular damage RNG has been so kind as to grant me heart issues), but other than that it's been fun and busy! On to the meat of the announcement: tomorrow, all of the audio for chapter 4 will be completed at last! That means that all that's left is tons and tons of editing (I'm only about halfway through that), art (I can barely count the tasks anymore) and scripting (the bane of my existence). That means I can tentatively say at last that I should be on time to make the release date I chose for chapter 4...

DECEMBER 8TH

That's my birthday! And all I'd love for it is for you to share the game with people you think would like it, if you'd be so kind. Maybe send them this cute new trailer I made? [previewyoutube=4u9NJ8dw7_k;full][/previewyoutube] Fingers crossed I can make it to the deadline without any other random bit breaking down in my body! In other news, you can find me next week wandering around AdventureX, London! Say hi if you see a short pale Spanish nerd with grey eyes skittering from place to place. And that would be all for now! I hope you have a wonderful day and a wonderful week. Talk to you soon!

[ 2022-10-25 18:15:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How are you all doing? I just came back from Gamescom a couple of days ago and it was a lot of fun! Exhausting, but fun that's for sure. So as I previously mentioned: Chapter 4's script is now complete! It's time to move on to my favorite part... RECORDING! But there are a few characters missing for that! This is where you all come in! If you are interested in auditioning for any of the characters that will appear in chapter 4, here's the link to the Voice Acting Boards! You'll find all the necessary info there. I'm looking forward to hearing your auditions! And if you don't get cast this time, no worries: there'll be other opportunities for chapter 5 too! I hope you have a wonderful day, and a wonderful week. See you soon!

[ 2022-09-01 17:49:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How are you all doing today? Me, I'm exhausted from making a thousand preparations to take a plane tomorrow, but I come bearing super exciting news! After a year and a half of hardships and many road (writer) blocks, I can unsafely say that chapter 4's script has been completed! I've sent the copy to my proofreaders, and I'm expecting to start recording early in September! I AM 100% NOT READY FOR THIS BUT WE'LL MAKE DO LIKE WE ALWAYS DO. In other news, you can find me running around on Gamescom this week! I'll be manning a booth for my day job as co-creative director at Mars Vice in Devcom, and then just ambling from meeting to meeting in Gamescom. It's my first time there, so if you see this handsome developer trying not to fall asleep at a booth or hurrying across the halls, say hi and tell me you played THK! You'll get a very exclusive, very rare, cute THK sticker of your choice for your efforts.
((Pretend the pic doesn't occupy 3/4 of the post)) And that's about all for now! I'm excited for all that's left to come to THK, and I'll make sure to keep you posted as the new chapter progresses. I'm much more active on twitter at @sandramjdev, if you want to stay tuned! Hope you all have a fantastic week! See you soon!

[ 2022-08-21 19:52:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How are you all doing today? Me, I'm exhausted from making a thousand preparations to take a plane tomorrow, but I come bearing super exciting news! After a year and a half of hardships and many road (writer) blocks, I can unsafely say that chapter 4's script has been completed! I've sent the copy to my proofreaders, and I'm expecting to start recording early in September! I AM 100% NOT READY FOR THIS BUT WE'LL MAKE DO LIKE WE ALWAYS DO. In other news, you can find me running around on Gamescom this week! I'll be manning a booth for my day job as co-creative director at Mars Vice in Devcom, and then just ambling from meeting to meeting in Gamescom. It's my first time there, so if you see this handsome developer trying not to fall asleep at a booth or hurrying across the halls, say hi and tell me you played THK! You'll get a very exclusive, very rare, cute THK sticker of your choice for your efforts.
((Pretend the pic doesn't occupy 3/4 of the post)) And that's about all for now! I'm excited for all that's left to come to THK, and I'll make sure to keep you posted as the new chapter progresses. I'm much more active on twitter at @sandramjdev, if you want to stay tuned! Hope you all have a fantastic week! See you soon!

[ 2022-08-21 18:39:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! How are you all doing? I don't have much to update you on this time (haven't heard of any new bugs lately, thankfully!) Development of chapter 4 continues at a steady rhythm (steady as in, I'm currently a bit blocked on how to move forward even though like 70% of the writing is done), and I hope to have the Spanish translation of chapter 3 ready by the end of summer. I just wanted a moment of your time to let you know THK is part of Season of Pride 2022! Hope you'll find a lot of new awesome games by queer developers, and that you enjoy the new header I'm trying out for the season! It'll hopefully give everyone a much better idea of what THK is all about. To me, anyway! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this new artwork. I'll also use the chance to remind you all that if you liked the game, a Steam review helps a ton! And if you want to hang out with me and a bunch of awesome people that enjoyed the game as well to talk about art, games, cooking and all sorts of stuff, you can join THK's discord server through THK's launcher! Have an absolutely wonderful day! See you soon!

[ 2022-07-11 21:32:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having fun with the Summer Sales! I actually posted a bit about this yesterday, but I'm not 100% sure how Steam announcements work so I wanted to have a dedicated announcement to the current patch...

AND the fact that Steam Cards have arrived!

Of course Sep is the rarest card and everyone is fighting for her. Of course. ...Meanwhile I'm here stuck with 3 Aders. Thanks RNG. So other than that, if you've noticed the recent update it's because 1.6.0.2 brings a couple bug fixes! - Fixed a Diary bug where skipping from a specific child Sep memory to an adult Sep memory where she's drinking caused a game crash. This was a little too on the nose for my taste. - Followed said bug to a small rabbit hole of potential bugs and shoveled it shut. - Removed a hat from a scene where Sep wasn't supposed to be wearing a hat. She knows she's not supposed to do this. It goes against her contract. - Added a rope to the scene that needed a rope. If you know, you know. Okay, now there's the totally not duplicated announcement! Have a wonderful weekend, y'all! See you soon!

[ 2022-06-24 20:24:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's Summer Time! Here in Spain at least. Or winter, if you live in the southern hemisphere. Dawnsoon, as it were in Acazhor. It's hot, is what it is where I live. As you may or may not know, The Hayseed Knight was already discounted at 20% off for LudoNarraCon, so I normally wouldn't put two discounts together quite so soon... but given I was super sick and couldn't make it in time to have 1.6 ready for LNC, I thought! HEY! WHAT THE HECK! So here! Discounts! Discounts for you! Cut me and I won't bleed! (To be fair, I'm from Alicante, so you're just going to get horchata at this point.) And not only that! Steam Trading Cards are just around the corner as well! ...In fact they've been ready since December, I just didn't have any good chance to release them :,> Thing is though due to a little review delay they won't be ready today so... HOPEFULLY TOMORROW! But very soon, NO MATTER WHAT! Other than that, 1.6.0.2 brings a couple bug fixes as well! - Fixed a Diary bug where skipping from a specific child Sep memory to an adult Sep memory where she's drinking caused a game crash. This was a little too on the nose for my taste. - Followed said bug to a small rabbit hole of potential bugs and shoveled it shut. - Removed a hat from a scene where Sep wasn't supposed to be wearing a hat. She knows she's not supposed to do this. It goes against her contract. - Added a rope to the scene that needed a rope. If you know, you know. Annnnnd that should be all, I think! I hope you all have a lovely season no matter what it is! See you soon!

[ 2022-06-23 21:12:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Turns out there WAS some stuff worth fixing after all! Enough to make me stop my vacations for a little bit, at least. - Fixed a game-crashing bug that occurred exclusively in the Diary in chapter 3 when going from teen Sep memories to adult Sep memories (because you're not supposed to do a character makeover 4 hours before a major release) Hopefully that'll be all! Please, update the game to the latest version, and do let me know if you find anything else! Have a wonderful weekend!

[ 2022-06-11 22:04:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Messed up a little folder thing because I was tired yesterday and accidentally made it so the .exe for the full game couldn't be opened through the launcher directly. It should be fixed now with the update, but if it doesn't immediately work, please, restart steam and try again! Thank you for your patience!!

[ 2022-06-07 05:24:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome, everyone, to The Hayseed Knight v 1.6! It's been a long time of radio silence (longer yet if you don't follow me on twitter or patreon), trying to find time to work little by little on a million different bits and pieces - all while fighting my failing health. This update is the product of a year and a half of work, and it is a TON! The game has never looked or sounded as amazing as it does now. 1.6 is a huge update that brings: - New designs for every other character, and makeovers for the rest! I wanted their sprites to shine. No more crusty old raggy "Merchant" - it's Mr. Pertok, now! - Updated CGs to reflect the changes! - 100% revamped GUI! And if you preferred the slightly clunky, more legible version, you can go back to it in the Accessibility Menu! - New original music tracks, courtesy of Emilio Villalba - a historic musician! - All new encyclopaedia entries! No more asking me who's Djao, YOU CAN JUST GO READ THAT NOW! - SFX. That's it. Things make noise now. - An all new Japanese translation for Chapters 1 and 2, courtesy of Shion Otsuka! - Content Warnings for the game at large and the diary, specifically! - More quality of life improvements I'm forgetting! - Rewritten stuff here and there! - God that's a lot To sum it up: v 1.6 will lay the groundwork for chapter 4, hopefully arriving in December 2022! (At the time of writing, that's six months of extreme hopefulness. For reference, I had to delay this update two weeks because I got kidney stones right as I was about to release :] ) I hope you're all as excited about what's next in store for Ader, Sep, Eina and the crew as I am! I'll continue bringing you my A game every time to give you the best story I can. I hope you have a wonderful day! See you soon!

[ 2022-06-06 18:44:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Hope you're enjoying THK I'm having a blast watching you all post about it and share streams and screenshots! I've been bedridden since I released the game for my birthday because my back gave up on me, so I haven't been able to reach out to press yet. It's all baby steps from here. Literally, I can't walk with my back straight. ANYWAY! Here's the tiny list of bug fixes for THK 1.5.0.1:

• Fixed the annoying freaking Diary Page Bug where the entry's page wouldn't be reset when jumping from one memory to another.
• Fixed a rare encyclopaedia bug where clicking an hyperlink on an entry before having unlocked the target entry would make the game crash. Now you can unlock stuff just like that, which gives me some massive power I was not aware I could have.
• Added Shishishiena aka Lin's VA to the credits, her absence made the world a little sadder.
• Reworded and added a few more hints to the Diary so you know what to do when you get there.
• Fixed a couple of typos.
• [strike]Began writing chapter 4.[/strike]

I've been made aware that the French translation currently has a few typos, absolutely my fault due to rushing these last few weeks of writing. THK'S wonderful French translator, Benjamin Beziat, is currently unavailable as he's got a lot of games to review for his job, so we'll get to fixing them and working on the French and Spanish translations respectively as soon as we can, most likely starting early next year. Hope you're having a good day, and thank you for all your support!

[ 2020-12-14 12:13:06 CET ] [ Original post ]