- Ingrid and Elissa
OSAS Extended Demo Project Relaunch (We're Back!)
Hello one and all!
After an unintentional project hiatus in the latter half of 2021, we at Forsythia Productions are happy to announce we have restarted work on the Extended Demo for Of Sense and Soul!
Thank you to those of you who have stayed with us thus far, and in particular to our Patreon supporters who have kindly supported us despite radio silence on our part.
What happened?
We apologise for our lack of communication—unforeseen life difficulties caused work on the project to be unsustainable in the short term over the past year. Health issues and external obligations such as school and work, as well as the general pandemic crisis, needed to be addressed before anything else. As a result, this project was put aside temporarily.
Although some of the issues we faced are ongoing, we have had time to handle some of these challenges and reflect on our previous workflow for OSAS, which will inform our actions going forward.
Patreon
The funds our Patreon supporters have contributed to the project have been stored and remain solely allocated to the production of Of Sense and Soul. However, we recognise that failure of delivery on our promised Patreon rewards is suspect no matter the reasoning. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused our patrons, and if desired, we are happy to negotiate recompensation with you on an individual basis.
We unfortunately cannot deliver on backdated Patreon rewards (with the exception of top tier rewards such as easter egg, character, and poem title co-creation) as there is no content to do so with. We will be reconfiguring our Patreon subscription model to prioritise production of the extended demo so future rewards are more sustainable for us to deliver.
(Current patrons received a direct message regarding these details prior to the release of this devlog.)
Moving Forward
As production starts again, we will be detailing the steps we are taking towards restarting the project and managing it in order to make the most of the time and resources available to us! Rather than only creating monthly devlogs, we will update followers and supporters on a more frequent basis via Twitter and Patreon.
The @forsythiaprod Twitter will host general development process updates such as retweets from team members and quick check-ins, and the Of Sense and Soul accounts (to start with, on twitter!) will share more information and works in progress from OSAS.
Our Discord will, of course, still be there for looks behind the scenes and special content for certain tiers of patrons!
As mentioned above, our Patreon model will see changes in order to prioritise production of the extended demo over providing rewards to our community.
The Goal
Our aim now is to produce an extended demo that will work for our purposes—not one that is as polished as can be, or one that contains everything we want to include, but one that contains all the elements necessary to deliver on our vision and product.
To do so, we have begun re-evaluating and reworking our previous development process and game assets. The creation and recreation of assets going forward may cause differences between the demo we released in August 2020 and the extended demo we are going to produce.
As part of our new production process, there will be increasing opportunities for you (our followers and supporters) to provide feedback!
We will release prototypes of game elements (or even fully playable sections of the upcoming demo) for limited viewing and feedback on our Discord and Patreon. Your thoughts will help inform our work and ensure that expectations can be worked in with reality.
What's Next?
Later this month, we will be posting a production update for you all, including some details on implementing the above plans!
We estimate the first extended demo prototype will be available for semi-public testing in April, and our patrons, of course, will have first dibs!
On another note--thus far, devlogs have lived here our main website at ofsenseandsoul.com/blog—but we will be retiring the website’s blog and posting devlogs to Patreon and Itch.io only after the next update.
We are incredibly excited to be back to devving and to share this story with you all. Thank you again for your support, and we'll see you again soon!
To be notified about our latest updates and exclusive process insights, follow us here on Patreon, or any of the following:
Join us on Discord for livestreams and latest updates
Follow @ofsenseandsoul on social media