Posted March 18, 2023 by HeartCoreDev
#progress update
Greetings Terrans!
The Symbiant and its extras are 10% off on itchio and Steam. Most of you already own the game but perhaps your friends will find this information useful!
We spent the better part of the past month working on the Google Play release, which must come censored to comply with Google's content policy.
Earlier this month, we were notified by a lawyer from South Korea's GRAC that The Symbiant's adult patch has been banned on Steam Korea, though Korean players can still purchase the base game. Installation instructions for the free adult patch can be found here.
A few days later, a confused Russian player in our Discord server reported that they were no longer able to see The Symbiant's page on Steam (and couldn't purchase it). Further investigation showed that The Symbiant has been completely banned from the country and we haven't been noticed by either Valve or any Russian authority. We asked Valve, and they're blaming it on payment processing issues, although just about every other game including our previous BL title Synthetic Lover are still available to Russian Steam players, which... doesn't add up.
This censorship is completely outside of our control and we don't even know why The Symbiant in particular is being targeted, nor whether the ban comes from Valve "self-censoring" or whether any Russian organization pressured them into it. Either way, we've been waiting for Valve's reply on the matter.
Irlana has been improving the two after-stories in several places. We're looking to add some more worldbuilding into the script before inserting the text in-game. Here's a snippet of Riemphea's introduction as an example!
We contacted 700HASH and they accepted to draw Danya and Brahve once again for the After Stories cover art! In the meantime, Doubleleaf only has 3 more CGs left to complete, while our background artist Sitai is facing a rather complex background composition.
In order to tackle the natural landscapes we'll need for the second story, we contacted Rebecca Hu, who you may know through Andromeda Six's gorgeous backgrounds! They will start working with us next month.
More bug fixing! We found out through player reports that a certain bug is breaking save slots after a game update and the solution will require reworking the way every line is coded.
This will take time, but we'll get there eventually. The Google Play release was also a very time-consuming process we're glad is finally over, so now Fable can focus on coding the After Stories.
This scene is more than twice the length of the previous one. There you meet Juni's girlfriend Riemphea, Danya makes some puns, and things happen. We hope you like it. =D
You can grab it either on itchio or on Patreon in the $20 tier. If you're one of the 13 backers in the $160 CAD tier, you can already access it at the same place as the previous beta.