itch.io

It's definitely in the works. I'm going through a busy period at my job, so I'm spending all my extra time making sure my Patreon subscribers are getting their monthly updates to Chapter 4. Once I find some extra time and my work dies down a bit, I'm planning to compile the next free demo update with a bunch of art revisions of the first two chapters, some new systems I've added since the last free demo, and new content from early Chapter 3.

Thanks for thinking about the game and waiting patiently. It feels good to know there are people out there looking forward to it <3

Ahh. That's interesting. Some NSFW scenes (the ones where the text is displayed beside the images rather than in the dialogue box at the bottom of the screen) have different settings than the rest of the game. I'm going to look into it, and either automatically disable the auto setting for those scenes and then re-enable it when they're done, or see if there's some other way to work around it. Thanks for letting me know!

Huh, the "locked by region" thing is weird, but no, Canticleis my first ever game, so no other work for now.

As for quicksave/quickload, I don't have a UI button for those at the moment, but might consider it in the future. Thanks for playing!

Aw, thank you! <3

It seems to be working fine for me and other players so I'm thinking there's probably one or two pieces that are placed wrong still.

Hey. Hmm, I think maybe your solution is wrong. The timer should stop immediately after you place the final piece. You are placing all the pieces on top of the greyscale image correct?

Absolutely. But hopefully it won't come to that. I contacted support again. Maybe repeat tickets speed them up.

Thanks for checking in.
No word yet. The request was submitted on October 28th, for reference. If I don't get a response by the end of the month, I'm going to publish the next version of the free demo on my Patreon in the free tier. I know that doesn't really work for some people who like to download games from Itch specifically, but it's the only thing I can think of at the moment. Hopefully I hear back soon.

I'm happy you're enjoying the game <3 Currently, this is a work-in-progress. So, I'm currently working on Chapter 3 (half of it is out now on Patreon), but basically, I do monthly updates to the game there. Full release is still a while off, but the progress has been good so far.

Just to make sure: you’re putting the color tiles over the black-and-white picture? There was a player before who was trying yo rearrange them next to the greyscale image, which is not what you need to do. So just drag and drop the color tiles on top of the appropriate part of the greyscale.

I am trying, but if you've read my recent devlogs, the issue I'm having is that Itch sets a 1GB limit on game uploads, and my game has now far surpassed that (the current Patreon version is at 2GB). So, I've contacted Itch support to see how I could resolve this, but they generally take a really long time to respond to everything (like, a month or more) so... As soon as I can get that limit raised (and I think I can because I see other games here that are 2+ GB), I'll be posting an update. I am hoping to offer at least up to the end of chapter 2 for free here in the future. 

I'm not aware of any system like that existing on Itch, sorry. And I think as a first-time game dev, I'd probably stay away from that anyway. If I ever start work on a second game after Canticle with some experience behind me, then maybe I'd consider a Kickstarter or other early access options.

The game is still relatively early in development, and it's my first ever game, so I really don't know yet. I guess with all the NSFW issues with payment providers these days, both on Steam and Itch, it's difficult to even know what the situation's gonna be like when the game's ready for a full release.

Fun playthrough <3

I’m happy Android users get to play it now! Enjoy ❤️

Not yet. And as the chapters progress, there are so many branches, and invisible variables that get you different dialogs, big and small, that I’m not sure how it will look if I do make one. Most likely, it would be a very general guide about specific character romances or mysteries/quests rather than a big guide for everything. And what’s more, I tend to revise a lot and change things/add variables (because that’s just how I write) so the guide would need to be updated with every new release. I’m really focused on producing content for my patrons monthly at the moment, so that kind of guide would likely only be released after v1.0, which is a while out. Till then, play through and experiment ❤️

Thank you to everyone who posted. I’ve identified the issue and have fixed it and am now working on optimizing the mobile version further. I’ll upload the new version for you mobile users very soon ❤️

Thanks! That one is a known issue, and I'm remaking the UI as we speak to accommodate that for Android users. The ongoing issue I'm not sure about yet is just the scaling/text display issue. The game should autosave quite frequently, so if you need to reload, for now, please reload from there.

Hi again! I've been trying to figure this out a little bit. It seems that the display issues you're seeing are happening on some Android phones but not all of them. The reason is most likely the way certain phone manufacturers deal with fonts and scaling. I'm trying to fine-tune exactly which manufacturers seem to be having this issue to maybe try and optimize stuff on a manufacturer-by-manufacturer basis (we'll see how viable this ends up being).

If you're comfortable, would you mind letting me know what phone model you use? For now, it seems Xiaomi phones might have this particular issue.

Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah, as I mention in the devlog, this was done very quickly so that Android could be playable for those who are willing to overlook the technical difficulties until the game is optimized. I recommend a bigger screen like a tablet or a large smartphone to play it. Apparently, it plays quite well on those. And of course, I recommend PC or Mac as the best way to play the game (and the platforms it was originally designed for).

I've already started optimizing it for the current Patreon content releases, but it might take a while until a truly optimized version comes to Itch. I'm a solo dev with a full-time job and no Android phone so I am just relying on emulators and whatever free time I can find to make it.

I do promise to look more into mobile optimizations for the game in the future.

Thank you!
The game will be definitely more than one week. The first week in its entirety (minus some scenes at the very end of the last day) is already available on Patreon, and will be here for free at some point in the future (likely after Chapter 3 is out for patrons).
So, I'm hoping for it to be a week / chapter, and I haven't landed on exactly how many chapters there will be, but I know I want a big game that feels pretty rich. I'm approaching it almost as a season of a TV show, where each chapter is an episode.
Now, whether the full game will be available on Itch depends on what the situation for NSFW games is by then with the payment processors etc. Hopefully by the time the game is done, the situation is a bit more stable.

I do plan on publishing more on itch.io at some point. Currently, the only way to have NSFW games indexed is by turning off any sort of donation option. I'll see how the situation progresses.

Unfortunately, for now, it's just autosaves for that version. I've added a quick menu and some other useful UI for later mobile scenes to the current Patreon release, but it's just a rough draft now, so I'm going to make it a bit prettier before the next Itch release.

I do see a lot of android players, and I'm interested to hear feedback. As I mentioned in the devlog, I only have access to Android emulators doing this, so I want to now what the actual experience of playing on a mobile screen is. Especially regarding the size of things / difficulty touching an icon, etc.

I'm really happy you enjoyed it.

Yes, it's hyperfocus. I'm in my mid-30s, and when I started working on this, something just clicked for me, and I knew this is what I needed to do. I'd done creative stuff before, but this is where a lot of my skills from before just came together, and it feels like a perfect match.

If you played the free demo here on itch, you played Chapter 1 (which is more of a Prologue, really), and about 15% of Chapter 2.

I'll be honest: I don't think I'll be offering any prices on itch.io ever again, what with the current situation for NSFW games. The only way I can have my game be indexed is by not setting any sort of price on it, so that's how it's going to stay. And also, deadlines are not really positive reinforcers for me with the way I do stuff. I want to be able to change my mind and discover my own working style, revise things as I see necessary, improve on and add new systems if I feel like it, especially since this is my first ever game.

I really like Patreon and the way it builds community and allows people to support what they want to see more of directly, so that's what I want to do going forward. That system also really motivates me, because I feel indebted to my patrons to release something good every month they can sink their teeth into, and makes me feel not entirely alone in this process. So if I need to have a stressor in my creative process, I want it to be that one.

But there will be more stuff coming from me here on itch.io as well.

Olá! Espero mesmo que sim! (Google Translate!)

Sure! So you just want to target the biggest groups of icons you can see (so yellow, green, or brown). When you click on an icon, all icons of the same color that are connected to the icon you click (up, down, left, or right) will disappear. And you get exponentially more points the more of them disappear together. So if you click on a solitary 'hay' icon, you will get 1 point. If that hay icon has another hay icon next to it, you get 4 points; if there are 3 together you get 9 points, etc. 

Ask and you shall receive! Enjoy. I hope it works well. I could only test it on emulators since I don't own an Android phone.

I’d love to. I’m a total noob and need to figure out how but if I do, I’ll post it!

Praise the Sisters.

I appreciate your view on this. I do not share it.

First of all, it is explicitly stated that a lot of the graphical assets are partly or fully made with AI in the metadata of this game. In fact, there is no toggle for exactly how much is made with AI, so I just had to put it as entirely made with AI, which is not even remotely true.

Second, let me be transparent. When you say "this game is made with AI," it would imply a lot of things that I'm going to have to protest. I wrote this story myself with no AI. It's currently at 69,000 words. I designed the game mechanics of this game myself with no AI. I coded all the minigames present in chapter 2 and all the other narrative lanes myself (I used the integrated Copilot feature in my programming software to debug sometimes, so I suppose that's AI as well, but other than that, it was all me). I even composed some of the music myself with no AI.

And then even when it comes to visual art, I am actually pretty good (I think) and have years of experience in illustration and image editing, which I am using to transform and animate the vast, vast majority of all image assets present in the game. Working in Photoshop is about 50% of the development process for me. So while I do start with generated images in many cases, they are worked on extensively after the fact.

And finally, on just a human level: I work on this game 4-5 hours a day and have been for the last 6 months. I have a full-time, corporate, soul-sucking job in addition to that, which means most of my free time is dedicated to the game. Don't get me wrong: it's a passion project and I love doing it. The tools available to me allow me to make it. If I had the money to pay artists to make everything I want them to make, I would do it. I would shower artists and composers with whatever money I had. I don't have that money. Not even close. The truth is that, were it not for the help I am getting by using AI tools, I wouldn't be filling an artist's pockets; instead, the game just wouldn't exist. As it is, I am feeling creatively fulfilled, and I have a community of people who enjoy the game and allow me to make it.

I share your distaste for certain usages of AI. Generated images that are used commercially that haven't been improved upon or added to a larger artistic work and are just sold somehow or monetized without any real added value are what I too would consider slop. But that is not what the finished product of this game is. And I am 100% confident of that.

I'd still encourage you to try out the game. And if not, good luck somewhere else. <3

Hi there! I am planning on releasing a little bit more of chapter 2 for free at some point in the future (likely after chapter 3 is out in its entirety to all my patrons, which is a while off yet). This is mostly because chapter 2 is when the more "Persona-like" aspects of the game, with the school weeks and choosing your activities/doing class assignments/socializing come into play, so I'd want everyone to experience them. But I don't really have any plans for after that at the moment.

Thank you. I don't mean to be impatient, and I understand the queues are long. I just want to make sure I do everything I can for it to not slip through the cracks. <3

Hi there,

I've read all the rules and the FAQ, so I understand the most likely scenario. I made a change in my games page, and the game likely got un-indexed for someone to confirm it's all on the up and up. And that's great. But it's now been days, I've since posted an update to the game, and people can't find my game at all unless they have the direct URL. The only thing I changed is I updated my Discord link because the invite expired, and changed one of the tags for my game. It's a bit punitive to have it delisted for days for such a small change.

I submitted a ticket (289766) and I'd just like some reassurance that my game will be indexed soon.

The game is https://voidmammoth.itch.io/canticle

Thank you.

There’s definitely a plan to have a gallery at some point in the future. I’m working on finishing up chapter 2 for my patrons right now, and once chapter 3 development starts, it’s on the list.

Thanks! I like the idea. I'm going to add it to the next update.

Thanks for the feedback!
Right-clicking at any point during the game should bring you to the game menu. (I'm not sure on Mac actually. Probably Command+click).

Thanks for bringing my attention to this! It should be fixed now.