Hello everyone and thank you for still being here despite the radio silence that was forced upon us! 

We’re back with a (lengthy) explanation about the current development status of Valentyne Stories Necromancy, why it was interrupted for several months, and why it won’t be released on the originally estimated date. We hope that our explanation, which is much more detailed than our last month’s post, will allow you to have a clearer picture of the situation.

First of all, no need to worry: our motivation to finish the game done hasn’t budged a single bit and our passion for this small universe of ours and what it has in store for you is still vividly alive. We can’t wait to show you more of it; we’re struggling to keep you a lot of the stuff a surprise for when you’ll play the game, and we’re working with very earnest providers who make us want to give it our all! Therefore, the issue here is not a lack of motivation (that would’ve almost been preferable!) but of health concerns. 

To get a clearer picture, here is a timeline showing all the times when we were able to work to the maximum of our capabilities, as well as the blank periods due to the stoppage of a member of the team:

1. Personal issue of one member of the team

2. Recurrence of Sally’s pericardial effusion (10 years after the first)

3. Relocation of the team 

4. COVID-19 (slowing down the development period)

5. Wani’s stomach flu

6. Sally’s hospitalization for severe acute pancreatitis

7. Sally’s recovery from severe acute pancreatitis

Please note that the relocation shouldn’t have affected our schedule. We had planned several weeks for it, which unfortunately was "eaten up" by the health problems at the start of the year. Regarding COVID-19, many of you have noticed—even if you worked from home—the lockdown and some other issues linked to the virus (worries, empty fridges, layoffs for the less fortunate among us) have been very damaging to everyone’s mental health and lifestyle. Our pace has slowed down during this period. During Sally’s hospitalization, Wani had sprained her ankle pretty badly, causing her to leave her workspace several hours a week for physiotherapy sessions. In short, 2020 spared nothing on us! 

As we said in our latest news post, it was Sally’s hospitalization that cost us—and will continue to cost us—the most time. pancreatitis is relatively harmless for someone who is in good health and potentially deadly for someone with obesity. Sally belongs to that second category; her recovery has been an uphill battle. Thank God she was able to leave the hospital after 5 weeks of hospitalization and along with many good resolutions regarding her weight that the whole team will make sure she holds!

However, such disease doesn’t get cured in the blink of an eye. In addition to her 5 weeks of hospitalization, an additional 6 weeks of sick leave has been advised which could be extended if the CT scan in September turns out to be inconclusive. Added to this is also the trauma related to the severity of the disease (and the reason behind its severity). Sally is suffering from a case of raging writer’s block ever since she’s gotten out of the hospital. This news post had been written bit by bit throughout August with a great deal of effort. This trauma is due to the fact things nearly took a turn for the worst and those of you who have experienced such a thing can testify to that: it’s very hard to tell yourself “everything’s alright” when you’ve come so close to leaving this world. But please don’t worry about her: we’ve always taken her psychological issues as seriously as the physical ones, and she is currently under the care of competent health professionals to beat that damn trauma!

Alright, but then why has one person’s problems been blocking the progress of an entire team? That’s because, aside from the relocation thing, there were never two people sick at the same time. And as you know, we are 3 people working on the game’s development (the rest of the team being providers). Shua does the coding, Wani the does graphics and Sally does the script. Therefore, even if we made sure everyone’s to-do list was full, if the other members of the team can’t fill it, it ends up empty and the development stalls. Such is the disadvantage of our group mechanics: each of us is good at something, but the two others don’t have the required skills to take over if needed. For example: Wani and Sally could try coding the game, but we wouldn’t be able to guarantee you could launch the game without your computer freezing! That’s the reason why communication and development were put on hold: Sally was in charge of the former and the latter needs the entire team to keep going.

Which led us to our final decision: Valentyne Stories Necromancy is being pushed back to 2021, to a new date that has yet to be determined.

We saw, via your messages to us during our previous news post, how understanding you were, and for that we thank you and are very grateful. This sort of announcement is hard to do, especially when you have no control over what’s happening (especially since we’re so used to having that damn control!) so you can’t even begin to imagine how much your kindness did us good. Nonetheless, we wanted to make a complete report of our first half of 2020, because it really wasn’t our year!

As we said before, we don’t know when we will be able to resume the game’s development. The three of us are trying to find our steady pace back while making sure that everyone’s health is being handled correctly, and that takes time. As soon as this part’s done, we’ll revise our schedule in order to provide you with a more precise release date, hoping that no other issue is going to ruin our plans!

P.S. : This news was written on August 31rst, two days before Sally's return at the hospital, the CT scan turns out to be inconclusive. She is out from the hospital since a few days but her condition, while better than 2 months ago, seems not to improve fast enough, we will update about it you later.