Hello! Its Violet, the social media/communications Rotten Raccoon. We recently got a reminder that while weve been posting monthly check-ins to demonstrate that were still alive and getting work done (as well as show little peeks at the work), we havent been sharing these posts with folks who only follow us on Steam! Thats been an oversight on my part, and I apologise. From now on, Steam users can enjoy the same updates as everyone else! Hello, hello, my beautiful raccoon friends! Its been a lively May here in the raccoon den, and now were enjoying June (in my humble opinion, the best month!). I think the best word I can use for May is productive, as we got a bunch of things on our checklist done! So lets discuss whats happened for us this month, and this time we have headers. Sales and events May is a fairly low-key time for us, but we did get to enjoy one sale event! The Otome Games Celebration, hosted by the wonderful Crystal Game Works, was a lovely little sale showing off some of the best in indie otome and getting to smooch fictional men. While the big co-ordinated sale event is over, the event page is still up if youd like to see a big selection of romance VNs about wooing fictional men. I highly recommend it! We also wanna highlight an event were not taking part in, but really love: the Women-Led Games summer showcase, which will be happening on the 7th (or early on the 8th in certain time zones). Were a team of women ourselves, and we love seeing the work of other women in the industry get highlighted! Theyve also been very welcoming of us and included Obscura in their sale events in the past, which were very grateful for! Audio It hurts me that I cant beam audio directly into your brain, because Cajsa is killing it. There are a couple of scenes that spend an extended amount of time in one area, and shes been making sure the music that plays for these scenes has variations to keep up the aural interest. This is one of the bits of feedback I offered this month, to get an idea of where shes going with her work.
Art Mugi has been working hard on updating Oleanders sprites for his second chapter, giving him a general sprucing up and also giving me some very exciting new options to play with. There is a lot to be excited about, but one thing I really wanna highlight is that the new sprite system enables me to do stuff like these poses

which keen-eyed observers may notice were not possible in his original sprite set! It goes without saying that I am very excited to make good, good use of the new opportunities this presents. Writing Writing has progressed really nicely this month! Tobi needed to revise some of her planned material, but that ended up producing some really exciting new ideas that Im hyped to watch come into play. She also wrote a nice chunk of a big emotional scene were really excited for you all to see. Going through it now, my reaction is just On Oleanders side, Cajsa caught a few visual bugs while programming the music, so Ive been bugfixing. There are some old-ass bugs in the game code that I am just so happy to finally be getting rid of. Im also starting on getting the new sprite system for Oleander working while being minimally disruptive to the stuff thats already in the game. Its going to be super interesting work, and since Im going to need to dive through the whole script again, I think Ill keep a typo tally and see how many little errors snuck through my spellcheck. And speaking of bugfixing We want you! Before major releases weve invited players to help us beta-test the game to ensure its bug-free, as well as keeping typos to a minimum and ensuring our accessibility tools are working as intended. While we arent quite ready to invite players into the testing phase yet, we wanted to offer you a heads up that all beta-testing will be done through our Discord. Its open to all 18+ players (and if youre playing Obscura youre definitely at least 18), and while well share announcements on our social media pages when we begin the beta-test process, the best way to stay informed about the beta-test is to be on our Discord. And thats all we have for you this month! June is promising to be a month where a lot happens, both in general and here in the raccoon den, and were excited to experience it all! Youll hear from us again soon, so talk to you all later! Love, The Rotten Raccoons Team

• Fixed bug where the black mask variant of the Vesper CG doesn't unlock
• Fixed bug where achievements failed to unlock
• Tidied some typos

Hello, beautiful raccoon friends! We're excited to announce we've been selected to take part in the amazing Storyteller's Festival, an amazing Steam event that celebrates the best of video game narratives. Obviously, we're honoured and excited to be taking part for the second year in a row. There are so many incredible stories to experience, so please check out the event! But we're not going to celebrate without giving you a little something as well. For the Storyteller's Festival, we recorded about 45 minutes of behind-the-scenes talk while playing through the first sections of Keir's and Cirrus' second chapters. This time, co-writers Tobi and Violet and audio master Cajsa had a chat, and we had a lovely, giggly time of it! And if you missed it, don't forget to check out the second date with Vesper in the Extra Story. Until next time, happy gaming! Love, The Rotten Raccoons Team

Happy Valentines Day, my beloved raccoon friends! I am here in my fanciest party dress to share the love, and theres a lot of love to share today! Theres three things on our agenda today that we think youll be pretty happy about: a game update, an update to our studio that were excited to share, and finally news about merch. Lets talk about in-game content first: today were releasing Obscura 2.0.2! This is the small update we promised at the start of the year. This update fixes a couple of small errors in the Chapter Two content where characters would talk about things that the player could choose to skip, whoops! But even better, this update contains an extension to the Extra Story, giving you a second date with Vesper. The Extra Story is unlocked in the Extras menu by reaching a good or neutral end to all four love interests first chapter, and the first part can be unlocked and played in the demo! If you unlocked it in the demo, it should still be unlocked in the paid version of the game (and if its not, thats a bug! Please report it!). To see the new date, youll need to reach the end of either Keir or Cirrus second chapter. Thats Ending 25 or Ending 31, for those keeping score at home. Mugi made proper standing sprites for Vesper, as well as a CG to unlock, to really max out their charisma levels! We hope you enjoy your second date with the MC of our romance game, its been a ton of fun to work on. Now, lets talk about Rotten Raccoons! Without getting too deep into the nitty-gritty, Rotten Raccoons itself wont be making any major changes. Were happy with the way were structured at the moment, and were going to keep making Obscura alongside our regular work. But we are building out our business a little more, and for that we have to introduce the Kaguya Project! The simple explanation is that our producer, Yamiochi, works in helping Japanese games get a foothold in the Anglophone game industry, and she wants to fulfil her dream of being an indie visual novel publisher using this experience. So Yamiochi, Mugi, and myself (Violet) are starting an indie visual novel publisher! Weve already started work with a game being made by a team of two(!), and were excited to see what the future holds for this project. Personally, this is extremely exciting stuff! But if all youre worried about is Obscura, which is fair enough, the only thing you really need to know is that Kaguya Project is made of Rotten Raccoons team members, and you can rest easy when you see Obscura merch being sold through the Kaguya Project name. Its all us, we havent made a deal with an outside party! Were just consolidating things under the Kaguya Project umbrella to keep things simpler on our end.
And oh, whats that about merch? Thats right, were finally getting ourselves together to make a little merch line-up! Were still waiting to see a few products to approve them before they go on sale (Mugi is not going to let sub-par prints go out!), so were not launching the shop just yet, but we felt like the time was right to confirm that its happening! Were grateful for your patience while you wait a little longer for us to be open for business. Were starting fairly small in terms of the number of things well be selling, but were extremely excited about what the future holds! And since we didnt want to leave you on just that, Mugi has made a little preview of an edit shes done for one of our future offerings. Remember the gorgeous art she did for the Chapter 2 announcement? Well! [previewyoutube=4s2hMX7Rips;leftthumb][/previewyoutube] Thats all from us for now, but well be back soon with more news to share. Thank you so much for your love and support! Love, The Rotten Raccoons Team

While we don't really advertise OBSCURA as a horror title as such, we do enjoy hearing how folks are getting the heebie-jeebies from certain moments in the game (coughCirruscough). So what could be better than taking part in an event devoted to Spooky Season? OBSCURA will be discounted for the entire fest, so if you've been looking for a chance to try Keir and Cirrus' second chapters, this could be your moment! In the meantime, hallowed be thy ween

• Smashed some bugs; if you were having trouble getting certain achievements before, they may be working now.
• Fixed some typos. There's always one that slips through the cracks...

It's a big day for us here in the raccoon den! We're very excited to share Keir and Cirrus' second chapters and hope very much that you'll enjoy them! The game is obviously available here, and on Steam! We're now getting properly into production for Oleander and Francesco's second chapters and we are having a ball with them, cannot wait to show you what we've been working on. For anyone looking to do a review or create content for the game, you are still welcome to reach out to us on Twitter. We have a request for anyone planning on doing streaming or VOD content to follow our video content rules. Thank you so much your patience, we're so glad you've come on this adventure with us. Please enjoy Keir and Cirrus' continuation, and look forward to Oleander and Francesco!

Three of the Rotten Raccoons Tobi, Mugi, and Violet go through OBSCURA and discuss the behind-the-scenes process of development. We talk mostly about art and story, mostly regarding Chapter One content, but with some talk about what we've been up to for Chapter Two. This is a prerecorded video, but if you have any questions or comments regarding something we talk about you're welcome to bring them to our Discord! It's an 18+ space due to the content of our game, obviously. And apologies for the background noise; one of the microphones was not muting like it should have been

Three of the Rotten Raccoons Tobi, Mugi, and Violet go through OBSCURA and discuss the behind-the-scenes process of development. We talk mostly about art and story, mostly regarding Chapter One content, but with some talk about what we've been up to for Chapter Two. This is a prerecorded video, but if you have any questions or comments regarding something we talk about you're welcome to bring them to our Discord! It's an 18+ space due to the content of our game, obviously. And apologies for the background noise; one of the microphones was not muting like it should have been

Happy Valentines Day from the raccoon den! Two gentlemen have been waiting in the wings all this time, and now they have the opportunity to take centre stage. Steam, meet Francesco and Oleander! Francesco is a ray of sunshine in the underground marketplace, so sweet and sincere it almost seems unbelievable. Or, maybe you dont believe it after all? The great merchant Oleander, on the other hand, is open about the kind of man he is: a hedonist, a flirt, and a gadfly, and in need of a new assistant. Hes capable of opening a lot of doors, but he might not tell you where he ultimately wants to go. Both of them can now be met in the Chapter One demo, bringing the total word count of the demo to about 70k words. The update also features tweaked sprite transitions, general bug fixes and typo cleanup, and one small bonus feature thats been in high demand on our Tumblr account (if you know, you know!). This update is fairly substantial, so there is a risk of bugs or visual glitches occurring if you load old saves. If you load an old save and are experiencing problems, we recommend starting a new save. Whether its your first or fifth or fiftieth trip to the marketplace, we hope you get to turn down the lights, put on some headphones, and enjoy your stay. Well be hard at work getting Chapter 2 ready for you all. If you want to follow our progress, you can join our Discord (18+), follow us on Twitter/X, or join us having a silly good time on Tumblr. See you under the mountain soon, Rotten Raccoons

Surprise! As a treat for you all and to celebrate Steam Scream: The Revenge the first chapter for Keir and Cirrus stories are now available here on Steam! We hope you take the chance to put on some headphones, turn the lights off, and enjoy the dark adventure thats in store with them. Meanwhile, theres two more love interests waiting in the wings. You may have seen them around elsewhere, but theyll be making their Steam debut another day (a day were very much looking forward to!). To keep up with that news, youre welcome to join our Discord (18+ only), or follow us on Twitter/X or Tumblr. See you under the mountain soon, Rotten Raccoons