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