AUTUMN 2024 NEWSLETTER
Technically this is the second newsletter in our arsenal, but here's a proper greeting... HELLO, AND WELCOME!
This marks the start of our seasonal newsletters that we release "whenever we want during the season" or if there's substantial progress with the projects. We felt this was necessary to keep fans of the project engaged and also to give you guys some news from time to time, no matter how small they may be.
We also know that Halloween is coming soon, and that it is a very special date for all of us, obviously because it's when Chapter 1 of DELTARUNE released. Back then, the fandom was way smaller, and there was a SERIOUS lack of AUs... Good thing Chapter 2 came around to fix that!
So let's get into the meat of this thing already...
We are making TONS of progress on the Andromedia Chapters 3-7 project. Seriously, you should see our Github push activity! With this, we're getting closer and closer to releasing the actual installments of the series, and while we cannot give you guys an actual date, we have a soft deadline set for us after our new production method started. More and more stuff is being coded, sprited and brainstormed, so maybe we'll even have some playable secret fights somewhere down the road (kind of a big maybe).
We're slowly but surely implementing new mechanics and gimmicks for each chapter, which are usually fitting with their themes. Speaking of which, I'm not sure where Toby got the idea that a teacup ride somehow goes hand in hand with an internet themed Dark World... Unless he wanted to keep the carnival theming going... We don't know. But hey! Who's to defy the dog?
In Andromedia, we're not trying to be the dog anyways...
(The latest official newsletter did surprise us with the balloon being teased specifically for Chapter 5... Lizzy was ecstatic.)
Lisspeed:
Honestly, when designing my theme park Dark World, it was always done because I love theme parks, haha!
Originally the idea was to make a fully abandoned theme park because I was curious on how that would play out, especially with how secret bosses are based on abandoned objects.
So what would happen if an entire place was abandoned?. Sadly I couldn't get it executed in a way that made sense, so it was turned into a trip outside of Hometown, giving the Fun Gang more of a reason to be there. When I made this concept the idea was always: "The probability of this is impossible, but if we're making an AU, might as well go all out."
So seeing that balloon was absolutely hilarious to us, because the mere prospect of my intentionally outlandish idea having some ground to stand on AND IN CHAPTER 5 OF ALL THINGS is wild to me!
More Progress...?!
We've made substantial progress in recreating Castle Town's mechanics and locations for the different chapters! At least one expansion map for Castle Town was made for Chapter 3, and we've pretty much completed the Cafe Placement mechanic + Dojo Challenges menu as well. Chapter 4 Cafe was also made, along with BPM related gimmicks...
I have to thank a few people on the Kristal server for all the help!
Some more progress we've made include... Cutscenes! Test cutscenes! Shops! Test shops! Shops that rewrite the whole UI for some reason! Seriously, though... we're incredibly happy with all the stuff that's been done so far, especially after we've spent a while without news.
Burnout and lack of motivation (fueled by the stagnant wait for the official chapters) tends to hit at the worst moments and that was no different for our team. However, after welcoming in some more members and setting up a new production schedule, we're foreseeing this project to have a good amount of content soon!
Soundtrack Update
Our plan going forward is to slowly revamp and remaster most of the current soundtrack, so you'll be seeing changes and updates of old songs. We have decided to do this because we think some tracks either don't fit the characters, sound extremely dated, or are just overall not a good result...
After bringing in very talented musicians from the community, we have started this process and will be posting the new tracks on HUECYCLES's SoundCloud account (because that's where she has Next Pro and they can't afford another plan lol), with some "special" songs being posted on YouTube as well whenever we're ready.
In case you want previews of some of the team's work, here's a few!
Nick L. Odeion (WIP)
Magic Mountains (Working Title)
FRIGHT NIGHT V2 (Piano Draft)
Candleholder
"But what about Candleholder?! Is it still on hiatus???""
Candleholder will soon be returning to the main stage! In 2025, we plan on resuming our development of the game and sharing news and sneak peeks + proper devlogs with you all. There's a LOT to update ever since the hiatus started so we should get to work soon enough.
The game is also going through a semi-major rewrite, and some characters will be slightly redesigned (see: Dealmaker) as well as the "Hard Mode" getting almost a full rewrite. Everyone in the team is honestly really excited to soon go back to Candleholder after so long!
Speaking of which... we know that a lot of you were very excited to learn more about Candleholder's secret boss. Well, we have good and bad news...
Bad news is: the secret boss was scrapped. Good news is: there'll be another in its place. Good thing we can show a bit of our scrapped idea for the original secret boss.
This is Sagro, Minerva's unpurified Shadow Crystal. You were meant to fight it in Trouble Dingle's Crystal Cavern, where the space would morph into something resembling funhouse mirrors. Glowshard, the shopkeeper of Happy Town, would have some extra dialogue in case you managed to beat Sagro.
HUECYCLES:
After some thought, I've come to realize that this storyline is kind of... silly and convoluted.
Especially since there are way better options for who could fill the secret boss role...
This obviously won't be publicly available information for a while (maybe only when the game is actually out) but all I'll say is that we're thinking about it very carefully and coming up with new stuff for the rewrite.
We even had a battle theme in the works! ... At least, a tiny wip of it.
Creepa-Bot:
I am going to create a boss theme that is so Final Fantasy
Website Update
You might have noticed we have a new url by now!
This is useful because we can keep things separate from HUECYCLES's own stuff and Andromedia/Candleholder. After all, there's another project being worked on from the shadows... that will someday bloom into colors and light (and more shadows)
This website will be going through a revamp from when you saw it last, like pages and sections being rearranged, as well as some stuff you aren't really meant to find... By the time of this newsletter, there are only a few pages available, but when November 18th comes around, we'll have a big update coming to this website. All we'll say is... feel free to explore by then!
For now, please join our new Discord server for further information and content! (The old one got archived as we wanted to start anew.)
That's it for now! Thank you for reading!
