Been a bit quiet here, huh? Apologies for that! Working Cohost's unique challenges into our social media pipeline while actively developing multiple products has been difficult. But rest assured, things have been happening! Quite a few, actually!

Talpin University

The finished writing has also given us a roadmap for which CG's and alternate sprites are needed, which has been the game's focus for the last few months. We're happy to say that all the foreground elements for Sterling's route are complete, with only backgrounds remaining to be integrated.

So while Talpin's development has definitely slowed a bit, it's still moving forward steadily. But, we think you'll understand this change of pace with our next update.

Maghni AI Voicebank -- Sage Opus

This is a development that we've been very open about on Twitter, but hadn't quite gotten to over here. We've received the rare opportunity to step out of our usual wheelhouse of visual novels and into the world of vocal synth! We are now officially a third party developer for the vocal synthesis engine Maghni AI!

We've been hard at work developing Sage Opus, a trilingual voicebank that reimagines our our existing character, Seiji. It's not nearly the hard pivot you'd think it is, considering the character was originally an UTAU voicebank that was similarly repurposed for games. If anything, he's just going back to his roots for a bit.

The bank is planned to support English, Japanese, and Italian, with four unrevealed alternate vocal tones, known as "voice colors".

Coordinating the diverse pool of talent necessary to get such a product off the ground has been a very fulfilling challenge, let alone doing that on top of gamedev! We're sure now you can see why we've been a little quiet.

That more or less covers it, for now. We're hoping to be more active across social media in general, which we hope will also include more regular chosts!

Until then, please look forward to more updates!

Hello! Once again, a fanart of the lava Gormiti Thoughtcatcher (Strappapensieri in italian). I love his design and personality, too bad he only appears in two episodes from season 1, and not even much in one of them.

I've noticed I often like characters with a beak.

Watercolour and a tiny bit of coloured pencil on A5 Clairefontaine Aquapad Goldline paper, 300 gsm.

Done at the end of June/early July.

i like when men are homosexual, or some variation of it

something that's always been a pet peeve for me is the way some people talk about dream symbolism. like, it can't actually be a metaphor for some grand lesson you need to learn; if your brain could construct a whole elaborate metaphor, then it must also just know the thing it's trying to teach you? so it shouldn't even have to teach you since it is you. like when people say things like "if you're falling a lot in dreams it means you feel like you're losing control" it's like cat psychology. I'm certain someone just made that up at some point

actually speaking of cat psychology that's another thing that's always bugged me. like when people say things like "when a cat cleans themselves after you pet them it's because they really like your taste" it definitely doesn't mean that

a cat has no concept of disgust beyond "ew tastes bad" and "ew smells bad" and "ew feels bad" it's you, the human, who decided that being responsible for unpleasant sensations in others is an inherently moral failure. it's you who got offended by the cat cleaning itself after you pet it. MAYBE we just want to get all of your gunk and grease and grime off of us. how rude of you to invent a nonsense system of etiquette and unspoken words, and then induct us into it without permission, for no purpose other than to feel offended by meaningless actions! and then to ask that we pretend to enjoy the taste of your oils to heal your feelings which you hurt yourself! shame on you. can you not understand that despite the fact that yes, you are grimey and oily and the sensations you leave us with are uncomfortable, we don't care! we still love being pet and love you enough that we let you do it anyways!! we understand that it's just the way that your body works and we've clearly displayed that we accept that! is that not enough?? shame!!!

I mean they