Greetings everyone, and first happy holidays! We're a bit late with the attached picture, but we thought we'd share for those that hadn't seen it on our twitter page.

Now that the holiday merriment is coming to a close and we're entering the new year, I just thought we'd take the time to reflect on what we've accomplished in 2020. While it was certainly one of the hardest years of my life for many reasons that others have shared with me, it was also somehow one of the best thanks to the support given to me by you all.

Over 12K downloads, roughly 450 ratings (most of which were 5-stars), and over 200 comments. That's no small feat, someone pointed out to me the other day that we're currently #6 amongst the top-rated furry games on itch right now, which is... beyond insane to me. It's more than I could've ever asked for and I hope we can keep this momentum going as we continue moving forward into this new year.

We've got a lot of exciting stuff planned for this new year that I really think is going to help enhance the Psychic Connections experience and I hope you all agree when these ideas get implemented. Your feedback has overall been very useful to us, the survey responses we receive with each build is impossibly important and gives us a good idea of what changes we need to make to better the project.

Speaking of feedback, it's about time we get to the more interesting segment of this post, the Q/A. You all gave us some lovely questions, and I did do a bit of digging around in the feedback for the survey to get a few more questions as well as from comments of previous posts. I've assembled all of the questions we can answer so without further ado:

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“Are there any plans for translating the story into other languages?”

Currently there are no near-future plans for translating the story into other languages. This is due to a couple of factors, primarily cost and quality guarantee. In the future I would love to translate the story into other languages and reach as many communities as possible, however I won’t be looking into that until the story nears completion.

“How dark will this story get? Will characters die or will it just be a game about connecting and bonding with unique individuals?”

I will say the intention is not for a very dark and grim story. There will definitely be some darker moments and I won’t outright eliminate the possibility of character death due to natural story developments. However, if you’re asking if this game is gonna turn into a horror/slasher at some point, the answer is no, I do not intend to go that far with it.

“Will there be threesome scenes or threesome routes for certain characters?”

Polyamorous relationships is not something I’m outright avoiding, but at the moment I don’t think I can see myself writing this for the current characters.

“How many days do you plan to make for the game?”

So at the moment I don’t really write the game with “Days” in mind, rather Chapters. I’ve got a set amount of chapters for each route and the days that fall into each chapter will be route dependent. So I can’t answer this with confidence because I don’t outright know how many days I’ll need in each route to maintain a natural flow. That said, I don’t expect more than 30 days which seems to be the VN norm.

“Will there not be a Zoe route?”

While I am not closed off to this idea, it is definitely not within the immediate future. It would come after the four main boys have their routes completed. Additionally it wouldn’t be romance focused. Mason as a character is strictly homosexual, and I have no intention of compromising how I’ve written him as a character.

“In what order will the routes be finished?”

So that’s a bit iffy, because the intention is to update routes on a 5 month cycle. Elliot > Quinn > Aiden > Jude >“???” the last update is unknown to me because every 5 months I will be polling our patrons to decide who they feel will be getting extra love that cycle. (They won’t be able to vote for the same person twice in a row) As a result, maybe 2 characters will be done well before 2 others, I won’t know until we’re further down the road.

“How does Jude put his shirt on? Don't they get stuck on his antlers?”

He strictly wears shirts with buttons, zippers, or tanktops such as what you frequently see with a very stretchy and elastic cotton. He’ll either pull up from his feet or fumble around his antlers, depending on the top and how much of a hurry he’s in.

“Will there be any easter eggs or references to pretty much anything ? I just love hunting for them.”

While I can’t promise I’ll reference everything, I’ll definitely be putting small nods where I can. I enjoy implementing them, I just don’t want to go overboard (which I’m sure I already have).

“What are Mason’s psychic powers?”

Wow asking for spoilers huh? Well I can tell you I’ve been putting an additional hint in regards to his abilities in every update. I’ll keep hinting away until the big reveal, until then I’m sorry but I simply cannot tell you.

“Will there EVER be NSFW content?”

I urge you to look at our Patreon description to find the answer to this question.

“Would it be possible to add a button to make the HUD disappear? I haven't been able to do it on a Android.”

We’re actually looking into custom UI’s at this very moment and that is a feature we will most definitely be implementing. Though I can’t promise when it’ll all be ready.

I think that phone texting mechanic is a bit wonky. Especially that you have to use "Close" button, not just click anywhere on the screen. Why is the interface like that? 

It's a tricky thing. The premises for the phone screen is that the player needs to be able to close the phone screen at their own choice so that they can take their time reading the phone conversation that's currently being displayed. That means we need a close button somehow. In earlier iterations of the phone, it would just have a back arrow that would put the phone away, but it definitely wasn't intuitive at all. The phone also has a draggable screen so that people that play the game on mobile can scroll through the messages by dragging them. It also works on desktop though, and you can also use the scroll wheel to see previous messages in the phone. And because of that, we can't have a click-to-close action inside the phone screen directly because it would interfere with the dragging ability of the phone. That's why we have a big "Close" button at the bottom when it's possible to close the phone. 

• (This answer was brought to you by Melo, the Programmer)

"Will we be able to have a customizable character?"

You saying you don't like Mason? I kid. Unfortunately a customizable character is not in the cards for a multitude of reasons, predominantly due to Mason not being a true Self-Insert. He has his own history, and a personality that can potentially collide with some of your own opinions or thoughts on how he approached issues. Additionally, any cinematic graphics we do, such as Mason lying in bed, or in the cafe scene, would require multiple custom pieces for each variation in the character which would become too costly on our end.

"Will Rook be a date-able character?"

Nope, sorry, I'm afraid I'm off the market in this particular project. <3

"Where can I find the songs on Psychic Connections? I am unable to search the artist."

Ah yes, well Hugh is a bit difficult to track down, unfortunately Hugh doesn't exactly have a spotify our soundcloud or anything. So unfortunately the only way you can listen to our songs currently is in game. However, we do intend to find a way to make that more convenient for your pleasure. If you're interested in listening to more of his work, he also does music for Socially Awkward.

"When can we expect to get updates"

Updates are intended to be on the last Saturday of every month. UNLESS you're a patreon in which case you can get access to our updates a week earlier. Other benefits include polls for the game as well alongside game influencing polls, special patreon exculsive rants, and other development news. If you are interested click the link HERE.

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Well, I got a bit off track at the end there, but I do believe that is all of the questions we had for our lovely little Q/A. It was a lot of fun to do, and hopefully we get to do another one in the future. This whole post is getting a little long, so I'll just wish you all a happy new year and a good night. (May it be better than 2020.)