Howdy everyone!

Time flies, doesn't it? It completely skipped my mind that earlier this week marked the 3 month anniversary of Sileo's launch! It's been an amazing, busy and surreal time for us on the team, we didn't expect the strong response we received and have continued to cultivate since and we're so so appreciative to you all for being here and sticking with us!

Our team originally formed in April after I reached out to potential artists on the FurAffinity Forums in the hope that I'd find someone who was keen to work with me in making this a reality. I'd tried once or twice before in the years prior and never had any success. You can imagine my surprise when CurryCatz contacted me and was agreeable to my ideas and approach. You see, at the time, I was unemployed due in part to Covid-19 and otherwise due to some unfortunate circumstances that had unfolded over the months prior. As such, I had no money I could put into the game and was unable to pay an artist up front. Instead, all I could offer was a revenue split should the project take off. CurryCatz wasn't motivated by the financial aspect, he more just wanted to make a visual novel he could be proud of. I felt the same way, and thus we came together, filling out our ranks with Kronos, a close friend and something of an avid visual novel fan. Kronos would QA test each and every build we published, as well as each time a major update was made in the middle of a development cycle. We'd also bounce our ideas off of him in order to better shape what our project was going to be. 

Amazingly, Sileo was met with strong acclaim even early on, and we've only continued to raise the bar in a lot of ways. We've also maintained a steady release schedule with a target of 3 new days each month, something that we've done since the very beginning (although Itch wouldn't receive it's first 3 day update until August on account of the Public Build launching alongside our Patreon, which didn't initially have a Patreon build available.)

We've also learned a lot. Neither CurryCatz nor Kronos have worked on a Visual Novel before, and my experience is limited to a very early prototype of the game Sileo would eventually become which released way back in 2013. Shout out to those here that remember it, I know there's at least a few of you! There's definitely been some teething issues, some mistakes made and some lessons learned, things we will exercise going forward.

To address the common question of when and what the next build is, we release major updates on the first of each month, every month. Patreon will receive new playable days ahead of the Itch builds, but both builds will otherwise be identical containing all of the same retroactive improvements such as new outfits, new backgrounds, new features and other improvements and fixes. Currently, the Itch version of Sileo runs until Day 9 inclusive, while Patreon runs until Day 12. Next month, Itch will run until Day 12 while Patreon will run until Day 15. And so on, so forth. If you want to support us, but don't have the financial means right now (we know covid has been really tough for a lot of people), tell your furry friends, retweet our posts (follow us on twitter, btw), leave a nice comment - these are all great ways that mean the world to us! Sileo will always be available here on Itch for no charge, and we hope, above all, that Sileo has in some way made your life a little nicer, be it from lockdown, or at work as you quietly hide the window behind a spreadsheet when the boss walks by, or even on public transport as the lady sitting behind you judges your taste in the finest of furry men!

We already have a ton of ideas for our other routes, Tai's route has a lot of ideas behind it, ones that I'm very excited to be able to explore. It will also be the most abstract of the four planned routes, exploring some very unusual ideas and a relatable yet creative scenario. Lukas' route is planned to be a more straight forward route with less of the melodrama that Diego's route has and will offer something more familiar and traditional in terms of VN storytelling. Axel's and Dom's is still very much under consideration - we know what we want to do, we just haven't locked in how we're going to do it. Time will tell how that one pans out. One thing that is certain is that we're going to take a lot more time preparing before we jump into creating the routes. We've also got plans to support Sileo beyond the conclusion of those four routes. Assuming Sileo continues to be popular, we will be introducing a mode called 'Tails from Woodcrest' - the horrible pun may or may not be shed by the time it appears on your screen. This mode will include stories, almost exclusively from other characters perspectives, that either take place outside of the main story's timeline (for example, one of our planned routes is from Eric's perspective after the main story has wrapped up) or during the main timeline that couldn't be told from the protagonist's perspective. Some of these plots will also be quite NSFW. We're looking forward to it!

Something else I'd like to take the time to talk about is Kyrex, who was recently introduced into Diego's route on the latest major public update. It's incredibly hard to address the major complaints about this character without unveiling spoilers, so forgive me for being incredibly vague. But I will say, the unambiguity of several things, such as Kyrex's position as an antagonist, and how smooth and idyllic the Day 8 - 12 stretch seems, are intentional. The latter half of the plot will be... well, a little more complicated. Not everything is what it seems right now, and hopefully it'll have been worth the weight!

Anyway, thank you all so much once again for your support these past three months! It's definitely been tough at times, I'm working in the health sector and with the whole Covid thing going on... well, you know. It's been a balancing act to say the least. Thankfully, we're managing to keep our momentum up and we're still on target! Long may that continue!