- Nightshade Winter 2025 Updates - 23 December 2025
The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe! There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here: Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time. Streaming Guidelines Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, sinc…
- Nightshade Winter 2025 Updates - 23 December 2025
The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe! There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here: Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time. Streaming Guidelines Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, sinc…
- Nightshade Winter 2025 Updates - 23 December 2025
The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe! There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here: Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time. Streaming Guidelines Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, sinc…
- Nightshade Winter 2025 Updates - 23 December 2025
The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe! There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here: Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time. Streaming Guidelines Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, sinc…
- Nightshade Winter 2025 Updates - 22 December 2025
The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe! There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here: Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time. Streaming Guidelines Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, sinc…
- Nightshade Winter 2025 Updates - 22 December 2025
The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe! There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here: Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time. Streaming Guidelines Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, sinc…
- Nightshade Winter 2025 Updates - 21 December 2025
The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe! There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here: Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time. Streaming Guidelines Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, sinc…
- Nightshade Winter 2025 Updates - 21 December 2025
The Winter Sale is currently on, with big discounts on the Eldritch Nightmare Duology and a sale for Life as Designed as well. Be sure to let your friends know that now is a good time to experience the Nightshade universe! There's a bit of news about the games as well, so let's go over some of that here: Blooming Nightshade and Flowering Nightshade These two games will eventually get a minor UI update based on a related project, though I'm postponing the update for the moment in the hopes of finishing the final planned story for Flowering Nightshade first. Once that story is ready, I'll try to get the updates for both games finished around the same time. Streaming Guidelines Hopefully better late than never, I've put together an actual page detailing some guidelines to streaming or recording these games. I'd highly recommend taking a quick look before playing these games on stream, sinc…
- Life as Designed is Now Available! - 28 August 2024
Life as Designed, the romance and coming-of-age story featuring Cho Fukuda, is now available for purchase! Cho Fukuda has spent much of her adult life as a freelance costume designer, to the point that she feels like she's been typecast. Her motivation to work on projects that all feel the same flounders until she ends up botching a commission, leaving her with no leads and the feeling that she's made a mistake with her life. With Cho out of a job for the time being, she and her girlfriend will soon have to explore how their love will adjust to this new challenge. Taking place about ten years after the events of Eldritch Academy, this visual novel continues the story of Cho Fukuda and her friends Akomi Miyazaki, Kagami Nakayama, and Yue Ishikami. (Some knowledge of Eldritch Academy is recommended, but not required to understand this story.) This game explores how the direction of Cho's…
- Life as Designed will release on XX XX! - 19 August 2024
Life as Designed, the romance and coming-of-age story featuring Cho Fukuda, will be releasing on XX XX! The planned price is $6 USD or the converted equivalent.
- Life as Designed Demo Released + Other News - 22 March 2024
The demo version of Life as Designed is now available for download! In this demo, you can play through the first three scenes of each of the main routes. Also, the original announcement for the demo on my blog featured a few other announcements as well, which you can find here. In particular, the post introduces Mysteries of Akiramine, a series of short stories that focuses on Shizuka Hirose (from Shireishi and Eldritch University). I hope everyone enjoys the demo! Which character's story will you try first?
- Nightshade Games Survey - 10 January 2022
In order to gauge what level of interest there might be in potential features and such for the games set in the Nightshade universe, I've put together a short survey. The survey can be found here: link Just to be clear, the only features that are currently planned for certain are: Eldritch Academy v3 update Additional stories for Flowering Nightshade Life as Designed for PC/Android The other features brought up in the survey are being considered, but interest in them will be important in determining their priority going forward. If you have other suggestions regarding potential features for the games, be sure to leave a comment and let me know!
- Eldritch Academy v3 Beta Announcement - 11 September 2021
Last year, I announced that Eldritch Academy was getting a major update for Version 3. After a lot of on-and-off work, that update is nearing completion. In the meantime, I figured it was time to give a better look at the update while the last chunk is implemented. For that reason, I'm planning to make a beta branch for the game here on Steam once I've double-checked the common route for any major bugs or issues. What's in the Version 3 Beta? The current plan is to have the full game be available in the beta, though some scenes will not have finalized art implementation and final script checks. In general, this is the breakdown: Prologue/Act 1/Act 2/Act 3: Implemented Act 4/Epilogue: Art not implemented, script under review Aftermath stories (standalone): Implemented Bonus Features: Implemented If there are any major issues in the "implemented" scenes and features in the beta, bug repor…
- Flowering Nightshade Released! - 11 June 2021
Flowering Nightshade (v7) is now available for download via Steam! Check out its store page here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1652030/ Almost five years have passed since Himeka sought friendship and romance at Solana Academy. She and her friends have grown now, and have to face their adult responsibilities. As a direct sequel to Blooming Nightshade, Flowering Nightshade continues the lighthearted romance story that began there. The player may choose to resume one of the six romantic storylines from Blooming Nightshade or begin a story featuring a new character. Features 6 returning love interests, with stories focusing on the transition to adulthood and maintaining long-term relationships A new character and storyline Each story is longer and more focused than the story routes seen in Blooming Nightshade I hope people enjoy this continuation of the story of Himeka and her friend…
- Flowering Nightshade Store Page - 29 May 2021
The store page for Flowering Nightshade is now visible! Go here to learn more about the game as it is prepared to launch on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1652030/ Due to recent updates to the Ren'Py engine and some code that needs to be updated to properly track Steam Achievements, the game will probably be made available on Steam with the v7 update. The current plan is to have the update ready sometime this summer. I hope everyone looks forward to seeing the game come to Steam!
- Achievement Changes 2 - 25 May 2021
To coincide with the release of v12, the achievement list got another look-over. Since the current structure of the game makes a number of the achievements redundant, I removed said redundancies. I also went and made the names more unique and tried to update some of the descriptions for ones that have changed a bit since v9. Highlights: - Prologue achievement modified. - Matchmaker and Dateless achievements tweaked. - Ending achievements got unique names. - Friendship/Romance start achievements removed.
- Poll: Flowering Nightshade on Steam - 22 May 2021
Now that all of the main routes for Flowering Nightshade are implemented in the public version of the game, I've decided to see how interested people are in having the game come to Steam. The game is currently free/donationware on itch.io, so I don't want to rush into a decision to launch on Steam (with its waiting periods and up-front fee). However, I didn't want to shut down the possibility entirely, so I've put together a basic poll for players of Blooming Nightshade to submit their opinions on a Steam release. Flowering Nightshade on itch.io: https://jackkel-dragon.itch.io/flowering-nightshade Google Forms Link I'll keep an eye on the responses, and we'll see where things go from there. Thank you for your time and interest!
- v12 Hotfix (Afterstory Fix) - 17 May 2021
For some reason, some of the changes made to the credits scene in v12 would prevent the player from ever seeing the after-credits scenes for romance endings. A hotfix has been uploaded to try to restore access to these scenes. If there are any remaining technical issues, be sure to mention them in the discussion threads. I hadn't even noticed the afterstories weren't playing until earlier today, so there may be other bugs still left in the game.
- Release v12 Update - 9 May 2021
It's been a while since this game got an update, but the next milestone for Flowering Nightshade is fast approaching and I felt like it was time to bring some of the improvements back to this game. One of the biggest changes this time is the replacement of the old music tracks with custom music, but there's also some new art for the menus and other minor fixes. The major changes in this update include: New art for the title screen and story selection menu GUI changes ported from Flowering Nightshade Music replaced with custom tracks by JadeVater (from Eldritch Academy, Eldritch University, and Flowering Nightshade) I hope people enjoy the changes from v11. I'll try to get the next version of Flowering Nightshade out in the near future, but until then, I hope you enjoy this game!
- Life as Designed Announcement - 13 April 2021
I've mentioned it a few times elsewhere, but today is the opening of the store page for Life as Designed! Life as Designed is a romance story with coming-of-age elements that focuses on Cho Fukuda, who first appeared in Eldritch Academy. There are three main storylines planned for the game, each of which follows from the paired endings in Eldritch Academy. (It's not required to play that game to understand this one, but some character traits are assumed to be familiar to the player.) Life as Designed takes place about ten years after Eldritch Academy. Cho now lives in the city of Yamashiya with her girlfriend, who both reside at a share house. All four main characters from Eldritch Academy have jobs in this city, but Cho's freelance work ends up sapping her motivation after a string of projects that feel unfulfilling or end in failure. Each story shows a different path Cho's life could…
