Hey everyone!

Today's a special day - five years ago, our very first release, A NIGHTMARE'S TRIP, arrived on Steam and itch.io, marking the world's debut of SKY HOUR WORKS and our PROJECT NATURA series. To everyone that's helped make these games happen, whatever it be the amazing friends that have helped with each project, or the small yet amazing fanbases for these games, thank you!!! The fact that these games have resonated with an audience at all means the world, and I'm proud of all of the work we've put into them.

So I thought I'd like to do some special things for our fifth year anniversary - that's half a decade, and surely we've got some cool things coming up! Well, we do - so let's talk about them!


Our latest release in the PROJECT NATURA series, last year's HAOxSORA =THE SKY'S ABOUND=, is finally arriving on Steam as a standalone, fully upgraded version that includes new system changes, content, and polish. This'll be the definitive and final take on our ENDLESS RUNNER X GEAR-BASED RPG project, and mark an end of an era for SKY HOUR WORKS as we start to jump into larger, more ambitious projects.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3231250/HAOxSORA_THE_SKYS_ABOUND_RIDE_TO_OUR_FINAL/

You can wishlist it on Steam now, and we'll announce the final release date when we're ready to do so. It'll be priced at a cheap $3 USD, making it an accessible game to pick up (and is also representative of the final game's scope and bite-sized experience), but a full $10 USD version, titled "HAOxSORA =THE SKY'S ABOUND= RIDE TO OUR FINAL /ANNIVERSARY MIX/" will include the original version from Indiepocalypse #45, plus our usual swathe of digital bonuses for those who want to support our work. Ruky's soundtrack for the game will be released on Steam as a separate release as well.

For those supporting us on Patreon, if you're currently a Natura Explorer by the release of the game, you'll receive Steam + itch.io keys to play the game. If you're a Natura Connoisseur, we'll provide you with a key of the /ANNIVERSARY MIX/ edition!


An anniversary bundle, featuring all of our PROJECT NATURA releases* will be arriving with the release of our new version of HAOxSORA =THE SKY'S ABOUND= RIDE TO OUR FINAL on both Steam and itch.io in 2025! The bundle is accompanied by this amazing anniversary artwork featuring our games' lead characters, drawn by the amazing novaborealis!

The itch version will be released as a standalone game, containing a new launcher (Windows only) compiling all of the games and digital bonuses.

And that's not all...

More details will arrive in the future, but we want this release to be a special one. It'll be limited, but lovingly homemade, and will be available online + at a handful of IRL events in 2025. There'll be cool bonuses attached to it, whatever I can put together that won't break the bank basically!

We can reveal one of those bonuses today - take a look at the first ever official KATO sticker!

We just approved the final size / finish for the sticker that we'll be going with over the weekend - special thanks to Sticker Goblin for doing the production and design for this!

* The Steam version of this bundle will not contain the following releases: Garden for Gato, PACK-CAT, and Deceived Voice - Whisper's Redux. These will remain itch.io / physical only!


We're gonna put all of our paid releases on Steam and Itch.io at record-low discounts for two weeks, so this is your chance to snag these releases for absurdly cheap! You'll notice the Steam store page artwork for A NIGHTMARE'S TRIP and SPACE / MECH / PILOT will be different during the duration of this sale, featuring our fifth-year anniversary rendition of these characters!


A NIGHTMARE'S TRIP is getting its first update in nearly 5 years, including an updated pass of the game's english script, a full localization in Simplified Chinese by Yuan Liu, and various bug fixes and minor tweaks. It'll be available on Steam and itch.io on October 14th!


We've compiled anniversary comments from SKY HOUR WORKS alumni from across all of our projects. Please read at our SKY HOUR WORKS 5TH ANNIVERSARY Guestpage[shw5thanniversary.bearblog.dev]!


As you know, we've been working on our future projects internally, while supporting both Beatblock and vivid/stasis as publishing endeavors, and so far, so good! It's gonna be awhile until we share more about our next PROJECT NATURA stuff, largely due to people on the projects being busy with lots of stuff (note: next year is gonna be a VERY busy year for me and I expect my ability to get SHW related stuff done to be a bit difficult). Expect our operations next year to primarily focus on our current publishing projects, Beatblock and vivid/stasis, as we want to best support those releases for their upcoming milestones, while giving everyone involved with the PROJECT NATURA series the space to breathe in regards to prior commitments.

Personally speaking, more than ever, I really wanna continue creating cool stuff for this label, and make cool stuff with this circle of creatives more than ever. I'm hoping to budget more time into that after other major milestones in my life, such as the wrapping of UNBEATABLE's development (my day job), passes by in 2025. So know that I'm still thinking about the future of SPACE / MECH / PILOT, that I'm still working on RE: DECEIVED VOICE, and that there's still more to come for PROJECT NATURA in these coming years! Just give me a lil' time, haha.

Thank you all for waiting and continuing to show your love for these games - it's proof that we've made something special over these past few years.

BELIEVE IN OUR FUTURE. CHASE THE WORLD!

-Jeff, SKY HOUR WORKS Director

Hey Pilots!

Happy 2nd year anniversary for the soft-launch of SPACE / MECH / PILOT! We've mentioned how the next NIGHT @ SKY HOUR, our annual anniversary event would be a bit different this time around...and well, take a look for yourself!

First off, we're co-publishing the Steam release of vivid/stasis, the freeware rhythm-mystery game from Hajimeli, releasing with its first episode in Q1 2023! You can wishlist it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2093940

In addition, the next mainline PROJECT NATURA game (the third game after A NIGHTMARE'S TRIP and SPACE / MECH / PILOT), RE: DECEIVED VOICE, releases Summer 2023 on Steam and Itch.io! For those wanting answers about the universe-line, the truth will change everything.

We have a full post about our announcements here if you'd like to read up (also contains a short blurb about where we're at with current projects, including S/M/P updates):

Thank you for another year of incredible support, pilots! Your support has allowed us to extend a hand with releases like vivid/stasis, as well as go above and beyond with our next game, and we're excited to show you more in 2023!

- SKY HOUR WORKS

Join us for NIGHT @ SKY HOUR 3 on October 7th at 5 PM EST to see brand new premiere announcements from both Hajimeli and SKY HOUR WORKS.

Premiere Link:

Attention Pilots!

Valve finished a review of SPACE / MECH / PILOT and have labelled the game as "Playable". See here for the details:

In short, apart from needing to use the default M+KB bindings for the deck (the touchpads especially), the game will run perfectly! We imagine they tested the game with the linux version specifically, and not with proton itself, so note that support on this system will be limited compared to Windows releases of the game.

No other SKY HOUR WORKS titles, including the 2ECONDS VNs and A NIGHTMARE'S TRIP, have been reviewed or are in a review process at this time.

And that's all! Enjoy the carnage, pilots!
- SKY HOUR WORKS

NOTE: Valve did not approve our requests to test any of our games on a Steam Deck dev kit as of writing.

Hey Pilots!

Our final update of the year for SKY HOUR WORKS is available now on Patreon! The post is free for everyone to view and it covers what we've done this year and clues in as to what's next for the label!

It includes a special section relevant for SPACE / MECH / PILOT players here - the tl;dr being that we're still actively working on bringing the game to HTML5, and that expansion development is set to begin at some point in 2022! As for those wanting a Mac version...well... :)

Details on what's taking so long on our next patch is present there too.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/60345524

Happy Holidays!
- SKY HOUR WORKS

Hey Pilots!

Today marks the one-year anniversary of SPACE / MECH / PILOT's soft-launch on Steam. On behalf of everyone at SKY HOUR WORKS' S/M/P team, thank you so much for enjoying the game! Every ounce of support has meant a crazy lot to us!

To celebrate, we brought on artist BLACKYPNG to do a new commemorative key art to celebrate the occasion, and it is currently the Steam store page! It's also been added to the game as a ending CG too! If you want to download the assets and keep them for yourself, as well as change your Steam Library cover/banner you can download this kit here[drive.google.com].

SPACE / MECH / PILOT has been a special project to us, and its been awhile since we've talked about its future. As said before, we're still really focused on other projects, whatever it be SKY HOUR WORKS' next mainline title, RE: DECEIVED VOICE, or the team's various other jobs on the side, such as my current full-time job, production work for the rhythm-adventure game UNBEATABLE! This means we haven't really sat down to begin work on S/M/P's game-changing expansions, and probably won't get to it anytime soon. But that's not to say they we haven't had any ideas, because I'll let you in on a secret - we know what's next for Kato and the strange ship-assimilating program.

This is a look at KATO in the [NEXT] Chapter. A early look into the future of SPACE / MECH / PILOT.

You can catch alumni from past SKY HOUR WORKS projects, including this one, streaming tonight to celebrate at 8 PM EST via twitch.tv/klonoacomet! And for more details on the rest of the announcement, including a special message for fans of A NIGHTMARE'S TRIP, check out our full patreon post here[www.patreon.com]!

I'm excited to announce that we're back on the Steam / Itch Summer Sale, and this time - we've brought friends!

The Summer Friendship Bundle, exclusive to Steam, contains both A NIGHTMARE'S TRIP and SPACE / MECH / PILOT's complete editions, as well as several games from our pals at Anarch Entertainment (NOISZ / 2ECONDS) and LAME DIMENSION! You can support the bundle here:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/21439

On top of that, our other games are on a nice discount n' stuff! Ya know the song n' dance! The new artwork (shown above) is done by our friend hexantoid, who came back to do new summer key art featuring Adrien, Kato, and the two new mysterious characters from our next PROJECT NATURA title, RE: DECEIVED VOICE!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/12014/A_NIGHTMARES_TRIP__FULL_ITINERARY_EDITION/
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/16475/SPACE__MECH__PILOT_V10__THE_UNIVERSE_DRIVE__OST/

Full details, including progress updates / announcements are available on current SKY HOUR WORKS projects are in our Patreon post, because it is almost 6 am in the morning and I am too tired to type that all out again for two different Steam posts

https://www.patreon.com/posts/52870671

For SPACE / MECH / PILOT players, I'll recap em here real quick:

• The game's Web version begins development today, and the side-story we're writing exclusively for our Patreon is now in the drafting stages! (note: it is very sad)
  
• Mac version's on the cards!
  
• A small patch came out that added Kato's summer artwork as a new ending CG for the game!

Stay safe, and have a great summer!
Jeff

p.s. play that other game im working on https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290490/UNBEATABLE_white_label/

Surprise! A brand new SPACE / MECH / PILOT Update releases today, primarily focused on fixing and optimizing the game!

Here's the patch notes:

• The game's CPU Usage has been drastically lowered - areas where the game was severely taxing on PCs have been patched up.
  
• Fixed resolution issues that occur when resizing the game's window and then selecting "Restart" game
  
• Fixed a bug where the CRT Shader glitches out when resizing the game's window

These patches mark our slowly growing effort to optimize SPACE / MECH / PILOT for its upcoming web release (and for the eventual V1.10 Patch). I'd also like to officially announce that this patch was developed by my friend Kei_01g, who will be (going forward) assisting on the project and maintaining the source code for the foreseeable future.

(say hi!)

With their help, the game should still receive continual fixes, get its official web port release, and get geared up for eventual expansion development (which is still not in development, just so ya know...but the entire team is interested in coming back and making some cool stuff when we're more freed up). With them around, the future of SPACE / MECH / PILOT is currently looking real bright!

In other news, the game I've been working on for over three years launched on Kickstarter a few weeks ago! If you're looking for a exciting rhythm-adventure game with a gorgeous anime aesthetic and some of the best music you can find in a video game, then please give our Kickstarter campaign for UNBEATABLE a look!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-xFczhoZb8

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dcellgames/unbeatable

Your support would mean the world! And if you want to try it for yourself, the campaign page includes a link to download UNBEATABLE: ARCADE MIX[dcellgames.itch.io], which is a rhythm-gameplay only demo we'll be having before we release UNBEATABLE [white label] on Steam (another free episodic demo!)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290490/UNBEATABLE_white_label

That'll be all for now! Keep in touch,
~Jeff

Hey all!

We noticed that the game was crashing on older Linux distributions. We recompiled the game on a older version of Ubuntu and it should now work for more distros! Please let me know if the issue still persists - we've checked two sep versions so far and they run great (including the most recent Ubuntu distro and a version a user on the Steam forums reported using).

Thanks,
-Jeff

Hiya! Lemme know if any issues are present with this one:

• FINAL REPORT artwork screens will now randomly cycle past your third playthrough. It will no longer by default show the Lunar-themed artwork.
  
• Fixes the removal of a feature intended to compensate for completed playthrough tallies not properly being compensated.
  
• Cleaning up suspicious leaderboard entries.
  
• THE UNIVERSE DRIVE now has a EXTRAS folder, containing 3 cell-phone sound effects from the game. Convert them to your format of choice to use them as ringtones!

Thanks for playing,
-Jeff

P.S. - Check back with the SKY HOUR WORKS patreon within a few days or so, we're gonna be posting a update on RE: DECEIVED VOICE!