A thank-you from Storm

Hey all, Storm here. Slockie and I had decided we wanted to take some time after the final release of Bare Witness to collect our thoughts about the past three years, so we can properly express them and not sound like, you know, blithering idiots.

With that in mind, let me start by saying: thank you. Having your support over these past three years has been a tremendous motivator for me. Your feedback, both positive and negative, helped keep us on track. But just knowing that you were invested enough to have that feedback in the first place was huge. If you had been ambivalent, if you had just not given a shit which way the story progressed or which love interest was depicted in whatever way, I don't know that any of this would have gotten done.

Writing is never easy. Writing relationships, especially sexual ones, is even more difficult. Doing so in a way that actually connects with people? Maddening. And being stupid enough to allow players nearly a dozen different routes to choose from among those relationships? Insane. And, frankly, kind of dumb. We bit off so much, and without your support we probably couldn't have chewed our way through it. But we did. We're here, and you taking this journey with us means the world.

There are a bunch of you who helped with beta testing, and even more who just pointed out mistakes that made it past beta, and I want to tell you all that your assistance is vastly appreciated. The same goes for the translators who are still working on their part of all this, and to our Discord mods who took over what would have been a frustrating, distracting job in keeping our Discord server running. You were all a big part of our success.

There are a bunch of developers who we really appreciate in terms of both their friendship and their assistance at various points in development. RJ, Nine, Droosk, and Stew were all amazing enough to share cameos in each others' games, making this all feel like a connected world and creating depth we might not have had otherwise. Not only that, their feedback and cheerleading has also been a huge boon. Then there are those we've not yet worked with on cameos but who we still think highly of. Developers like Wilson Wonka, Atemsiel, August Esoterica, Annika Bell (a soon-to-be dev and a great friend), Tako, Panda, Drifty, Jestur, UndergradSteve... There's a lot of you, and if I didn't mention your name it's likely more a matter of me brainfarting than an unappreciativeness. Hell, I'll probably be adding names to this for weeks as I realize I've forgotten someone. Regardless, each of you has helped us in some way, whether it be advice, advertising, or just general cheerleading. Thank you.

Some others who did wonderful work for us, or otherwise helped us out, include: Eris Adderly (who created both the AlterWorlds and Heaven's Door logos; check out her books if you enjoy erotica and mythology), Wibble (who created not only the eponymous club for Heaven's Door, but did a couple of smaller things for us during development without ever asking for anything in return), Scooter, who I cannot put into words did so much work for us. SO MUCH. The man was relentless in his support, guidance, and cheerleading.

I should wrap this up, because it's already leaning well into the "verbose" side of things. Slockie will be dropping his own post soon, so please keep an eye out for that.

Again: thank you for being here. I hope you stick around for Heaven's Door. I think you all are going to love the story we tell there, and I can't wait to put that first chapter in your hands (digitally speaking).

Storm ⛈