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Folks, it's been a minute!
Our three-person dev team crunched hard to get Aquarium 51 out of our minds, and into a playable demo form in time for the #NaNoRenNo deadline, and we did it! Since then, the team has had a busy few months. After some much needed rest and recovery, and some necessary time away to make sure we were still keeping up with all of our day jobs, we’re ready to really dive back in.
Our lead dev and head artist Kit is finishing up the last day of Summercon today, and they’ve been spreading the word about the demo with all the wonderful people they’ve met. To any new folks just finding out about us, and to the ones who’ve been keeping up with Aquarium 51’s progress, welcome!
From Kit:
Thank you to everyone that visited me in the grueling heat at Summer Con while I shriveled up like a bug in the sun in the outdoor marketplace. It genuinely means a lot that you all came to visit me and patron my booth under the harsh conditions. I’m so glad you decided to give this game a look and hope to deliver more Aquarium 51 content and trinkets! (Aquarium 51 merch soon? 👀)
Anyways, I’m headed home from Puyallup now and hope to see you at another event soon! (Rose City Comic Con? 👀) Get tons of rest and hydrate up!
💜Kit
On to the updates - thank you so much to everyone who's already played the demo, shared it, or commented on it! Getting this first version of the game out into the world has been so exciting, and we're so grateful for the support. Seeing our vision come to life, bit by bit, has been such a gratifying experience.
Now, let's talk about the demo!
The current build is available free-to-play on our itch.io page, and includes the full Day 0 playthrough, which introduces you to your internship at Searose Aquarium and gives you your first look at the three main love interests and their future routes.
The demo also includes:
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Beautiful character sprites designed by Kit (Egg Dadde) for everyone you interact with.
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An in-progress phone interface, for texting your soon-to-be love-interest.
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Completed backgrounds for some, but not all scenes - illustrated by Pidge (me!) and rendered in all their charming (and painstaking) detail by Kit.
The Day 0 demo is fully playable, but there are still a few things we want to finish before we consider it complete. Our next round of work is to focus on polishing up and completing the Day 0 experience with:
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Completed background illustrations for all remaining scenes.
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Applying sprite expressions (so you can finally see Cailean's tsudere-ass blush).
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Fixing up the phone UI.
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Adding several new phone apps for players to interact with.
These updates will be pushed out as we complete them, and should help Day 0 feel more complete, more expressive, and more like the final version of the experience we want players to have.
What happens next?
We're going to keep working on Aquarium 51 until it's finished. That's a promise and a threat.
We even have an extra route planned for a mystery bachelor that the whole team has gotten very attached to. Not ready to say more yet, but we like him a lot - his story will happen after the main events of the full game take place, so think of him more like a DLC.
As development continues, we'll keep updating and sharing our progress. Our next major update is currently planned for August/September, and we'll have more to share as we get closer. The biggest developments planned for that push include:
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Updating with a full, playable Week One for Simon’s route
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Working on the script for Week One of Quynh and Caileans’ routes
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Completing additional background illustrations
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Working on implementing some delightful little mini games
We're so stoked to move from the introductory portion of the game into the larger story - and it's an ambitious one for sure. But we couldn't help ourselves, we fell in love with these characters and this world, and we just want to do it justice.
Thank you again for playing, supporting, and following along on this adventure. We're so happy the demo is finally out in the world, and we can't wait for what's next!