Celsius Strays: A Preview

Hello again,

Followed through with my goal so far again of a post a month by writing this. Looks like this was exactly a month after the last month, so I’m at a good pace for now.

Anyway, first things first: work with Night Dive Studios is coming along fairly smoothly, though still can’t disclose too much yet. Also got myself to retry singing the other day, though I don’t plan on sharing the result publicly until next month due to it being a gift for a dear friend.

But now the gist of this post: as late as I am to posting about it here (it came out last Tuesday), a new visual novel has a time-limited demo available on Stream: Celsius Strays. It’s a spinoff of the Brok game, using a VN engine from the same developer, but this time, the story was mainly made by Austin Schmidt, a good friend I met on the Brok who’s now founded Patch Works Interactive, and Brok is not the main character this time around. The synopsis is as follows:

You are the Chief of the Squealers. It has been nine years since the coup to save your people failed, and you were banished to a far corner of the Slums. Survival is a luxury here, with robotic death squads, a deadly climate, and power-hungry Slumlords all eager to snuff out the defiant remnant of rats.

Manage your team, protect your colony, be a leader. And remember: in a world set against you, not all danger comes from outside.

This is an interactive, puzzle-lite Visual Novel where the choices you make, and the relationships you build, shape the future of the story.

From my point of view, I regret to say I wasn’t as deeply involved with development this time around, but I respect Patch Works Interactive’s interest in experimenting further with the musical direction, and I still did contribute a good chunk of the music heard in this preview. The trailer music is not mine, but depending on various factors, I may be permitted to publicly share my own take later on, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, I do appreciate being able to experiment with an edgier sound for the pieces I did contribute, so I did my best at letting my darksynth past resurface itself.

The game can be downloaded for the next week and a half on Steam. The full story won’t be out until later, but all the same, CowCat, Patch Works, and I all hope you enjoy what you see, and hear.