So, back in January, on a Tuesday (Tidesday), I woke up one day and I had the urge to do something creative.

I had been reading up on medieval monasteries for some time, both in non-fiction and fiction (The Name of the Rose was a big thing for me last year) and I had decided to make a D&D campaign set in a monastery at the end of the world where monks come to scribe a mysterious Incantation, a piece of magic so powerful it has to be made by a group of people. I think, in retrospect, this idea of an Incantation spoke to some of my anxieties, because I knew I wanted to make a game myself, and I also knew (or, thought) I needed a lot of things to actually make that happen: a team and money being the two most obvious. But as I started reading up on visual novels, and how to make them, it became clear that I couldn't quite use this as an excuse for procrastination any longer. Today, we have access to technologies that make it pretty easy for someone who has never coded before in their life to pick it up in a reasonable amount of time. And as far as the other skills required, well, I've been DMing for along time now, which has taught me a few things about game design and writing; and I've been working in image manipulation and editing in and out of my actual job for years. So, it finally occurred to me... why not just try and make something?

Ever since that day, I've been obsessed with getting Canticle out there. I haven't felt this rush of creative energy in a long time, and as I delved deeper and deeper into it all, it started seeming like I've been slowly tuning all the skills I needed for this project over the last few years without even knowing it. And even though the game is still very early on in development, I find myself pretty optimistic and excited about where it's all going. Hopefully, there are a few of you out there who will share this enthusiasm.

I want to make a game that responds to you. Where, as you play it, you think to yourself: "Oh, cool. The game is commenting on a choice I made, and taking it into account. Yes this is what I wanted to happen by choosing that back then." On top of that, I want to make a game for the gays. Like, unapologetically for the gays. And as a sex-positive person myself, I wanted to make the game feature sex. The thing with sex in games, I find, is that it tends to be one or the other: either the game is pretty much just porn (which is great if that's what you're in the mood for); or its representation of sex is, well, not very sexy. I wanted to make a game with a rich world and a cool story, and also with hot sex. Again, hopefully some of you have been wanting a game like that as much as I have.

I am planning to post an update to the demo featuring a lot of bug fixes and a redesigned Canticle puzzle (I've been told it's a bit tricky). A list of all the changes will be posted along the update so keep an eye out. Also, four and a half days of your first week at the Lucent Priory (roughly twice the size of the demo) are now available for all tiers on Patreon, so please consider supporting me there, and joining my Discord. We're trying to form a little naughty priory of our own in there.

I guess that's all I wanted to say to start this off. I hope some of you get to read this, and it's not just me in a dark corner of Itch.io from here to eternity. If you've read this far, thank you. I'd love to know what you think of the game and what you'd like to see more of.

Love,
Void