Major Announcement: Progress Update + Game Release Update (Patreon)

Hey there, buddies! We’re here to bring you another batch of exciting news and updates about the development of Camp Buddy!

We ask that everyone please take the time to read through this post as it contains a lot of information and answers to the questions that most of you have!

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STORY / SCRIPTWRITING

Story writing has been our main focus for the past few months and continues to be our highest priority. At the time of this posting, Natsumi’s route has been 75% Completed, and is expected to be finished within the first half of August 2018. Some of you might wonder why it’s taken us so long, and we want to assure you that the only reason we take so much time on the story is for us to ensure that the plot flows smoothly, as well as to give you all a deep and solid connection with each of the characters. When you’re playing Camp Buddy, we want you to really get to know and learn about each of the campers and staff and get really invested in their stories!

To give you an idea of what we mean, one character’s story arc in Camp Buddy is longer than the entire story of 'Bacchikoi' on its own! This should show everyone how much time and effort has been put into each character, and how well you’ll get to know them!

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PROGRAMMING

Most of you have followed our programmer, Jey’s, progress on Twitter, but you’ll be happy to know that Hunter’s route’s coding has been 80% completed and is expected to be finished within the next week! As soon as Hunter’s route is completely coded, Jey will move onto coding Natsumi’s route to ensure that it’s ready to go in time for release!

Some of you may be wondering if Natsumi’s route will be completed in time, since each route has taken about a month and a half so far to code, but we can assure you that Natsumi’s route will be coded faster! The past few months, Jey has been working with us to complete the story, as well as managing other various project tasks, but now that his job is solely on programming, he can zoom through quicker than before!

In addition, to assist Jey, we’ve actually hired a new programmer, Corbs! Corbs joined the team in early July and has been a huge help in finalizing the Foreplay Minigame, Beta testing, and designing and coding our Journal Minigame from scratch! With him and Jey working together, we’re positive that programming will be completed in a timely manner!

In the meantime, check out a short gif below of the Journal Minigame – we think it’s really cool!

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ART

Mikkoukun and Zael have continued to work on the remaining art workload and have made fantastic progress drafting and beginning line work on sprite costumes, CG scenes and Sex Scenes that have yet to be revealed! We’ll tease you with another preview for an in-game SX scene that’s not been seen before, but we can’t show too much! We don’t want to spoil anything before you get to play!

Mikkoukun has also spent some time to finalize the remaining backgrounds in game! You’ll see that some of these backgrounds are character-route exclusive, while some appear all throughout the camp! Here’s a preview of a few of them for you~

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ANIMATION

CG Scene Animation

After overwhelming support for adding animation back into the game, we have decided to include it in the final product! Our Animation Team consists of two new team members, Sorashu, our Animation Director, and Ziel, an additional animator who is supporting Sorashu! They have been working hard to streamline the animation process and have managed to make the animations lighter so that they run easier in-game, as well as making them look even better than before! Take a look below to see some samples of the animation in action!

The final product of Camp Buddy will consist of 41 Animated Sex Scenes, with 1 in Arc 1 and 10 per each character route. That’s a lot of animation! However this count does not determine the total amount of CGs and Sex CGs in the game, as there are also some non-animated scenes.

If you prefer the traditional, non-animated versions of the animated sex scenes, it will still be included in the gallery for you to view!

Opening Video Animation

We're also glad to announce the the opening video animation has been fully completed by Howl! We will publish it as soon as the development team completes the game and enters its promotional period! 

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VOICE ACTING

In addition, we are pleased to announce that the voice acting has been progressing smoother now thanks to our Voice Acting Director, Kiba Walker! Also known as the voice of our main protagonist, Keitaro as well as Scoutmaster Yoshinori we have decided to delegate this process to him to ensure that all of our characters' voices - played by our dedicated cast members - reflect all of our directions and themes to Camp Buddy's highest standard; as well as give the core team more time to do their respective tasks!

As for the current status of this developmental aspect: 

• Hiro and Yoichi's voice actor has been recasted to "Shouta-Sensei". Please be informed that the previous voice actor is no longer affiliated with Camp Buddy.
• Hiro's route voice acting is expected to complete by the 1st week of August 2018, to be followed by Yoichi's route voice acting!

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TAIGA’S ROUTE

Some of you may be wondering why we’ve kept on discussing Hiro, Yoichi, Hunter and Natsumi’s route, but neglected to mention Taiga’s route. This has been based on a decision by the team that, in the timeframe we have left, we cannot complete Taiga’s route to be a part of the initial release of Camp Buddy. 

However, don’t panic! Taiga’s route will still be included in the core game and will not be pushed to the expansion route! We plan to release Taiga’s route as a FREE DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT for everyone who has purchased (and were entitled to a free copy of) Camp Buddy (Initial Release) as soon as his route is completed in development.

Once Taiga's route has been completed, the initial release of the game will pulled out from our store replacing it with the full version of the game, including the four main routes and Taiga as a secret route.

We want to apologize to everyone for this delay, but to ensure that Taiga’s route is up to the same standard that all the other character arcs are, we feel that we need this extra time to complete his story. Thank you all for your understanding, and we promise to deliver news about him as soon as we release the main story!

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ABOUT THE TEAM

BLits is now a team, who work 10-14 hours a day and 7 days a week to make sure the game development always moves forward, and below is the distribution of the workload:

Mikkoukun + Zael (Zamius)

• Storywriting (Plot / Dialogues)
• Scriptwriting for Programmer (Used for Coding)
• Art (CGs, Sprites, Backgrounds)
• Animation Assets
• Interface Design
• Overall Quality Control

Jey

• Coding / Programming and Beta Testing 
• Programming Management
• Storywriting (Plot)
• Customer Service

Wade

• Storywriting (Plot / Dialogues) 
• Proofreading
• Outsourcing Management
• Customer Service

PooDay

• Sprite and Voice Cue Placement
• Merchandise / Physical Items Production

Corbs

• Coding/Programming and Beta Testing
• Proofreading

Sorashu

• Animation Direction & Animation

Ziel

• Animation

KitHawking

• FX Scene Art

Hailace

• Technical Work (Cue Prepwork)

Kiba Walker

• Voice Acting Management

Kenta

• Website Management

Outsource (Commissioned Contributors)

• Voice Acting
• Music
• Sound Effects
• Opening Animation
• Accounting
• Supervision

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WHEN IS THE NEXT UPDATE?

We'd just like to inform everyone that our next major update will be released on the last week of August 2018 for everyone to see! So, stay tuned for any news prior to game's final release and everything you need to know about it next during that period. Thank you! 

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WHEN IS THE RELEASE DATE?

The question that we’re sure you all want to know if when are we actually releasing Camp Buddy! Back in our May major update, we announced that we plan on releasing the game in August of 2018, which is just a few days away. Our team has been working around the clock every day to try and meet this goal and have currently laid out a schedule to try and ensure that the release of Camp Buddy will be on or most likely later than August 31, 2018. 

We are trying our hardest to make this release date, however if complications arise, we want to let everyone know that it is highly possible that the game will be pushed to a September 2018 release. We apologize once again for the possibility of this delay, but we want to assure everyone that the game is really nearing completion! We will have it out for everyone very soon, and we can’t wait to let you play! 

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A GIFT FROM US TO YOU

When we first started the Camp Buddy Campaign back in September of 2016, we had no idea that it would gain this much love and support. We are so happy to have so many supporting and caring fans who constantly provide us with words of encouragement and support, as well as backing us financially to ensure that the project is completed to its best ability.

Originally, we announced that only Pledgers from the original Campaign of Camp Buddy, which took place from October 2016 through June of 2017, would be eligible for a copy of the game.  However, we have decided that in order to say thanks to everyone who has pledged over the following months after the initial campaign, we will be giving ALL PATRONS  (including previous patrons) who have achieved a cumulative pledge of 50 USD or more (between October 2016-August 2018) a FREE, DIGITAL COPY of the game on release. This digital copy will also be eligible for the Taiga Route downloadable content on release as well. 

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CLOSING MESSAGE

Thank you very much for reading through this announcement, and we hope that we answered many of your questions!

If you may have any other inquiry, please refer to our updated FAQ section for more details:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/19016502

Once again, thank you so much for all of your constant support and love, and we really hope you can continue to be patient with us on these last few weeks before the release! We are so close to achieving our goal, and we can’t wait to share our hard work with all of you!

Lots of love <3,

-BLits Team