HAPPY NEW YEAR! Thanks everyone for making 2025 amazing for us. Our launch was such a wonderful and encouraging experience. We've got a few small updates coming in the next couple of months <3 #indiegames #visualnovel #otome #datingsim

Clair Obscur does such a good job of having a deeply sad world without the game itself being a bummer. I think the only other game I've played that pulled that off was Crying Suns.

Just pushed a new build live, including a QoL feature for folks who have beaten the game and are doing additional play-throughs. The 'time skip' feature that unlocks when you beat the finale will now also be on in any new games you start, making exploring specific branches easier to get to.

I've been looking forward to this a ton!

We're so very close to the 50-review threshold where Positive can turn into Very Positive. If anyone has played Heartspell and has a minute to post a review today, that would help us so much.

Our launch week (and the launch sale!) end in about an hour! If you'd like to be a part of it for 15% off, now's the time. store.steampowered.com/app/2113350/... #indiegames #otome

There are a lot of hopeful numbers from our launch weekend, but I think my favorite is that our median playtime is over 5 hours. It means a lot to us that folks who check out Heartspell want to stay in that world for so long.

100% this soon after launch is so unexpected! Thanks you for spending so much time in our magical little world.

DRESS UP MY GIRL DRESS UP MY GIRL EEEEEE oh and Constantine too I guess

We have had a GREAT launch weekend! We hit that big 10-review threshold so fast! @britt1st.bsky.social says she'll make alternate Squibbles-stars outfits for Constantine and Lila if we get to 50 by the end of next weekend. #indiegames #sillywizardsports

We've set up a playlist of the soundtrack on YouTube, for anyone who's interested: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Thank you to everyone who's been playing and leaving reviews! It's been an amazing opening weekend. I'm thrilled that we got to ten reviews so quickly! Until you get 10 reviews you won't get shown in various lists and discovery queues and all that. Crossing that threshold quickly is a big relief.

Just pushed a small-but-important patch that does a couple things, but mostly re-adds Force Wave to the spell list of players who are using an older demo save. Hitting the Publish button on a live game is so scary. Thanks to @harlecryptid.bsky.social who showed me that this bug existed.

I'm so overwhelmed by our reception so far! It makes me so happy to look at reviews coming in and to see they're from people who've played for 5 or even 10 hours and the game has only been out for 19. Means the world to me.

We've had an absolutely wonderful launch day! Thank you to everyone who's played the game, spread the word, or left a review. Watching people react to what we've been working on for so long is a delight.

I got so hooked on Heartspell! The narrative pacing is perfect and there's so much thoughtful world building. Meaningful choices, and platonic friendships that are just as compelling as the romance. The minigame that gets (optionally) quite hard! I recommend it, especially for Exocolonist fans.

I'LL BE STREAMING TONIGHT! Heartspell: Horizon Academy from @direkittengames.bsky.social is out & I'm ready to play! I'll be picking up from where I left off in the demo, so we'll be getting back into things & trying to remember characters together! See you at 7:30pm PT!! www.twitch.tv/harlecryptid

Heartspell: Horizon Academy is launched! Sorry for the delay, but we're fully up and running now! SO EXCITED. We'd love to hear what you think, and if anyone starts streaming the full game please let us know here or on Discord so we can join you <3 #indiegames store.steampowered.com/app/2113350/...

Still no word from Steam. Bummed, but hanging in there.

Alright everyone, thanks for sticking with us through a stressful and uncertain week. We'll all find out together whether Heartspell is on sale in eight hours. If it's not, I'm at least feeling reassured that it won't be too terribly long. <3

In celebration of our upcoming launch we added more content to our demo. In addition to polish improvements and bug fixes, we've also added second chapters for both Heron and Cassie (our poll winners). We hope to see you in class when the full game launches! store.steampowered.com/app/3142920/...

After being a real nuisance I've gotten a response from Valve. No idea if we'll be available tomorrow morning like we wanted, but we at least have some clarity that it's being worked on.

Who would you like to see another chapter of in our updated demo? 1️⃣ Lin 2️⃣ Cassie 3️⃣ Ember 📊 Show results

Who would you like to see another chapter of in our updated demo? 1️⃣ Amara 2️⃣ Heron 3️⃣ Charlie 📊 Show results

BlueSky unfortunately does not do polls (right?), but if you'd like to vote on which characters we're going to put a little more content from into our demo, you can do that over on our Threads account.

We're 15 hours out from our planned launch and I've been completely unable to get any sort of communication from Valve all week. We'll probably miss our launch and I'm aggravated about it. Tonight we'll update our demo at least, so everyone who wants to can see the last bits of polish we put in.

always a good day to leave reviews on the games you play

I've been wanting to post excitedly about our upcoming launch, but I haven't because we're stuck in the Steam cert process, which is being slow and opaque this time around. We're still hoping to launch in 42 hours, but there's nothing we can do to influence that at this point. Fingers crossed.

A really lovely intro to Heartspell: Horizon Academy by @direkittengames.bsky.social - you can hear my narration and some of the voice acting! Also featuring the dulcet tones of @meztermind.bsky.social introducing the game beautifully! youtube.com/shorts/EMoD8...

I just pushed our first build with 100% of our VO hooked up and it feels GREAT. Launch is in five days and I absolutely couldn't be more excited. I'm taking the week after that off and my hope is just to obsessively refresh various screens and watch some Twitch streams.

As I near the end of processing all this VO, I'm hitting sections that I love, but are also fairly out of the way. To find them you have to make some odd choices, or play characters in a certain order. They're delightful and I hope some folks find them.

I feel like marketing wants me to make all sorts of grandiose statements about being the best at this or that. All I really want to say is that Heartspell is a thing we really wanted to make and we think it's really special and fun and you might really love it too.

We had an AMAZING time at GeekGirlCon and watching people play that built all weekend gave me that last little bit of confidence to send out access to Steam curators. 10 days to go, fingers crossed. #indiegames #geekgirlcon #steamcurator

Our demo booth is all set up in the gaming hall at #GeekGirlCon!

We're trying to track down a bug I can't reproduce that causes the puzzle game to lock up. If you've hit this in the demo please get in touch so we can get this figured out.

Come see us at GeekGirlCon in Seattle this weekend!

Thank you so very much for taking the time to check out Heartspell! <3

Release management is scary. Every time I push a new build I test all the new features very extensively, but worry constantly that like...I'll have adjusted the volume of one line and as a result no one will like the game anymore.

Our new demo update unlocks the practice arena. This lets you test your spellcasting puzzling skills infinitely AND gives you a little sneak peek of Dawn, our sports werewolf. #indiegames #match3 #puzzles

Our new demo update has three more of Morgan's chapters. Whether you're new to Heartspell or returning for the update, let us know if you're streaming and we'll come hang out and see what you think. #indiegames

Phew, this always makes me nervous, but we've pushed a big new demo update. There are three new Morgan chapters, an infinite practice mode, and all sorts of smaller improvements. Check it out! #indiegames #otome #visualnovels store.steampowered.com/app/3142920/...

We did it, fam.

We're getting set to release our last big pre-launch demo update, which will add three of Morgan's chapters and also unlock the practice arena, so you can cast spells to your heart's content. #indiegames #match3 #playforever

Hey everyone. I haven't been posting much lately and a lot of that is working hard, but also I've been pouring a lot of my time and energy into helping Pooka, who was diagnosed with cancer a couple months ago.

We've been trying so hard to get to 7k and one month out from launch, we're there! Thank you so much to everyone! #indiegames #otome #datingsim #visualnovel #wishlists

Exactly one month until launch! We're hard at work getting everything all buttoned up and polished.

It's an exciting day for me. We've gotten as much feedback as possible and now I'm putting together our final list of last-minute VO requests. Once those go out and get processed, VO in Heartspell will be 100% done for our release!

For anyone curious, it's for the utterly delightful Heartspell: Horizon Academy by @direkittengames.bsky.social There's currently a voiced demo available! store.steampowered.com/app/2113350/...

A new Frontline’s out with @direkittengames.bsky.social I don’t usually cover magical dating sims — if I saw Heartspell on Steam, I’d probably scroll past. But every “fringe” game is someone’s life’s work. www.indieformer.com/p/frontline-...

Early sketch timelapse for Miko the moth fairy 🧚‍♀️ #art #sketch #drawing