May 31

Hell is Us - Nacon

Remi’s return was never meant to be triumphant. His homeland is a fractured, haunted place—one that never truly let him go. And something lingers in the ruins, waiting.

He was only five years old when his mother smuggled him out of Hadea, a nation closed off from the world. No one was allowed in or out. But she made a choice—one that condemned her son to a life of questions. He understands why she did it. He knows she wanted him to have a better life, beyond the suffocating isolation of Hadea. But that knowledge does nothing to quiet the trauma of having been left behind.
He does not seek justice. He does not seek redemption. He seeks them. The parents who abandoned him. The nation that erased him. He needs to confront them.
Now, decades later, he has finally found his way back.

A Man Defined by What’s Missing

Remi grew up in Canada’s foster system, raised by strangers in a land that never truly felt like his own. All he carried from his past were the name of his birthplace—Jova—and the fact that his father was the village blacksmith. That, and a strange necklace he’s always kept with him.

When Remi joined the ON Peacekeeping Forces, it wasn’t out of duty, but as a means to an end. When Hadea plunged into civil war, he saw an opportunity—a chance to cross the border under the guise of a humanitarian mission. As the operation was being shut down, he deserted his post to slip into the country before the window closed.

The land he once belonged to should have been war-torn, divided by conflict. But what he finds is something far worse—something that defies all logic. The civil war he expected has been swallowed by a force he cannot explain. Each step he takes uncovers fragments of a past he was once part of — pieces of a story he was not aware of, now staring back at him through the wreckage. But understanding what happened here comes at a cost, and the deeper he digs, the more he realizes that the truth may be far more terrifying than he ever imagined. Yet, he cannot turn back—he has spent his entire life chasing it.

A World That Demands More Than Survival

The world of Hell is Us is not just a backdrop—it is a test. There are no clear answers, no simple threats, only the brutal demand to adapt or perish.
Remi’s only tools are a set of mysterious weapons—whose origin is as enigmatic as the forces he must face—a resourceful drone named KAPI, and a datapad. They’ll prove useful, but the answers he’s looking for… he’ll have to find on his own.

The Weight of Isolation

Remi won’t be handed the answers he seeks. If he wants to understand what happened here, he’ll have to search for clues—scattered across the land, buried in ruins, and hinted at in the words and actions of those he meets. Some may help him, but no one will offer up the truth for free. In these troubled times, everyone has their own burdens, and their willingness to assist may depend on what he can do for them.

You must read the world itself—follow the remnants left behind by those who came before, listen for the unnatural silence that signals danger, and decide whether to push forward or turn back. Every discovery is earned, and every mistake is yours alone.
Remi’s journey isn’t just about surviving what lies ahead—it’s about confronting what’s always been missing. The civil war may have reshaped Hadea, but for him, the real wound was inflicted long before the conflict began.

What if the truth he’s been seeking is worse than not knowing?

We’ve only scratched the surface of Remi’s journey. In the coming months, we will reveal more about his past, the dangers he will face, and the choices that will define him.
But in a world where the truth has been buried under centuries of silence, will understanding be enough?

Follow us on our Social Medias and prepare for what lies ahead. The answers are coming—but so is something else.
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May 31

Early Access Launch Feedback and Upcoming Updates

Garden of Witches - Team Tapas

Greetings from Team Tapas!

First of all, we’d like to thank you for supporting and playing Garden of Witches’ Early Access release. Your many comments, reviews, and words of encouragement have been a tremendous source of strength for us.

Since the Early Access launch last week, we have been fixing critical bugs based on your feedback while also carefully reviewing every piece of feedback you have given us. There’s a lot to take in, but we’ve had extensive discussions about how to improve the game and the direction of our future updates.

Today, we’d like to share a brief summary of all the patches we’ve done during the past week as well as some of the feedback and issues we have collected. Then, we’ll talk about the upcoming updates we have planned.

Patch Notes 0.5.0_b102

As a rule, we usually share patch notes via announcements whenever there is an update to our game. However, due to the urgency of some bugs, we rolled out a few updates in advance. We apologize for the delay in sharing the patch notes, but in the future, we will make sure to announce patch notes in a timely manner.

Here are fixes included in this update:

Fixed an issue where sound effects would not play after the ending of the final chapter.
Fixed an issue where players could acquire more than four scissor attributes under certain conditions.
Fixed an issue where after obtaining the Cracked Swan Doll relic, tags removed by choosing the Crying Ouija Board could still appear as selectable attributes with the Sewing Kit relic.
Fixed an issue with the endgame content score tracker where the most recent score was displayed instead of the highest score.
Fixed an issue in Chapter 1 where rewatching the ending scene would result in only being able to fast-forward the cutscene instead of allowing the player to skip it.
Fixed an issue where if the player moved to another chapter before clearing Chapter 5 and then cleared that other chapter, then they would not be able to return to the chapter they were originally on.

Known Issues

The following issues have been confirmed and reproduced by the dev team, but they require additional time to resolve. We are doing our best to identify the causes and to fix them as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Some relics do not function according to the values in their descriptions.
The mouse cursor does not disappear during gameplay under certain conditions.
There are long loading times when entering a combat zone for the first time after launching the game.
FPS drops during some boss fights, especially with Nahatra (including the second phase).
- We have identified some optimization-related issues and are currently working on them.
- We plan on releasing a public beta build to test these fixes, so we would greatly appreciate your participation!
Players occasionally get stuck in walls when using the Ambush skill.
Enemies sometimes get stuck on objects and are unable to move.
Abnormal angles appearing in the grid pattern of one of Nahatra’s attacks.
Various graphical, animation, and visual effect issues.
Various translation errors.

Issues We're Looking Into

The following issues are issues the dev team has not been able to reproduce yet. If you could share more detailed information via Discord, we will do our best to resolve them as quickly as possible.

Dash does not activate when attempting to dash while pressing the up and left buttons.
Nintendo Switch Pro Controller is not recognized properly.
Buttons on the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller are assigned incorrectly.
The skip button does not work during the credits scene after the ending.
In rare cases, save data becomes corrupted and prevents gameplay.
Blood Clot amount does not increase even after acquiring a Blood Clot.

Confirmed User Feedback

Based on the feedback we’ve received so far, although there are several areas that need improvement, we believe the game has generally received positive responses.

Many of the features we tested internally and deliberated upon are functioning as intended. However, we acknowledge that there are shortcomings with content volume, difficulty balance, visual clarity, and UX, which we may have overlooked or underdeveloped.

Below are the issues we’ve identified based on user feedback.

Chapter 1

Although Chapter 1 may feel somewhat easy, we believe it plays an important role in allowing players to quickly immerse themselves in the game and story while enjoying the basic progression system. However, many users pointed out that Sil’s initial movement and attack speeds felt too slow during their first playthrough.

We intentionally set the stats lower to create a clear sense of improvement when players experience their first death and upgrade their stats in Sil’s house. That said, this design choice might give the impression that the tempo of the game’s combat is slow, which we think is problematic.

Chapter 2

This chapter introduces the Synergy System, a core element of the game, and it has generally received positive feedback. However, there is a noticeable lack of explanation regarding map rewards and the effects of various attributes.

Chapter 3

In Chapter 3, enemy HP is significantly higher than in Chapter 2. This results in longer progression times, which may cause the pacing to feel slow or tedious depending on the player’s build and playstyle. We think this is a problem.

Furthermore, from Chapter 3 onwards, the performance gap between strong and weak builds becomes much more pronounced. During development, we balanced enemy HP based on high-performing builds, which seems to have caused the overall difficulty to skew too high for those using weaker builds.

However, the core issue we are looking at is how to help players understand which builds are possible and how each system works. Players often lack a clear understanding of how to optimize their build, leading to trial-and-error without a clear goal. We’d like to provide a better learning process to make the trial-and-error process less frustrating and more clear.

Relics also offer relatively limited variations to builds.

Chapter 4

Compared to Chapter 3, the increase in difficulty appears to be reasonably tuned in terms of raw stats. However, some boss patterns were set to be too aggressive, and we’ve received feedback that certain boss patterns or mechanics felt overly difficult to learn or react to.

In particular, the second phase of the final boss relies heavily on pattern memorization rather than reflexive reaction, making it more difficult to master. While we believe a certain level of challenge is appropriate for the final boss, the current learning curve seems to be unnecessarily high.

Boss Pattern Difficulty

We’ve received frequent feedback stating that Sil’s movement speed is too slow, that the dash cooldowns are too long, and that melee builds feel underwhelming. We believe these issues largely stem from boss patterns being too difficult to learn and being unfavorable for close-range combat.

Our dev team aimed to maintain a balanced ratio between patterns that players could react to in real time and patterns that required repeated attempts to learn. However, we recognize that this balance may need to be re-evaluated more carefully.

We designed the current version of the UI with a temporary layout that was easy to modify and expand. Throughout the Early Access period, we plan to fix various UI-related issues, refine the system, and gradually improve the interface.

By the time the full release comes around, we intend to enhance the visual design and add more detailed effects to polish the UI.

Other Feedback

The following issues are issues we are aware of and issues that we are planning to address gradually throughout Early Access. We will continue to make improvements based on your feedback.

Balance between spells, relics, scissor types, and dual synergies.
The impactful feel of hitting enemies and getting hit
Visibility issues with area-based attacks
Repetitiveness in maps and regular monster encounters
Limited overall content volume
Lack of story content or side content
Lack of build diversity
Need for controller vibration and key remapping options
Lack of a post-game summary screen or access to past play records
Need for a true “skip” function instead of just fast-forwarding through story scenes

Summer Update

Among the issues we shared above, we consider the lack of content volume to be our highest priority to address.

Below is a brief sketch of how we plan to expand the game’s content.

We are currently aiming for a summer update that coincides with the Steam Summer Sale starting June 23 June 26 (edited). Since there isn’t much time left, we’re not sure how much we can get done, but we’ll do our best to deliver a solid update.

If we are short on time, we may release only a part of the update or push the schedule back slightly. We will share the development progress with you along the way to gather your ideas and to better identify what needs improvement.

Epilogue Chapter 1
- A new story featuring a different witch set far in the future from Chapter 5
- A new gameplay style with its own rules
- A simple progression system that only affects this chapter
New Skills and More Scissors
- Through the epilogue, a new ability will be unlocked that uses a new button (Keyboard: shift / Gamepad: RB)
- We plan on adding 3 new skills that players will be able to choose from, similar to how skills and attributes are currently selected.
- New scissors tied to these skills will also be added.
Side Missions
- We plan on adding about 10 side missions that can be attempted at any time while progressing through the main story.
- These missions will be simple challenges that require understanding the game’s core mechanics and will have accompanying rewards for clearing them.
- For example:
  - Chapter 2: Missions to practice the Counterattack skill or to learn certain mechanics like thread + charge, HP management, and Butterfly Step.
  - Chapter 3: Missions that hint at powerful builds
  - Chapter 4: Missions that make use of different scissors.
- Note: These will not be simple tutorials but engaging challenges with meaningful goals and rewards.
Balance Updates (for boss patterns and overall difficulty)

Upcoming Plans

Full Release

The full release will take place after a sufficient amount of content has been added. We are tentatively aiming for the Winter Sale at the end of this year at the earliest, but given the small size of our team (of about 6-7 people), there’s a high chance we may not meet that target.

That said, our top priority is to deliver a satisfying amount of content and quality rather than rushing to meet a deadline. Steam-related features such as Achievements and Trading Cards will also be added at the time of the full release.

Additional Epilogue Chapters

In addition to the epilogue chapter planned for the Summer Update, we also plan to add another chapter around autumn. By the time of the full release, we aim to have at least three epilogue chapters, each with a unique gameplay system.

However, we currently lack strong ideas for entirely new gameplay mechanics. If you have fun or interesting ideas for epilogue chapters, please feel free to share them through our Discord community or other channels!

New Scissors, Skills, and More

We will introduce new scissors and skills among other things through the new epilogue chapters.

Currently, some new scissors are being tested. As for new spells, it’s been a challenge to design entirely new mechanics that are distinct from our existing spell lineup, especially considering the need to align them with existing synergies and attributes. Because of this, it may be difficult to add new spells.

Instead, we aim to provide a more engaging gameplay experience by introducing a new skill button in the upcoming Summer Update.

Outfit Customization System

We are planning to add a system where players can unlock various outfits and dress Sil with their preferred outfit of choice. You’ll be able to unlock outfits through various gameplay features like Challenge Mode and Side Missions.

Challenge Mode

A full-featured Challenge Mode is scheduled to be added at the time of the official release. We aim to design enjoyable challenges that utilize the playstyles from both the main chapters and epilogue chapters.

※ Note:
The Challenge Mode currently in the Early Access version was added as a temporary feature for some of our short-term goals such as testing various difficulties.

It will be removed later. So records from the Early Access will not apply to Steam Achievements or platform milestones in the future. However, for those who have already achieved high scores, we may create a legacy records scoreboard for viewing.

Additional Platforms

We plan to release the mobile version (Android, iOS) of Garden of Witches after its full release on Steam. It will be a paid app with no ads or in-app purchases. The price is yet to be determined but will be decided based on the pricing models of similar games.

We’re also preparing for console releases (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation) shortly after the full Steam release.

Support for Linux and macOS is also under consideration. However, since we have no prior experience with porting to consoles or other OS platforms, we cannot yet be certain how smoothly this will go. We will share more details once we’ve conducted further research.

Discount Policy

We plan to participate in all major Steam sale events. Until the full release, discounts will be capped at 20% unless Steam offers a special promotion. The OST bundle pack will likely continue to be available at a 10% discount as well assuming no issues arise.

Voiceovers & Dubbing

We are currently prioritizing Korean and Japanese voiceovers and considering English dubbing. We are especially interested in English voiceovers, as it seems well-suited to the game’s atmosphere.

However, due to cost concerns and the fact that this is our first attempt at implementing voiceovers, we anticipate some trial and error. So we cannot commit to it yet. If things work out, we may consider running a crowdfunding campaign alongside selling physical merchandise (goods) to help fund adding this feature to our game.

Closing Remarks

There are still many things we couldn’t cover in this announcement, but please know that we are carefully reading through all of your feedback. We would like to sincerely thank all of you who have sent us your many thoughts and suggestions.

As this is our very first attempt at developing a PC game, we are putting in our utmost effort to create something truly enjoyable, and we hope to continue receiving your valuable feedback.

Thank you again, and see you again in our next announcement!

※ Edited on 25.06.02
Originally, we said the Steam Summer Sale started on June 23, but the actual date is June 26.

May 31

Chibi Update! ...and quite a bit more!

Fantasy Waifu Collector - SyKoHPaTh

Developer Note:
This month focused on completing the remaining tasks from "Art Redo Phase 1", which focused on the Storybook Portrait characters. After a bit of testing using the redone in-game models alongside the old portraits, well, it didn't look great. Efforts were then redirected into redoing the Goddess of Dragons in-game model, and ya know what? I did a great job with her! I also completed some very much overdue older tasks of completing the Demon King art, adding the "Deew" monster, as well as redoing the art for the Goblin. Then of course the big thing (for me hah) was remaking the Chibi art. I decided to create an entire new system to handle these; using an "old-school" pixel-art style, I was able to quickly make the art and functionality which results in a much more visually pleasing result over the old "scary style" models. My intention is to use them in places where a large number of Waifus (more than 5 on-screen), because not only are they less resource intensive, but the simpler models cause less chaos on the screen. Less is more! Compared to the "Art Update" all of this work wasn't nearly as stressful.
Since I was able to have some time to knock out smaller tasks, I also took time to rethink how the Guild-vs-Guild mode should work. I believe I arrived at a good solution, but of course, testing and feedback will be important here. At worst, it's another method for the player to "get more stuff" via rewards. On the note of rewards, I decided to go ahead and make "Events" work in Offline mode as well. Since Events are basically just a leaderboard, it was easy to make it so that it just stores the player's "high score"; it gives the player something to work towards, as well as again - another method to earn rewards from the event itself (depending on event!). Of course, the nature of Online mode offers extra rewards based on the final scores with the weekly resets, so that method stays the same.

Bugs:

Fix 2 crashes for new Online accounts (Steam connecting to server for 1st time to setup account)
WSurvivor: Fix crash in crystal store
WSurvivor: Fix 'Revive' to actually set flag to true
WSurvivor: Minimum move speed is now 1
Character Details: Fix crash due to corrupted inventory (please send Bug Report if inventory is reset!)
Actually did the math, adjusted existing Clothing Package unlock price to 2000 Crystals each ($20USD value)
- Aim is $20USD for minimum 6 pieces per package
Fix crash when failing a quest (#PlayerSkillIssue)
Added better handling and reporting of file load issues; writes to error.log instead of crashing for most issues
Bag of Crystals changed to give 10 to 50 Crystals when used
Create Guild: Check if player has 1000 Crystals
Ambassador Input Fields: Silenced the spamming sfx
Prevent access to the Arena while in Offline mode
Fix joystick overriding keyboard movement when there isn't a joystick
Added missing Chibi skins for Solar/Spirit

New:

Controller mapping for Quests and Magic Cat Training
Animated Chibis! These are pixel-art representations of the characters
Added Chibis to Townbuilder; they prefer to walk on roads!
Added control-direction glyph to Waifu Tuber for clearer clothing that is selected
Added probability descriptions to Gacha Banners
Reduced Warband difficulty scaling; outer edges lowered to level 1, but Demon King's Castle remains level 200
Magic Cat "Training": Added "Autofill" button, which kinda-smartly picks the best choices to use for "training"
Art: Increase size of boxing gloves slightly
Added mouths: Owl, Tiny
Added proper art for the Demon King!
Redid the art for the Goddess of Dragons! (Art Redo Phase 1 complete!)
Storybook: Replaced "portrait" art with in-game models
Event World Boss: Rearranged appearance to loosely follow appearance in Story
Added new bosses to Waifu Survivor: Divine Dragon and Demon King
WSurvivor: Changed boss appearance ordering to loosely follow Story
Added Guild vs Guild; Matchups refresh every day with one daily attempt. Resets monthly. Daily & Monthly rewards!
Added Monster: Deew
Added proper art for Monster: Goblin (finally!)
Warbands: Added Demon King's Army to actually guard the castle
Added Keyboard controls to Gathering (default: arrow keys); Better cursor movement with joystick
Settings: "Server" only changeable if logged out (on title screen)
Reduced World boss ticket to 1 maximum attempt per day
Enabled Stadium (Events) to work with Offline mode; Compete with...yourself!? Cost-items are not used when Offline.
Rewards summary displayed after an Event
Waifu Tuber now rewards Currency (value is "Donations" in the minigame)