Parting ways with Shiisanmei & Lionheart

Hello all,

We find ourselves in the sad situation where we have to announce we’ll be parting ways with developer Shiisanmei and removing Lionheart from our catalogue.

To only give the most general summary of the reason behind this decision within the bounds of general confidentiality, the developer seems to have had unrealistic expectations for the Steam release of Lionheart, which coincided with personal issues we weren’t aware of, and that has led them to harass our staff incessantly to a degree where they’ve had to take sick leaves due to stress. This has been a continuous strain on our entire company for the past 2 years, and while we’ve hoped for the situation to improve over time, their behavior has only grown more aggressive instead, to a point where we simply cannot condone their actions.

We’ve long tried to find a peaceful way to solve the situation, or at least peacefully detach ourselves from the developer without any drama, but unfortunately even this has turned out impossible. Since we have contractual obligations to our partners, we found that the only way we can secure the well-being of our employees is to cut off ties with the developer altogether.

I now regret we didn’t take this step sooner, since the signs were there already before the release of the game, when the contacts from developer side started to turn increasingly bizarre.

I dislike unnecessary drama and I would’ve been happy to not make this post, but as the developer has (not unexpectedly) now begun slandering us in public, it’s unfortunately impossible to say nothing. However, we are still bound by confidentiality, so what we can say is limited in scope. Please accept this as the bare minimum statement from our side.

Lionheart will be permanently discontinued from our distributors after February 11. It can be purchased for -90% off on Steam and Fruitbat Factory store until January 21, so if you wish to add it to your collection, we encourage you to do so now.

I’d like to stress that Lionheart is a fun game that we’ve spent months and months polishing, so I can only hope these news won’t spoil your enjoyment of it.

We wish Shiisanmei all the best in their future endeavors.

-Jakke Elonen
President of Fruitbat Factory

みなさま、こんにちは。

今回は、開発者の十三妹様とお別れし、Lionheartを弊社のカタログから削除しなくてはならない状況なってしまったという悲しいお知らせです。

この決断に至った背景を守秘義務の範囲内でご説明いたしますと、開発者様側がSteam上でのリリースに現実的ではない期待を抱いてしまっていたということと、私達の知らなかった個人的な問題が重なり、結果的に弊社の社員に対し絶え間なく嫌がらせ行為を行い、精神的苦痛のため休職しなくてはならない状態に追い込んでしまうということが起きてしまったからです。

過去2年間、このことが会社全体に継続的な負担となっており、時間とともに状況が改善されていくことを望んでいましたが、希望とは裏腹に容認できない程度までその行動が悪化してしまうという事態となってしまいました。

長い間に渡り、この状況を平和的に解決するための方法を探し、少なくとも何の問題もなく開発者様から身を引くことを試みてきましたが、それさえも不可能になってしまったことを大変残念に思います。私たちはパートナー様に対して契約上の義務を負っているので、弊社従業員の安全を確保する唯一の方法は開発者様との関係を完全に遮断することであるとの判断を下しました。

今では、ゲームのリリース前にも開発者様側から奇妙な連絡があったり等、すでにその兆候があったにも関わらず、なぜもっと早い段階で今回のような決断をくださなかったのか非常に後悔をしています。

私としても不必要な争いや、今回のような投稿はしたくなかったのですが、予想外にも開発者様が公に弊社を誹謗中傷し始めているので、これ以上黙って見ているわけにはいかなくなった次第です。しかしながらまだ契約上、守秘義務がありますので、私から今回申し上げられたことは本当に最小限のことであるということを理解していただけると幸いです。

Lionheartは2月11日以降、永久に販売中止となります。1月21日までSteamとフルーツバットファクトリーストアで90%オフで購入できますので、今のうちに購入しておくことをお勧めします。

最後にLionheartは何ヶ月もかけて磨きあげた楽しいゲームであることを強調したいと思います。今回のニュースがその楽しさを損ねてしまわないことを心から願っています。

十三妹様の今後のご活躍を心からお祈り致しております。

フルーツバットファクトリー代表

ヤッケ エロネン

Status Update

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since our last post where we talk about the status of our various projects. Since we have an extraordinary amount of games in the works at the moment, I figured it’d be good to give a bit of an update on them all.
So if that interests you, buckle up and read on.

100% Orange Juice
100orange
I’ll start with a game that’s not coming out any time soon. In fact, it’s been out for 3 years now. Still, it’s our best-selling title, and we’re constantly working to keep improving it, so it feels natural to talk about it first.

We employ a full-time programmer, and most of his time goes to developing 100% Orange Juice, it being the most technically demanding of our games. Over the months and years we’ve kept improving the infrastructure of the game to the point that if you watch the Steam trailer for it now, you’d be hard pressed to find a single detail that hasn’t changed in some way since making the trailer (and yes, we have a new trailer in the works!).

The latest major undertaking was changing the rendering of the game so that almost every text in the game is now stored as plain text instead of graphics, allowing us to support multiple languages in a rapidly changing game. It was the wish of Orange Juice to add support for Japanese, and with the most recent update, we can now also support any number of custom languages. It’s cool to see many people working to translate 100% Orange Juice into their native language!

On our recent trip to Japan, we sat down for a good chat with Orange Juice about the game’s current development, and the things we’d like to do with it in the future. It was heartening how they were completely on board with all of them, so we have a ton of exciting news in store for 100% Orange Juice in the coming winter. A keen observer may have observed some spoilers for some of them on the Internet already, but we also have some ideas that we’re confident will surprise everyone.
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Moving onto our upcoming releases…

ENIGMA:
enigma
Although our background in the industry comes strongly from visual novel translation, Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish was the first pure visual novel we released as a company (putting aside the two 99 Spirits fan disc stories). However, it won’t be the only one. With all likelihood the next one will be Uzumeya’s mysterious fantasy ENIGMA:, which has an interesting narration style and tons of endings.

The translation, courtesy of Conjueror, is now at 100%, and the game is moving into editing. The project’s slated for release this winter, either late this year or early next year.

Lionheart
lionheart
This cool new RPG comes from Shiisanmei, and is packed full of cute character art and tongue-in-cheek humor. As a fairly massive RPG, there’s a lot to QA in Lionheart, and I can foresee that process taking a while.

Translation itself is at 95%, and same for editing. What remains is mostly combat data. Although it’s possible we’ll be able to release the game this year, it’s more likely to happen early next year, since playtesting is expected to take some time.

Miniature Garden
miniature-garden
Translation is now beginning on Muzintou’s dark mystery visual novel Miniature Garden. Not much else to say about it yet, but look forward to the finished game! The production values (including Korie Riko‘s art and the top of the line anime voice actors) are pretty amazing. We’re aiming for a release around Spring 2017.

Dungeon Girl
dungeon-girl
Inu to Neko is a hard-line developer who’s been making gameplay-heavy games for well over ten years, a major feat in itself. Dungeon Girl is our first release from them, and we’re looking forward to bringing many new fans to the game universe. Did you know that all Inu to Neko games share the same world and many characters? Working on Dungeon Girl has been fun so far, and there’s a ton of depth to the gameplay mechanics.

Translation of Dungeon Girl is currently at 78%, and editing at 72%.

Acceleration of SUGURI 2
aos2
We had a slightly unusual reveal for Acceleration of SUGURI 2 this summer, and one that was a ton of fun for us. Since then, we’ve received countless requests for status updates. Well, I’m happy to say that the translation and editing of AoS2 is 100% complete. However, the biggest challenge we’re tackling for its release is programming, since we want to handle its multiplayer right. As with 100% Orange Juice and 200% Mixed Juice, we plan to support Steam lobbies and possibly add some extra multiplayer features.

We will start the Steam programming shortly, but it will likely take several months, so I can almost guarantee it’s not coming out in 2016.

Seven Days
seven-days
While not really an ongoing project on our part, those who follow our social media, or visited our booth at Tokyo Game Show, saw us promoting LIFE0‘s upcoming visual novel, Seven Days, and made the correct assumption that we have the rights to an English release.

Seven Days is currently raising funding on CAMPFIRE, a Japanese crowdfunding platform, and has so far raised a hefty 4.2 million yen out of its 2 million goal. There’s still a few days left if you want to support it, though please note that CAMPFIRE is for Japanese users only. We are also co-funding the game’s production, so naturally our expectations are high.

Seven Days is coming out in late 2017 and we’ll have more updates and an official reveal closer to that time.

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…And more?
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That’s the end of this status update. You should take any release estimates with a grain of salt, as you may note that we don’t list an actual release date for any of them yet. There’s always a chance that some aspect of a game takes longer than expected, or that we run into an unforeseen issue somewhere along the way. Or conversely, we may finish our work on a game a month earlier than initially estimated. That’s why we avoid committing to any dates until a game is virtually ready to release, and the estimates you see here are just that, rough estimates.

Tokyo Game Show 2016 Guest Schedule

Hello everyone!
With Tokyo Game Show 2016 (September 15-18.) rapidly approaching, we’re happy to announce the final list of guest appearances at our booth. The full list of guests includes Yakiniku Banzai, Orange Juice, LIFE0, Tazigen Clock, Inu to Neko, Muzintou and Shiisanmei!

timetable

You can meet representatives of the circles at our booth, 7-N01 at the above times. Our star guest, Poppo, will also be giving signatures whenever she’s not out and about.

Poppo_TGS

We also have some super limited badges from various games available at our booth, for those quick enough to visit us each day.

TGS Badges

Hope to see you there!