solarProtag Art and Games

Hi I'm Solara/Sol! I'm an illustrator and indie game dev who likes OCs, visual novels, and making VNs of my OCs! Itchio Steam More Links

[solsdevblog]

June 2026 Devblog

Hello everyone!

It's time for another devblog, and there's a bit to cover this month so let's hop right in!

Battle Live Releases this Month!

My next game — Battle Live! The Idol School Collection — releases this month on the 26th! To hype up the release I've updated the Steam page with its brand new trailer! You can check out my hard work on the page itself (and be sure to wishlist it to show your support if you haven't yet already!)

Battle Live! The Idol School Collection on Steam

Welcome to Pride Park! Experience six main stories and several bonus stories centered around the staff and students of this eclectic idol sc

On that note, I'd like to remind everyone that two weeks before the game's release (starting on June 12th) I'll be putting the artbook of the original versions of Battle Live on sale, so that anyone who wants it can grab a copy for cheaper (and also grab the games while they're at it). Once that sale has ended, it and the original five games will be permanently archived.

If you've bought the artbook or donated to any of the games before then you'll still be able to access them through your Itchio library later. The remaster will be the intended way of experiencing the Battle Live games after this, so I hope everyone can understand and support this decision.

It still feels unreal that I'm releasing a remaster of my first few games, but I'm really excited to share it with everyone this month.

Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter Steam Release and DLC

If you didn't see my announcement at the beginning of May, my 2025 Yaoi Game Jam entry — Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter — is getting a Steam release, touch-up update, and a brand new paid DLC story!

Currently it's in a solid late beta, and just needs finished artwork and a few more rounds of editing before it's complete. If you're interested in seeing an early preview of it, you can join my Patreon to read the behind-the-scenes post I made in April about it.

There isn't a concrete release date for all of this yet, but keep an eye out during September to November, as that's the rough timeframe of when I'm aiming to make it public. In the meantime, you can check out the Steam page and wishlist it here!

Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter on Steam

A romantic, fantasy slice-of-life visual novel about Emile Mayer — the owner of A Slice of Comfort bakery in the Kingdom of Selias — when th

Upcoming Sales and Deals

Moving right along to another major topic for these next two months: the sales and deals my games will be a part of!

First in the list is the Power of Pride Bundle over on Itchio! The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not was accepted into it, so you'll be able to grab it and a bunch of other fantastic LGBTQ+ projects in both tiers ($60 or pay-what-you-want) of the bundle from June 1st to July 6th. Thank you again to the team who worked their butts off organizing this bundle, I'm honored to be a part of it.

Over on Steam, later this month Forget Me Not and Battle Live will be part of the Games for Pride sale hosted by AAPI in Gaming! While Forget Me Not won't be discounted during the sale event, due to Steam's 30-day cooldown on custom sales, I'm still looking forward to the event and seeing all of the other wonderful LGBTQ+ games Forget Me Not and Battle Live will be showcased next to.

And finally, in July my two released games on Steam will be part of npckc's Nonbinary Coded Games Steam sale! As an enby person, I'm super glad and excited that I got accepted into this, and I'm happy that my enby OCs will get to be showcased next to a bunch of other fantastic games. Forget Me Not will be discounted for this as well.

Misc Topic Roundup

Now, just a few miscellaneous topics to close off this month's devblog.

I've been slowly working through my next longer game, Deep Waters, while working on these immediate releases. As of this blog, it's at roughly 20k words and every route of the first playable character's perspective has half of its scenes ingame, with the main romantic route being almost done. My next patron-exclusive blog in July will most likely be talking about Deep Waters once again, so I'm hoping to finish that route beforehand, as well as some other parts of the game.

I've also done some touch-ups to Forget Me Not recently, all thanks to the wonderful people who have played my game and left me feedback (which includes the streamers and content creators as well.) Alongside some text-related editing (typos, the bane of my existence) I also added some more spots in the point-and-click sections to double check if the player is ready to move on, due to some areas missing them. Once again, thank you to everyone that pointed these things out.

That's everything from me for now, so I'll see you all again in my next public dev blog in August! Take care!

[solsdevblog]

Battle Live! The Idol School Collection Releases JUNE 26TH

Hello everyone! I'm thrilled to announce that my upcoming, episodic idol school visual novel, Battle Live! The Idol School Collection, finally has a definitive release date!

The game and its first DLC story pack, More Stories from the Idol School, releases on...

June 26th!

Things are going to ramp up very soon before release, so be sure to wishlist and share the game with anyone you know that might like it!

[solsdevblog]

Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter Steam Page, DLC, and Bundle!

Hello everyone! The Yaoi Game Jam Co-op Bundle has just started, and my 2025 entry Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter is part of it! With the bundle's release I have some special things to announce.

The first is that Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter is getting ported to Steam! It'll remain a free game, but you'll be able to take advantage of the new Steam features, such as the new achievements for each route. You can wishlist the game here to show your support and help spread the word to more people:

Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter on Steam

A romantic, fantasy slice-of-life visual novel about Emile Mayer — the owner of A Slice of Comfort bakery in the Kingdom of Selias — when th

Along with the Steam release, Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter will be getting an update! This update includes things like some visual enhancements, a retouching of the UI, and including the Profiles Menu that I scoped out of the original jam release. This update will be available on both Steam and Itchio at the same time.

And the last and most important thing I'd like to announce:

Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter will be getting a PAID DLC STORY! This is the secret project I've been teasing for a while, and I'm really glad I can finally announce it!

Coming in at just over 10k words, this DLC story — titled "The Baker's First Ball" — takes place several months after the main story. The capital's annual Autumn Charity Ball is about to happen, and a certain someone learns that Emile's never been to a ball before! This DLC story will be available for purchase on both Steam and Itchio when the Steam port releases. It's a very cute extra story, and if you enjoyed the main game you'll definitely love the DLC.

That's all the news from me for now! Be sure to check out the Yaoi Game Jam Co-op bundle, as well as wishlist Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter on Steam to show your support for the upcoming release!

[solsdevblog]

April 2026 Devblog

Hello everyone! It's now April, which means it's time for another public devblog. There's a bit to cover this time, so let's hop right into it!

Battle Live

First off, let's go over one of the major projects I'm working on: Battle Live! The Idol School Collection.

In case you missed it, the Steam page for the game went public at the beginning of March! You can check out the page and wishlist it here:

Battle Live! The Idol School Collection on Steam

Welcome to Pride Park! Experience six main stories and several bonus stories centered around the staff and students of this eclectic idol sc

So far the game has over 100 wishlists, and I'm hoping we can get a decent handful more before it releases. If you know anyone that would enjoy my idol kids, then be sure to share it with them.

In terms of dev-related news, as of this blog post I only have the CGs left to finish for the game before I can officially call it complete! I'll also be working on the trailer for the game to prep for the eventual release, so we're in the final lap of development.

As for when exactly the game will release, I'll be taking some time after I finish CGs to look at how the game is doing in terms of wishlists and go from there (I've also been debating making a "demo build" of Episode 1 so Battle Live can join one of the upcoming Steam Next Fests, but I can't guarantee that). I'll be looking to see how many wishlists I want pre-release before I commit to a release date (especially since this is a free game).

Deep Waters

I've also been working on my other, longer project on the side: Deep Waters!

(Still in ugly alpha lmao)

For March's patron blog, I released an in-depth look at the game, what I'd done so far, and what I want to accomplish for it this year. If you're interested in learning more about my modern fantasy, boy's love game, then you can throw me a pledge for even just a month and read it (and all of my other patron blogs).

As for what I've gotten done, I can say that I managed to get a decent first pass of the UI done, and I am one scene away from finishing the first route of the first POV of the game! My goal for the year is to get one POV entirely written, so I'm on track for that.

I admittedly didn't get a ton done for it the past month because of...

Secret Project

Yeah I'm workin' on something secret (unless you're a Patron, in which case you know what it is).

As of this blog post, this secret project's Steam page and build have been approved, and the additional content I'm creating for it is at 10k words for my first pass of the script! I'll be working my butt off to get out of my ugly alpha phase so I can throw it at my editor, and hopefully by the end of April/middle of May I'll be able to announce publicly what this project is!

I am planning on making a patron blog for May that goes into this secret project in more detail, so be sure to keep an eye out for that. (Although it might not be at the beginning of the month since I ideally would like it to be after I announce it publicly haha.)

Misc Topic roundup

Let's finish up this blog with all of the short miscellaneous topics that also happened these past two months.

On February 20th I released a blog post for Forget Me Not, that goes into what the first year of my first commercial game was like! If you haven't read it yet, you can do so here: https://solsdevblog.tumblr.com/post/809100175583920128

Another anniversary to talk about is the 1st anniversary of my NaNoRenO game: Madame Ro's Curiosity Quiz. To celebrate not only the anniversary, but also the fact that it hit 1k downloads on itchio, I created a mini artbook full of concepts, doodles, and my ramblings about what went into making the game.

Madame Ro's Curiosity Quiz by solarProtag

On your usual walk you meet a strange woman who wishes to learn more about you...

Speaking of jams, at the beginning of February I collabed with OTOJANG to create the Strawberry Jam GUI Pack for the Make Visual Novel Assets Jam! I drew the food illustrations, made the quick menu, and set up the controller support (using Fen's pack of course). Be sure to check it, and the other fantastic resources that were released this year, over on itchio!

Strawberry Jam GUI Pack by OTOJANG Games

Strawberry Jam themed UI for Ren'Py.

What's Coming Next

As I mentioned earlier, I'll be spending the time finishing Battle Live's CGs to decide when exactly I want to release it. At the absolute latest I'll be aiming for August (in line with Battle Live's original anniversary), but I'll make a separate announcement post when I figure out when the release date will be.

I'll also be working my butt off on the secret project I mentioned earlier! I believe, so long as nothing major interrupts me, I should be able to get it to a finished beta state by the end of the month. Once that's set I'll be in a good position to publicly announce it (and start collection wishlists for it on Steam as well).

Otherwise that's everything going on with me! My next public dev blog will be in June, so I'll see you all then. Take care~!

[letskei]

Finally got around to starting this girl's love visual novel by @solsdevblog!

[solsdevblog]

Hey there!

Did you know that I have several blog posts on my Patreon that go into deeper looks into what I'm working on? If you're interested, then you can join either of my tiers and read all of them over on my Patreon!

Check em out here!

[solsdevblog]

GET READY TO JOIN THE IDOL SCHOOL!

The Steam page for my next release, Battle Live! The Idol School Collection, is finally up! You can take a peek at my upcoming FREE episodic idol school visual novel on Steam and wishlist it for when it goes live!

WISHLIST IT HERE!

[solsdevblog]

The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not 1st Anniversary Blog

Hello everyone!

I can't believe the day is here, but today — February 20th — is the first anniversary of The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not releasing! It truly feels like it hasn't been that long, but it's been quite the year since the game released, so let's talk a little bit about that!

Initial Release Month

I already went over this in the Post Mortem release blog when the game came out, but the first month went a lot better than I thought it would, honestly. In that month, Forget Me Not hit 50+ sales and three positive reviews on Steam! I won't lie, I was expecting maybe 10 or 20 sales max — especially since I admittedly am not the best at marketing my work (a certain someone would never let down my sudden midnight release haha) — so seeing that I hit that milestone soon after release was incredible. Thank you again to everyone who grabbed a copy in that first month.

2.0 Update

Speaking about the initial reviews, this is a good segue to talk about the major update I released for the game later in June: the 2.0 Update! In response to a few reviews mentioning that they wished the game had more romance in it, I got the idea to create what would become the new epilogue chapter for the game. I let myself be super self indulgent with this chapter, and the result is an extra chapter that even had some of those initial reviewers comment that they really loved the addition! As a writer that honestly makes me super elated to hear. I also got to use the epilogue as a chance to really see how much I've improved as a dev, and I won't lie knocking that out in a bit over a month felt really good.

As well, this update introduced proper controller support, because seeing that a handful of people mentioned playing this game on their Steam Decks made me desperately want to add proper controller support for them (the initial RenPy controller settings are just… so poor lol).

If you haven't played the epilogue yet, or haven't played around with the controller support, then I recommend checking those out to see the work that went into them!

Queer Games Bundle and Itchio Feature

I've talked a lot about Steam up until now, so let's talk about the other site that I released Forget Me Not on last year; Itchio!

Admittedly — and I touched this very briefly in my End of Year blog post — Forget Me Not did poorly over on Itch compared to Steam. Up until August, Forget Me Not sat at less than 10 purchases, and less than 50 downloads of the demo overall. It was pretty disheartening, but it made me glad that I put in the time and effort to release it on Steam.

This all improved when the Queer Games Bundle started, however. Despite the late launch due to some issues they were having, the bundle itself helped give Forget Me Not some more attention. It gained a very good amount of downloads, and it even got more eyes on the Steam page as a result.

As well, the most unexpected development happened after the bundle was underway; Forget Me Not got Itchio front page featured! I still don't know who behind the scenes at Itchio decided they really liked my phantom thief yuri VN enough to put it in the Featured Games feed, but because of that the game got even more traffic than before. While Steam is still leagues ahead of it (entirely due to it being a more popular platform) I am still extremely relieved that Forget Me Not managed to come back and have a successful first year on Itchio as well.

Fall in Love Festival

Speaking of features, let's talk about the sales and festivals Forget Me Not was part of in the past year. Forget Me Not's been a part of 6 Steam sales and festivals as of this blog post, but the one that gave it the most attention was Studio Elan's Fall in Love Festival!

I had the pleasure of not only being accepted into the festival, but also was featured in the special showcase stream hosted by Vtubers LirieLirie and Ran! Of course to be part of the showcase I needed a trailer, so thanks to the combined efforts of myself and my good friend Ironori (the lead of the VNDev Wiki) I was able to create the trailer that you can see on both store pages. It was a lot of hard work, but it was well worth it.

I touched on this in the devblog I released in October, but the whole festival was a very positive experience for me. It of course got more eyes on my game, but it also gave me my first chance to reach out to streamers and content creators to cover the game for the festival! They all had positive things to say about the game, and a couple of them even continued streaming it well after the festival ended (even resulting in what would be one of the funniest commissions I've ever gotten).

I'll of course continue to submit Forget Me Not (and future games) to more festivals and get in touch with streamers/creators, since this festival gave me the confidence to do so.

Misc Topics and Final Thoughts

Before I wrap up this blog post, let's touch on some other topics I didn't get the chance to mention earlier.

One of them is a big milestone for the game, and that's the fact that on November 21st of last year the game reached 10 reviews on Steam, giving it an official Positive rating! I'm floored that the game managed to hit that in its first year, so thank you to everyone who took the time to leave their thoughts about the game on Steam. Maybe in the next few years we'll get close to the 50 milestone next, we'll see.

Another big milestone for the game happened earlier this year! For those who don't know, when your Steam app hits a lifetime gross of $1k USD you get the initial steam app fee refunded in your next payment. Well, I'm happy to announce that thanks to everyone's generosity Forget Me Not reached that! I definitely didn't think I'd be able to reach this goal so soon, but thank you to everyone so much for making this possible!

Along with the festivals and sales, what definitely helped were the Steam bundles that the game got to be a part of. Forget Me Not got bundled together with Crystal Game Works' latest Otome VN, Mari's Magical Deliveries, and later during the Steam Winter Sale it also got invited to join several other games in the Cute Yuri Games Bundle.

I'm still amazed that it's not only been a year since my passion project finally released, but that this past year has been so eventful and positive for the game. While I have no plans to add anymore content to the game itself, I will be continuing to make bonus artwork and other things outside of the game for fun and promo (if you haven't seen them, be sure to check out the birthday artwork of the main cast and the special Valentines' Day comic I made). I hope everyone can continue to enjoy not only this dear game of mine, but other future releases I have planned as well!

Thanks for reading, and Happy First Anniversary, Forget Me Not.

[solsketchbook]

Happy Valentine's Day~!

Here's a cute, short comic about the lovely ladies from my game, The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not.

[solsdevblog]

February 2026 Devblog

Hello everyone!

It's time for the first public devblog of 2026, so let's jump on in to what I've been working on since December.

Forget Me Not 1st Anniversary

February 20th will mark my game — The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not's — first anniversary!! It's been almost a year since I finally released my labour of love full of phantom thievery, yuri, and my dumb girlfail of a protagonist, and it still feels like yesterday I was still working on it.

While I don't have anything big planned for the anniversary, I do plan on making an extra blog on the day of talking about what the first year of release was like, so look forward to that!

Battle Live Progress

For things I'm currently working on, let me talk a bit about my remaster collection, Battle Live, The Idol School Collection!

As of this blog I'm almost done the finished sprites for the game! Afterwards I'll jump right into working on the finished background art, and once that's set I'll be able to make the Steam page public so everyone can wishlist the game! As a reminder, the base game will be Free To Play but I'll have DLC Story Packs available to add onto the game (one releasing alongside the game, and another releasing later down the line). I'll be making a separate announcement for that once it's ready, so keep an eye out!

My ultimate goal is to get the Steam page out by the end of February/middle of March, so let's see if I can hit that. If any delays do happen I will keep everyone updated, of course.

Other Plans

Last month for my patrons on Patreon I released a paid blog talking about all of my plans for the year (which you can check out here). While I won't go into too much detail about the things I mentioned there, I will say that I plan on working on one of those things specifically in March! This certain something is another thing I plan on releasing in 2026, and I'll be sure to announce it once I'm able to.

As well, I am of course slowly working on my next longer game, Deep Waters! As of this blog I've gotten almost a 3rd of one POV fully written, and once I'm free from the art mines I plan on going ham on more writing to blast through even more of it. The game, visually, is still in my ugly alpha sketch phase but here's a little doodle based on one of the scenes I wrote.

What's Next

I've been going ham on all the finished art for Battle Live, so by the time my next public dev blog goes up the Steam page should be live! It still feels weird that I'm almost done working on this remaster, and I can't wait to share it with everyone — both old and new fans alike.

As well, alongside all the art I'm working on, I want to try and push my way through Deep Waters and see if I can finish one of the routes for the first POV by the end of March. I'm also considering having the prologue available for patrons to play early and leave feedback on, but I'll keep everyone updated on what my decision ends up being for that.

This ended up being a shorter post, but I hope everyone's looking forward to what I've got cooking for 2026 already. The next public devblog will go up in April, so keep an eye out for that! Until then, take care everyone! See ya!

-Sol

[solsdevblog]

2025 End of Year Blog

Hello, everyone!

Welcome to my last dev blog of 2025, my End of Year Roundup! I'll be taking the time to go over everything that I got done this year, as well as all the notable things that happened! This year was super packed so there's a lot to cover. Let's jump right in!

Forget Me Not Released

The biggest thing this year, and the thing that was the focus of the first few months, was my game The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not finally releasing! After a long few years of solo dev, my phantom thief love letter of a game is now available on Itchio, and it marks my first release on Steam as well!

The reception Forget Me Not's gotten this year has been really wonderful, honestly. As of writing this post Forget Me Not's sold over 150 copies across Steam and Itchio! We also hit the 10 review milestone over on Steam netting it an official "Positive" rating on the site, which has helped bring a few more eyes to it as a result. If you decided to either play the chapter 1 demo or grab the full game this year, then here's a thank you from me!

Forget Me Not also got featured in the Fall in Love Festival Showcase, and has been played (even in full!) by a handful of streamers, which was very fun to experience.

I won't lie that I was a little worried on the Itchio side, as Forget Me Not sat at very little downloads before the Queer Games Bundle, but thanks to that (and the surprise front page feature it got as a result) it managed to do well over there as well!

I also managed to add a substantial update to the game a few months later in the form of the 2.0 update! Along with proper controller support (I continue to owe Feniks my life—) I wrote a brand new Epilogue chapter for the game! Clocking in at under 10k words, this chapter was done much faster than the other parts of the game not only because I was able to use all of my previously finished assets, but also because my current workflow has helped me speed things up a ton with dev!

February: MVNA and Trans Joy Jam

Alongside the Forget Me Not release prep, in February I also took part in two different game jams: The Make Visual Novel Assets Jam (from February 1 to 16) and the Trans Joy Jam (from February 1 to 24).

I joined MVNA as an excuse to practice some more background art, creating the Beach Vacation Background Pack! It was a lot of fun, and I've gotten to see it used a fair bit this past year. I'll definitely be taking part in MVNA again in 2026, so look forward to that.

I also got recruited into a team for the Trans Joy Jam. Initially I got brought on as the character designer, but then got promoted to CG artist as well. This was my first time being part of a jam team, and the whole process went super smoothly due to the hard work of everyone in the team. If you're interested in checking out a free, fun game about a budding trans woman then go check out Spring in Her Step over on Itchio.

March: NaNoRenO

The jam train doesn't stop here, however, as right after in March was NaNoRenO! I took part this year with an idea that would become my fantastical quiz game, Madame Ro's Curiosity Quiz. This was my third NaNoReno that I took part in, but the very first one where I released a full, completed game by the end of it! (2017 was the beta of the original Battle Live, and 2024 got taken over by Locked Room on Rails).

I made a whole postmortem blog about my experience making Madame Ro which you can read for yourself, but I'll say that I'm extremely happy with what I accomplished in this month. I definitely want to take part again, maybe even try to make that game I attempted to make for the 2024 NaNo again and see if I can finish it this time.

July and August: Yaoi Game Jam

After a three month break from jams, I jumped back into it in July for this year's Yaoi Game Jam, creating my fantasy, slice-of-life game Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter! I have a behind-the-scenes post about it for patrons over on Patreon that you can check out if you decide to join.

This game was truly the perfect way of showing that my new workflow has been working out very well for me, as I managed to knock out this 24k word game with 9 CGs, 8 Cut-Ins, and 8 BGs in these two months. The script itself was written in July, with all of the assets being finished and refined by the end of August!

I admittedly almost burnt myself out with how hard I was working on this game, but it was still a valuable experience and let me release yet another shorter game this year! This makes me confident that I can maybe release at least one short game a year from here on out (though I will, of course, pace myself better than I did with this game haha).

Battle Live, The Idol School Collection

Now to talk about the biggest thing I worked on this year (and honestly the thing that took up most of the year lol), the remaster of my first five games Battle Live the Idol School Collection! Alongside everything I mentioned before, I worked on this remaster collection all throughout 2025.

With the work I did in November, I can proudly say that the entire base game for the collection is fully in beta! All its missing now is to finish up all of the assets and touching up the script. The base game sits at 60k words long, with 6 main episodes and a dozen, shorter bonus episodes that you all can enjoy about my idol kids.

Soon after I finished the base game, however, I jumped into the next thing I needed for the release next year: the first DLC pack that will release alongside it! So far I've gotten three of the seven bonus written and formatted into the game, and I'll be aiming to finish all of the scripts by the end of January!

On the topic of the eventual release next year, I also got the Steam page for the game and my build approved! My plan is to make the store page public once I finish the sprites and background art, and then spend the time before the full release finishing all the other assets and doing another last round of playtests. I also managed to get achievements working for the main episodes over on Steam, so look forward to collecting them once the game's out! As a little bonus, here's a look at the key art for the game that I finished as well.

Plans for Next Year

Now that Forget Me Not is released, next year will hopefully continue the trend I want to follow of releasing one long game and one short game each year at least.

Battle Live just needs its finished assets and the DLC fully written, so I can probably say that at the earliest it might release around April/May 2026, or in August at the latest. We'll have to see how the first few months of the year treat me (but I'll of course keep everyone updated!)

For other things I'm working on, I actually managed to start the alpha for my next longer game: Deep Waters. It's still in VERY early alpha, but here's some previews of it so far.

It's currently sitting at roughly 10k words written, with the entire prologue ingame already! At this rate, I believe the full game might end up being around 50k words? I'm not the best at predicting my own wordcounts, so we'll see. I'll be keeping everyone updated on its progress as well next year.

Other than that, there's a couple jams I have my eye on joining next year, but nothing 100% decided yet.

This year was a hectic one, with a lot of things that I did and got done which you all saw. I'm hopeful that I can continue this energy into 2026. For now that's all from me! I hope this year treated you all at least a little well, and I'll see you all next year, bye~!

[solsdevblog]

Hello everyone!

Right now my game, The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not, is on sale for both the Steam Winter Sale and the Itchio Winter Sale! You can get it (and my other paid goodies) for 20% off on both sites!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3333600/The_Mysterious_Thief_Forget_Me_Not/

Itchio: https://itch.io/s/172563/winter-sale-2025

As well, over on Steam Forget Me Not got invited to be part of the Cute Yuri Games Bundle hosted by Winter Heat dev YuriKissaten! You can get it and three other games for a discount in this bundle!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/65472

[solsketchbook]

@arimiadev's newest game, Mari's Magical Deliveries, came out yesterday (the 8th)! It's in a bundle on Steam with my game, The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not, so you can grab both of them together!

[solsketchbook]

Happy Halloween from the cast of Forget Me Not! (And thank you for 100+ sales as well!)

If you wanna learn more about this fun bunch, you can check out my game on Steam: The Mysterious Thief Forget Me Not!

[solsdevblog]

The itchio Halloween sale is back for 2025, and you can grab all my paid goodies for 20% off, or together in a bundle!

You can find out more, and maybe even grab yourself a copy of the bundle, HERE 🎃 https://itch.io/s/162280/halloween-sale-2025

[raleydrew-gaming]

I'm super late for the Fall in Love Fest (sorry), but at long last, here's the beginning of my playthrough

So far, Chapter 1 is complete, and I'll be playing the rest in the near future. For future updates, please consider saving my playlist for the full game here

Please check it out and remember to support @solsdevblog as much as you can! Links to their social media is listed in the video description, so look there for more info ^-^

Thank you and please enjoy 🌠

[solsdevblog]

October 2025 Dev Blog

Hello everyone! Welcome to the next public devblog, where I go over everything that happened and what I got done in the past two months! There's quite a bit to go over this time, so let's jump right in!

Yaoi Game Jam

Kicking off this blog post is my latest game release for Yaoi Game Jam 2025, Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter! I released it right at the end of August, and it's gotten some very good reception since then — especially because it was added to the Fresh Games Section on Itch.

Bread Makes the Heart Aflutter by solarProtag

A boy's love visual novel about a fantasy bakery, and the interesting newcomer that visits.

Creating this game was a very fun experience, and I ended up really getting into a good rhythm with the game dev itself, with it totaling at 24k words, 9 CGs and 8 Backgrounds! However, I did admittedly almost burn myself out because of how hard I was working, which is why I won't be doing anymore jams for the rest of the year.

I also created a patron-exclusive behind-the-scenes post for Bread, which you can check out on my Patreon!

September 2025 Patron Blog | solarProtag

Get more from solarProtag on Patreon

Fall in Love Festival

Before we hop into what I'm currently working on, I should also bring up Studio Élan's Fall in Love Visual Novel Festival on Steam that, as of this post, just wrapped up! I had the pleasure of being accepted into it, and I even got into the special showcase stream where Forget Me Not and 19 other games had their trailers shown off with comments about them from the two hosts, Lirie and Ran.

Because of the showcase, and the festival itself, I of course spent the first week of September getting my butt in gear and made a trailer for Forget Me Not!

While all the actual video recording and editing was done by yours truly, this definitely wouldn't have turned out as good as it did if it wasn't for the support and criticisms that Ironori — the lead of the VNDev Wiki — gave me through the entire week! Thank you again Iron!

This festival was also the first time I've ever reached out to streamers and press to see if they'd like to cover a game of mine! I admittedly get very nervous whenever I need to contact anyone, especially in a "professional" setting, but I am glad I worked up the courage to send out the emails I did. As of this post the game has been streamed by several streamers who have all had very positive reactions to the game:

On Sunday, Sept 28 Kalla Shearwater streamed the game on her Youtube channel.

On Monday, Sept 29 Suzume-chan streamed the demo on her Twitch.

Also on Monday, LiatrisKitty streamed the game on her Twitch.

And on Tuesday (the day before this blog post haha) Lirie streamed the game on her Twitch.

You can also expect a gameplay video over on RaleyDrew's Youtube Channel.

Overall, the Fall in Love Festival was a great success for Forget Me Not, and it has given me a bit more confidence in trying to reach out to people to cover my games in the future.

While the festival may be over, Forget Me Not is still on sale for the Steam Autumn Sale that's still happening at this time, which you can check out over here:

Save 20% on The Mysterious Thief; Forget Me Not on Steam

A story-rich, girl's love visual novel about the titular phantom thief, Forget Me Not, and the famous ballet troupe that visits the city wit

And now, speaking of future games…

Battle Live Remaster

Let's now talk about everything I got done for the Battle Live remaster!

Because of the time I spent focusing on Bread game, I ended up taking a little break from Battle Live dev. However, as you can tell from the progress image, I was able to come back swingin' after my short break at the start of September. This past month I managed to get all of Valentine's and White Day Live scripted and put into the game!

I've also finished all of the clean sprite sketches I needed to do for this part of the remaster and will be starting on the clean background and CG sketches as well! At the pace I'm going, I should have Vday and White Day Live set by the latter half of October, maybe earlier if I get into a groove.

As well, I also got my beta reading feedback for Halloween Live and Christmas Live! The changes I made to both of them have been well received, so I'm excited to share it with you all.

What's Next

As I said earlier, my goal is to finish the beta for Valentine's and White Day Live this month, since I only have the backgrounds and CG sketches left to clean (as well as some script touch ups along the way). After that's set and I throw it at my beta reader, I'll be jumping right into the very last episode of the base game: Festival Live! It feels so weird that we're already here for the beta. At the pace I'm going my goal of having the entire base game fully in beta by the end of the year is looking more realistic by the day, and that makes me extremely excited.

On the topic of Battle Live, I'm also aiming to get the bonus stories for the base game fully written by the end of the year at least! From my outlines I'll need little to no extra assets for them, so if I get through those at a good pace I could probably add them into the game before the year ends as well, but we'll have to see how it all pans out.

For non-Battle Live projects, like I said at the start I won't be doing anymore game jams this year due to almost burning myself out with Bread game. That doesn't mean I won't be using certain jams as an excuse to work on other things, however. Even though I won't be actively doing Yuri Game Jam this year, I'm planning on using it as an excuse to flesh out an outline I've had sitting at 2% for ages. I'll keep everyone posted when I eventually finish it, and when I decide to turn it into a game.

For my next blogs, the next public dev blog will actually end up being the 2025 wrap up near the end of December! I'll go over everything that happened this year, as well as all my goals for 2026.

I'll also be releasing my next patron-exclusive dev blog next month in November, which will focus on the work I did for the second half of the Battle Live Remaster, Christmas Live to Festival Live! If you haven't already, you can join my Patreon and not only get access to it when it drops, but also be able to read my other patron dev blogs! I also have the patron-exclusive beta of the first episode of Battle Live, which will stay available even after the game fully releases (the feedback form, however, will be hidden after the 2025 wrap up post goes live).

That's all from me, so I'll see you all in the next dev blog. Take care!

- Sol