Fuchian Chronicles News

Hello everybody! It’s been a while, huh? Hope you’re all doing well. It’s already been a whole year since Fuchian Chronicles came out of Early Access, so I’d like celebrate the occasion a little. How? For starters, the game is 40% off for the week, the deepest discount yet!

But that’s not the main thing. As you may know, Fuchian Chronicles is a remake of my very first game, Space Fox Kimi. Looking back at it I can’t help but be embarrassed at its quality, and that I put it up for sale at all. But I’d like to think that just means I’ve grown as a developer. I’ve left Space Fox Kimi up for posterity all this time, and with Fuchian Chronicle’s anniversary, I feel like the time is right to make Space Fox Kimi free to play (if it's not yet, please give it a bit to let Steam make the change). Now you can see just how bad it was for yourself!









Visual quality and gameplay improvements aside, the main difference between Fuchian Chronicles and Space Fox Kimi is that the narrative is far more focused in the remake and doesn’t have as many “random plot threads that go nowhere” (I had Kimi and co go to EARTH of all places in the original for reasons I’ve long since forgotten). That’s not to say there aren’t similarities, and you’ll find a couple familiar plot points, especially in the first three chapters of the original. I hope you guys will nonetheless enjoy Space Fox Kimi, and the silly DLCs that come with it!

And that’s it for this time. Unfortunately, I’m still not ready to make a Fuchian Chronicles sequel yet, but in the meantime, I’ve taken on a commission to make a different game. All I can say about it for now is that it’ll be pretty different from the games I’ve made so far, and that I’ll make an announcement about it when it’s ready to be revealed. See you guys then!

Best Regards,
ShenTzu

Hello everyone, hope you’re all enjoying the holiday season! I come bearing gifts, in the form of the Last Fox Fighter!

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Yes, The Last Fox Fighter is now available for free for all owners of Fuchian Chronicles (which is 25% off as part of the Steam 2024 Winter Sale!). Simply go to the DLC page and add it to your library, and you’ll be able to pick whether to play Fuchian Chronicles or The Last Fox Fighter whenever you launch Fuchian Chronicles. The web-playable itch.io version will remain free to everyone regardless of whether or not you own Fuchian Chronicles, and the full version will be available for $1 there as well. I know I previously said I wouldn’t sell it, but I feel this is a decent way to give owners of Fuchian Chronicles an added bonus without alienating those who are only interested in The Last Fox Fighter. Thank you for understanding. Newly added features in the release version of The Last Fox Fighter include:

• A short story consisting of 9 stages
  
• Two ground levels
  
• Stage select and free play option upon story completion
  
• Databank with descriptions of enemies and their behavior
  
• New enemies: bunnoid missile and defence platform
  

There were also a number of tweaks, including:

• New weapon effects as you level up your weapons’ damage
  
• New visual effects for RCS thrusters and boost ability
  
• Stage transition now requires a button press instead of happening as soon as you touch it
  
• Turrets and some enemies now lead their shots, making it harder to dodge
  
• Balance changes, such as number of shots fired at once, faster resource gain, and bigger play area for some stages
  
• Additional settings, including one to change the maximum number of enemies allowed at once, which can improve performance if the game starts to lag
  

If you find any bugs please post it in the bug reporting thread in the Steam community, or if you prefer, email me directly at [email protected]. I’ll fix them and push an update as soon as I’m able.

Finally, as I said in my previous announcement, I will be stepping away from game development for the foreseeable future. Thank you for all your support. I still love making games and fully intend to come back to it in the future, including making a sequel to Fuchian Chronicles. I just need to get things in order first. I still plan on doing some game jams when I can, so please follow my bluesky for updates!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,
- ShenTzu

Hello everyone, I hope you’re all doing well! I know it’s been a while, but I needed some time to properly think things over and come to a decision. That said, this will be a longer post than usual so please bear with me. I’ll have a tl;dr at the end.

First, the Last Fox Fighter. I previously said that there was one more major feature I’d like to try making, and I’m happy to say that it’s done!



Fuchian Chronicles had both ground and space combat, so I wanted the Last Fox Fighter to have them too. Now that the framework is more or less finished, I plan on making a few stages with a short story, and releasing the Last Fox Fighter as a free DLC for Fuchian Chronicles. The web-playable version on itch.io will remain in its current version, and only the Steam version will be complete with separate stages and ground sections. As for a release date… I’m not sure yet, but I’m aiming for a Christmas release, or January 2025 at the latest.

So why a DLC instead of a full game? Well for starters, as fun as it was for me to make the Last Fox Fighter, it’s still more of a learning project than a game I’d feel comfortable selling (I’ve learned from my Space Fox Kimi days!). The other, more important reason would be budget, and this is where this announcement starts becoming a bit of a personal post-mortem, so feel free to stop reading here if you’re not interested.

Without getting too much into details, I made Fuchian Chronicles while living off savings and taking some freelance jobs (which in hindsight, was dumb to say the least). This meant that I couldn’t put as much resources into the game as I would have liked, both in terms of money and time. To me this stood out most in the lack of variety in poses in character sprites/portraits and the inconsistency in art style, which is the result of using a wide array of asset packs instead of sprites from a single artist. The scope of Fuchian Chronicles didn’t help either, especially since it contains both sci-fi and medieval fantasy elements.

That wouldn’t be as big of an issue if I could have taken my time with development, but the fact that I was living off savings meant I couldn’t. I had hoped by putting Fuchian Chronicles out in Early Access would help and that it would do well enough to fund my next game, but unfortunately that didn’t pan out. I have no one but myself to blame for these unrealistic expectations of course, and there are many other things I could have done better. These are lessons I'll be taking to heart for my next game.

As things are, I don’t have the budget or time to make the Last Fox Fighter into a full game. And that is why I will be stepping away from game development after releasing it as a small DLC, to get my life to a more sustainable place. I still love making games and plan on continuing to do so in the future, which includes making a sequel to Fuchian Chronicles. It’ll just likely be a while before I can, and development will be slower when I do. Hopefully by then I'll have more experience and resources that can go towards into making my next game even better. Naturally I’ll still fix any bugs that may come up, so please do report any that you find. I may also participate in the occasional game jam and do some light dev work if time permits, and will be posting updates to my Bluesky account when I do.

And that’s it for this time. I apologize if you're disappointed by my decision, but I hope you'll understand why I made it. I’ll make another announcement when the Last Fox Fighter is finished and ready for download. Thank you as always for your support, and for reading this extra-long announcement/post-mortem. I’ll see you guys soon.

Sincerely,
ShenTzu

TL;DR
The Last Fox Fighter will be a free DLC, aiming for release around Christmas to January 2025.
Web-playable version on itch.io won’t be updated to final version, which will includes ground sections, a short story, and multiple stages.
Fuchian Chronicles sequel on hold until I get my life in order, bug fixes will still be made if new bugs are found.

Fixed a small bug where a character was still using dummy equipment after rejoining the party. Thanks to Nether for catching it!

Hey there! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Between commission work and a game jam, progress on The Last Fox Fighter was slower than I would have liked. That’s not to say there hasn’t been any, and the prototype has come a long way since my last update!



New enemies, an upgrade system, cutscenes, there’s a lot of new stuff to see, and you can play The Last Fox Fighter in browser on itch.io! Most of the features I wanted to add are now in the game, but there is one major addition I want to see if I can make before I make a decision on the future of the game. So look forward to my announcement about that here!

Speaking of making announcements and places to make them, at this point I’ve given up on getting back on Twitter/X. So from now on I’ll be on Bluesky and I’ll be gradually posting smaller updates there more often. I understand it’s not exactly a main stream platform, but I do hope to see you guys there!

That’s it for this time, I hope you’ll check out The Last Fox Fighter, and of course, feedback is always welcome! I’ll see you in the next announcement.

Sincerely,
ShenTzu